05/07/2025
Greetings Smoltesers! Sharing this post from Celia Hammond. Although I'm not from a Rescue, I was rescued from a neighbour who didn't want me and if my mum hadn't taken me in, this could have been my fate. Rescue is definitely best!
Why in 2025 are animal rescue centres across the U.K struggling to cope with such huge numbers of unwanted pets? Is the Rescue message really lost on so many of todays pet owners?
Like all animal charities up and down the country we are inundated with requests to help unwanted and abandoned cats, our centres and foster homes are full and the requests to take in more cats continue to pour in. The plight of cats in the areas we work in is desperate and the situation is continuing to get worse.
The Cost of Living crisis and post pandemic relinquishment of pets are part of the reason but there is more to it than that including a shift in attitude about adopting rescue cats and about neutering pets.
The Cats Protection Annual Report 2024 reveals that it is the 18-34 age group who are most likely to purchase cats (mainly pedigree cats) rather than choose to adopt rescued cats. This younger generation are also the least likely age group to neuter their cats - just 77% of cat owners aged 18-34 neutered their cats compared to 95% of cat owners aged 55 years and older.
Our own experience is that for those who do choose to adopt rescue cats increasingly the “pretty” colours are sought and many adopters are very specific wanting specific colour combinations and they do not hesitate to shop around online to compare with other rescue centres and also with breeders. The Cats Protection survey also found that over a quarter of cats are now acquired through social media sources and with social media being so important to the younger generation this could this be why the physical appearance of their cats is a priority for these younger cat owners.
If rescued animals are falling out of favour then the future for unwanted and stray cats is becoming even bleaker. Those of us who have worked in rescue for decades are devastated by the deteriorating shift in attitudes by some towards rescued animals, does the plight of stray and abandoned animals really no longer pull at the heart strings? Are our pet companions considered disposable? Is a whole generation suffering from compassion fatigue? - or did they ever care? The older generations are not without blame either as we also continue to encounter older people with pets breeding out of control and an increasing demand by elderly people to adopt kittens and very young cats with no plan as to what will become of these cats if they can no longer care for them.
Whilst mass neutering of cats is currently needed to stabilise the cat population this also needs to be combined with an education programme to change the attitudes of those who are contributing to the cat population crisis that we are struggling to cope with.
