At last it seems that all Chester’s troubles are over and he has a forever home with Marion, along with his friend George of whom he says ‘No one loves me as much’. Oh I think they do! Marion and Steven and their family love him, as does everyone else who meets him.
For anyone who hasn’t read about what happened to Chester, this is his story:
- Chester Part 1 – rescued and recovery
- Chester Part 2 – updating news for his fan club
Nothing has been easy for him, he was physically harmed and mentally traumatised from his terrible ordeal. Then when he recovered from all that and went to be neutered, he had a retained testicle which meant a bigger operation than normal for a male cat.
The next day he wrote on his Facebook page which is called ‘Chester The Cat’ and where he now has 204 fans:
’I am home and am fine but am hiding in darkest smallest place I can find and I may stay hidden for a while’
But later he was much more cheerful:
‘I am fully recovered tearing around the house eating all the food in sight, I certainly won’t be getting cuddled as I don’t like being held, I don’t trust humans enough to cuddle me but I do trust them to feed me so can see they have their uses’
Then the other day:
‘Today I responded to a stroke from the human, I raised my tail, I just couldn’t be bothered to run away like I usually do as I was balanced on top of stair rail’
Progress indeed!
The other news from our Wear Valley & Darlington Cats Protection branch isn’t so good. Marion and her foster carers have more than thirty cats in care, including some with special needs and the waiting list to come in is over one hundred now and never gets any less because of all the abandoned cats coming in as strays.
Marion is running a campaign this month with vouchers towards neutering local cats, hoping maybe that will help some of those people who feel they can’t afford to pay for that and may need to relinquish their cats.
Also more neutered cats mean less unwanted kittens coming into care because the biggest problems are as ever, more kittens being born and not enough homes for them. There are not enough volunteers to raise the funds needed to help more cats.
Flick is a CH kitten and is another staying forever with Marion, along with Chester and George, because of their special needs.
TNR and feeding ferals takes up a lot of volunteer time and the branch is battling against cat flu in some feral colonies.
What makes things even worse are the people selling litter after litter of kittens via facebook or similar and then when they tire of doing that expect CP to pay for their breeding cats to be spayed. The expectations of people from a small branch is far too high, all the volunteers are over stretched right now.
As many cats as possible are helped as always, neutered, vaccinated and microchipped to give them a better chance of being adopted.
Peppa has been spayed and sadly had to have her deformed tail amputated.
Hopefully one day soon, someone will adopt her and the many other beautiful cats needing a loving home and there will be room for more.
And so the work goes on …….
Ruth aka Kattaddorra
Please search using the search box at the top of the site. You are bound to find what you are looking for.
I would love to see how Chester (and his buddy George) are doing today.
Does anyone know?
Chester is very grown up and handsome now
God, I love him and although it is not possible or sensible I’d be thrilled to look after him.
Another lovely photo of Chester and George
Great photo again. I love these Chester photos. Chester looks wonderful these days. Here is a slightly different version of the photo:
That was me, Monty’s Mom, in the above comment. I forgot to change it back from when Jeff commented on his carpentry building Monty’s furniture.
I wondered if it was your Jeff lol
Babz and I sometimes do that when we both use the downstairs computer one after the other and the first one of us forgets to do a crap cleaner.
Yes Chester is a real stunner and maybe one day at Marions he will let us stroke him but we can’t blame him for being so wary of people bless him.
Just have to share this latest wonderful photo of the handsome Chester
He’s gorgeous, such a beautiful coat and his little intelligent face, he’s still just a baby really, so glad he’s safe
Chester really grew up to be quite a stunning cat.
Peppa has a forever home, good news as another cat can come into care in her place.
It’s sad that so many are relinquished, to me cats are family and families stay together.
They can’t ALL have good excuses as to why they don’t want the cat any more 🙁
cant believe anyone would do something so cruel and great shes much better now geogerous ginger cats love them
Terrible to think if that man hadn’t stopped those scumbags, Chester would have either been drowned or set on fire!
Chester is such a marvel. I guess he’s sort of semi-feral (for a lack of a better term) because of all the trauma he experienced. Again, and I know how weird I am, THOSE EARS! And, George’s too.
Marion, I so admire you and hate that people are selling cats on FB or anywhere else. I really can’t read that stuff. It puts my sanity in jeopardy.
