The CatteryEach of our residents is desperate to find their forever home, so please browse through the photographs and click on the ones where you would like to find out more detail. Every cat deserves to find their own special human so please take your time and if you have further questions that need answering don’t hesitate to give us a call. Liverpool 0151 931 1604, Wales 01286 880 808 Welcome to the Freshfields Cattery   The Freshfields Cattery's (Liverpool & Wales) act as temporary (and we hope short term) home for the endless cycle of cats and kittens in need of our help each year. Our aim is for the misery to stop once it reaches our door and we endeavour to ensure that every cat & kitten receives the food, medication, warmth, love and socialisation it needs whilst in our care. Every cat and kitten, just like every human has the right to a happy, loving home and for that reason we are thorough in our checks when rehoming. Re-homing policy may differ slightly between the two rescues due to resources. We are entirely dependant upon your donations making the charity itself resource led. If you are looking for a permanent addition to your family that will, with time, give you joy and love in return then please take a look through the profiles, visit us at the centre or give us a call if you require further advice. We look forward to hearing from you! 2010 Cat Neuter Figures for the Liverpool Shelter (Update)Figures for the year were as follows for the Liverpool shelter; Adoptions 503 [2009 524] As can be seen there was a substantial rise in the level of door to door domestic work the charity undertook solely because Cats Protection raised their level of voucher funding, this is predicted to rise further as long as the budget from CP remains roughly constant.
The charity has increased the number of clinics it now uses on Merseyside to 5 to cope with the rise in work, http://www.ruffordvets.com are handling all the Liverpool 20 project cats, http://www.justcats.co.uk mainly handle all the charity rehoming work, http://www.withygrovevets.co.uk focus on our feral work and 2 new additions http://www.vets4pets.com in Old Swan and http://www.hillcrestanimalhospital.co.uk have joined to tackle our domestic door to door workload. We have negotiated set prices for all our neuter work with each practice to cap it at £30. Over 80% of households have their cats picked up by the scheme to ensure the surgery takes place. Although increasing the cost of the scheme to this charity, this practice is a necessity to guarantee an end to breeding there, because so many of the households we are dealing with are dysfunctional.
The pilot project in Liverpool 20 [Linacre] funded by Jean Sainsbury, Jean Marchig and the Persula Foundation progresses well. Regarded as the most deprived area in north Liverpool it previously had eaten up over 17% of our CP budget in 2009 and has seen the charity working very closely with many existing community groups on the ground within the wards referring problems onto Freshfields. One of the strongest results of this collaboration has been the response of several social housing providers who have seized the initiative, published the neuter scheme in their own magazines and put the info onto their own websites. This has led to literally a deluge of requests to access the scheme, currently putting through on average 30 to 40 cats a week, still leaving a waiting list of approx 10 weeks at any one time In a breakdown of postcodes that are and have accessed the scheme it is clear that the ripple effect of the advertising done for the Linacre Project within the various community groups and by the social housing providers has spilled over into other postcodes where tenants have seized the opportunity our work has offered. For instance in Liverpool 11 numbers have jumped from 1 to 54, Liverpool 21 33 to 84, Southport [PR8 and PR9] 38 to 64 from 2009 to 2010. Because we have been active within Liverpool 20 before the new project came on line in August the figure there has jumped from 123 to 205, 2009 to 2010 The preparation done to launch the scheme in Liverpool 20 as well as the need to satisfy the funders meant an appraisal of our modus operandi, how we keep track of the various budgets, what info we needed to gather from households so we could assess future need for the project and how we process that material. This has led to an increase in the admin work the neutering schemes have generated but to allow us to gauge accurately where and how these schemes need to be pushed we have had to computerize the info we are gathering. All of these could be relevant in future decision making on project direction; post surgery problems, number/type of agency referrals to the charity, number of dysfunctional houses dealt with, numbers in season/pregnant/litters had, households without own carrier/transport etc. This will allow us to report more extensively on the issues that Merseyside faces and as a charity with limited means reliant on grant assistance for this field work to focus on areas that the evidence proves we need to act. Funding is reasonably secure for 2011 allowing us to further develop our community work across Merseyside, the Linacre Project work in Liverpool 20 will continue to the end of the summer. The feral colony work across the county will be substantial leading up to the spring before breeding starts again. The door to door domestic neutering for households on benefits and in social housing is set to increase even further. The charity regards this preventative work as essential and is keen for supporters to subsidize the charity's commitment to it.
FIV Cats - the Truth Behind the Myths!   FIV cats make perfectly good pets! With the right people in the right environment! Here are some of the myths and truths regarding cats that carry the FIV virus: All rescue centres admit a percentage of cats with various medical conditions. That is the nature of rescue work. As animals get older they develop or contract disease and body organs do not function as well as you would want them to. No different to us really. This is an important part of the work that Freshfields carries out; identifying illness, drawing up a treatment plan, stabilising the condition and convincing understanding adoptees that they can cope with the condition whilst providing the adoptees with back-up when needed. Here at Freshfields cats testing positive for FIV are given no less consideration than those diagnosed with heart or kidney disease, that are blind or have had a limb amputated. If our veterinary assessment is one that the animal can be treated and homed then we treat and we make every effort to re-home. That is an essential part of any ethical approach to animal welfare. Too many cats diagnosed with Feline Immune Virus are euthanased because their owners (often under veterinary advice) believe this to be the only option to prevent the spread of the disease. Sadly many welfare organisations also adopt the easy approach and euthanase anything presenting problems including FIV positive cats. Indoor only homes are required for our FIV cats, preferably with a mature family responsible enough not to leave doors open. FIV cats are the perfect option for those people living near busy roads who would need to keep their pets inside for safety reasons. And of course, anyone already with an FIV positive cat would be an ideal candidate to take on a companion for it. These cats do not deserve to die. Whilst capable of having a good quality of life that they should be permitted the experience of the same love and affection other cats enjoy in a home.
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Meet the Animals... |
