A woman who rescues stray cats says she has had to seek help from another site 300 miles away as her local centres were “at crisis” with “no space anywhere”.
Anna Seymour, who runs Cats Galore in Chigwell, Essex, is calling for a change to the law around neutering to try to curb the “massive influx of stray cats” she has seen.
“I rescued 454 cats last year, all of which were not microchipped and not neutered,” she said. “It’s immense – I’m just one person.”
Leanne Kent, of Clay County Cat Care in Cornwall, has taken 180 cats from Seymour to her centre in St Austell over the last year and a half.
“Although [Cornwall has] a problem, they don’t have as big a problem as we do in the Essex and London areas,” Seymour said.
“Irresponsible ownership is a factor and there needs to be something set in place about mandatory neutering and breeding.”
Clay County Cat Care said it had “been working with two rescues in Essex/London for around 15 months trying to help with the massive over-population and neglect they are experiencing and working so hard to try to improve”.
Seymour said it was often impossible to reunite cats with their owners due to a lack of microchips, but said it was “important to get cats into great homes,and that’s where Leanne has helped”.
“It’s a mammoth task to hire a van [and] make sure they travel safely,” she said.
“We’ve been backwards and forwards a few times. We ensure the cats go in dog cages, there are litter trays, they’ve got lots of room and they’re comfortable.”
Hannah Watson, small animal vet with an Essex-based veterinary group, said practices were “certainly seeing the same issues that rescue centres are seeing”.
“We work closely with another local charity in the area, and they’re facing huge demand from the stray cat population,” she told BBC Essex’s Sonia Watson.