The world is a better place because of people like you. As hard as it is, you’re ezactly where you are meant to be.
I think I know what you mean about their ears Dee, sort of always pricked up alert instead of relaxed like cats ears are who haven’t been abused.
Even though Chester was so badly treated as a kitten he was one of the lucky ones, going through what he did got him rescued from what was a potentially awful,and probably short, life for him and safely in the best home he could ever have hoped for, so many kittens and adult cats are never as lucky as are passed around from home to home on a whim, advertised, sold, abandoned and of course used as dog bait, it’s heart breaking to see some of the things that pop up on Facebook about cats. I’d never seen a CH cat in person before I met Flick, had never heard of it until she appeared on Marion’s page, what a brave little thing she is and how sad that this awful – illness/disease? – is becoming more common now, surely it’s more important than ever to control breeding there are just so many desperate cats and kittens, surely better they were never born that that they be abused or die outside.
I am full of admiration for Marion’s many years of work for cats, I know that I couldn’t cope with all the sadness that she must have had to swallow over the years so that she could carry on doing what she does.
Chester’s story is a great success for cat rescue. It is just sad though that there seems to be an increase in unwanted cats. I don’t like to hear about that. It indicates that cat ownership is not going in the right direction.
Still, it is nice to see Chester confident and healthy. Looking at George and Chester is like looking at father and son. I like to see that expanse of ginger tabby fur.
its horrendous all the pet sale and free ads on facebook heart-breaking too, from £200 asked for a moggy DSH which they say is a pedigree cross so obviously isn’t to the free worthless kittens like two we rescued from such an advert online, owner had a shopping list full of animals for sale but the kittens were worthless 🙁
our volunteers took in another CH kitten which was being hawked free to good home on facebook and described by a self proclaimed behaviourist as only affected when bored and quite cute really 🙁 kittens were wormy and way underweight with the CH kitten being particular skinny. We are trying to neuter as many as possible now at the start of breeding season but there will still be an abundance come May 🙁
I am shocked to hear that cats and kittens are being advertised on Facebook. I am surprised FB allows this. What do you know about this Marion? Can you provide me with a link to a page with an ad in a new comment? I’d to do an article about it if possible.
Michael there are many groups, pages and profile on facebook all selling /dealing in pets, often a pic of kitten will be tagged with about 50 or 60 of these. Here is a selection of the names just do a facebook search, lots of them are kept private though but we come across them when the sellers get desperate and have pics public or when we are alerted to have a look, some we join and add juts to keep an eye on.
Teesside Animal-sales, Northeast Animal sales, Animals free Togoodhome Tyne and wear, Animals for Sale Bishop Auckland, Hartlepool Animal-Sales.
Petsales Northeast durham
Dton Animal Sales
Durham Animal sale And stuff
Tyne and wear Pets
Animals for Sale Bishop Auckland
Free to good Home For sale animals
Petsales Tyneandwear
Chantelles Animals page
Pets for sale Co durham
Darlingtons Animals For sale Or wanted
Thanks a lot Marion. I’ll check this out.
No one should ever advertise pets free to a good home, or sell them on social sites like facebook
Last night I spent about 2 hours searching Facebook for “cats for sale” and what upset me was there were lots of overbred pedigree cats for sale from Russian and European breeders. OK these are not “free to good home” cats but they are part of the same problem. Cats being used for profit. I might do a short post on it.
He is looking wonderful. It is hard to read about so many unwanted cats. I praise the folks like you and Marion who champion the cause. Heartbreaking work, until the good stories like Chester’s emerge. Thank you isn’t enough.
It’s wonderful that Chester’s story has such a happy ending, we will never know what happened to his mother and any siblings he had. Those youths were never caught, we just have to hope they were shamed by the reports in the press about their cruelty from ever doing anything like that again.
I had no idea there was such a problem like this in England. It’s very sad and depressing. Those people who sell kittens should bloody well sod off. It’s not right and it’s not fair on all the other kittens and cats who are homeless. I had no idea that in England there were TNR colonies and so on. It’s very hard to keep the numbers down if you have people subverting your every move by creating more kittens and un neutered cats.
I’d be giving them a damn good yelling at on facebook if I saw them posting kittens for sale anywhere I’m browsing!