Consett Cat Rescue

27/05/2026

Last week we popped in to microchip the lovely Muffin and she was an absolute star throughout 🐾✨

We use Pettrac microchips, one of the UK’s most trusted Defra-compliant databases. They’re checked by vets, rescues and local authorities nationwide and operate 24/7, giving lost pets the best possible chance of being reunited with their families. Studies consistently show that microchipped pets are far more likely to make it home, with microchipped cats reunited with their owners many times more often than those without a chip 🏡🐱

It’s also worth noting that it is now the law in England for cats to be microchipped and registered, so this simple procedure isn’t just peace of mind, it’s a legal requirement too.

We offer Pettrac microchipping for just £20 per pet, including registration, quick to do and lasting a lifetime. One small chip, a huge layer of protection 💛

27/05/2026

Keep your eyes peeled folks

🐾 Cat fans!! 🐾
Earlier in the year I told you I'd be doing an online event raising funds for Consett Cat Rescue, a cat charity local to me 🐈‍⬛️
I've decided to do that next month! 🙂
Keep your eyes peeled 👀 for more info.
Everything will be cat-themed and here's some sneaky peeks of just a few of the things I'll have available 🤩

27/05/2026

✨ A little rescue update from us… and honestly, it’s been a pretty exciting Bank Holiday weekend here at Consett Cat Rescue! 🐾🎉

I confess I delayed sharing this news because I didn’t want to tempt fate 😅 but an email today finally confirmed things, so here goes…

🏡 TWO cats have now gone off to their new homes:
🐱 Maude
🐱 Libby

AND…

💖 THREE more cats are now reserved and hopefully heading off to their forever homes very soon:
🐾 Noah
🐾 Elmo
🐾 Twinkle

Two are due to leave in the first week of June and we’re just waiting on a date for the third 🥰

Gosh… I said all that in TWO sentences. That has got to be a first for me because usually I ramble on and on and on 🤣🤣

📦 Huge thank you as well to everyone who has sent items from our Amazon Wishlist. Some parcels arrived recently, but I also discovered two unopened boxes from a while ago that somehow escaped unpacking 🙈 so thank you to those lovely supporters too ❤️

💳 And another massive thank you to everyone who has set up a standing order or direct debit.

People are often shocked when I say this, but running a small rescue costs us close to £100,000 a year 💸 and remember — we have NO paid staff. Every penny goes back into the cats 🐱

Food 🍗
Litter 🧼
Vet bills 🏥
Medications 💊
Neutering ✂️
Vaccinations 💉
Emergency rescues 🚑

… it all adds up incredibly quickly.

That’s why regular donations, no matter how small, really do help keep us going ❤️ Without fundraising we’d honestly be up a certain creek without a paddle 🚣‍♀️🤣

📱 In other news… we may be attempting to get down with the kids and venture onto TikTok 👀😂

Clearly we are becoming old dinosaurs relying purely on Facebook, so over the coming weeks I’m going to try and get my head around this mysterious app everyone keeps talking about 🤣 Wish me luck!

🐾 Lastly — we are currently inundated with requests for trapping help.

At the moment there are only TWO of us doing all the trapping, alongside working full-time jobs, so unfortunately we do have to prioritise where possible — especially female cats first because every unneutered female potentially means more kittens being born.

We are keeping lists and we WILL try to get to everyone, but please bear with us ❤️

Huge thanks as always to our amazing vets at Darlington Vet Clinic who are absolutely brilliant 🏥🐱 — but they are also incredibly busy, so neuter appointments are limited.

🙏 Please:
✔️ Get your own cats neutered
✔️ Tell us about stray and feral cats needing help
✔️ Be patient with us while we work through cases

Thank you all for supporting this little rescue of ours ❤️🐾

21/05/2026

Lucy had the remainder of her teeth removed this week… and honestly? She is like a completely different cat 🥹🐾

Because Lucy has such an intense dislike of other cats 😅 she had to enter the vets via the back door so she wouldn’t have to see any feline “enemies” during her visit. The staff kept her completely separate all day, and she is now back home recovering in our spare room — which is very much HER kingdom 👑

We cannot mix Lucy with other cats because she genuinely goes absolutely ballistic 🙈 but now that we’ve finally worked out the likely cause of a lot of her extreme grumpiness, we can manage things much better by simply ensuring she never has to interact with other cats.

Of course, this does create a challenge for us because Lucy currently occupies an entire room on her own — and realistically that room is supposed to be our isolation/mum-and-babies room 🐱🍼

Lucy is around 12 years old and, aside from her diva tendencies, is actually in excellent health ❤️ She has also lost weight since arriving here, but that has been intentional. She arrived weighing over 6kg and is now down to just over 5kg — a much healthier size for her.

She is also taking all her pain medication like an absolute pro 🌟💊 which is lovely to see because she clearly feels so much better already.

And who knows… maybe now we finally understand Lucy’s “issues,” we really *can* find the right home for her after all 🏡✨

She would need:
🐾 An experienced cat owner
🐾 A calm home
🐾 ABSOLUTELY NO other cats
🐾 Someone who understands that Lucy’s love language is… selective 😂

But never say never, huh? ❤️

19/05/2026

Not palatable for everyone but I firmly believe it’s the right thing to do

19/05/2026

I received an email this afternoon asking me to confirm and accept our nomination for this award 🏆🐾

Of course, being the super cautious person I am, I had to Google it first to make sure it wasn’t a scam 🤣

But genuinely… thank you so much to whoever nominated Consett Cat Rescue ❤️ It really does mean a lot to know people think highly enough of what we do to put us forward for something like this.

Voting opens in 6 days time, so you can be sure I’ll be encouraging lots of voting when the time comes 😹🐱

I just hope it doesn’t turn into another Jolleyes-style fiasco though 😬 I really didn’t enjoy that experience one bit and won’t participate in anything that pits rescues against each other in a negative way. Rescue is hard enough without competition and drama between organisations. At the end of the day, we are all supposed to be helping animals ❤️

If anyone wants to have a nosy at the nomination page, here it is:
[My Local Awards – Consett Cat Rescue] https://mylocalawards.co.uk/business/consett-cat-rescue/

18/05/2026

I knew today was going to be a long day as some “unexpected” extra work arrived late last night. 😅🐾

Up at 5:30am to feed and muck out the masses with the idea of leaving home at 7:45 to drop off Lucy at the vets for her scheduled dental.
However by the time I boxed up 5 cats in total, typically I was running late. 🚗💨

With Lucy dropped off, I had to collect a friend and then head to Chopwell to collect a “pregnant” cat. 🤰🐱
The vets had agreed to neuter 3 extras today on top of the 2 I already had booked in.

So with all the driving — Consett to Fencehouses to Low Fell to Chopwell to West Auckland — I eventually arrived at 11am and dropped off 5 cats for neutering. 🛣️🐈

Then it was posting off a p**p sample because we currently have some p**py cats and the only real way to figure out the cause is testing. 💩🔬

After that we had a couple of hours while the cats were in surgery, so my friend and I went to Raby Castle. Mainly sat in the café because it rained and I had stupidly forgotten my coat! ☕🌧️😂

Then back to the vets to collect everybody, dropped off one tom cat at Chopwell that I’d transported for his owner, then dropped my friend home.

By then it was time to collect Lucy, although the vets were also running late because, as every vet practice knows, Mondays are always chaos with emergencies and last minute extras. 🏥🐾

Lucy has now had all her teeth removed but the surgery went well. Fingers crossed we may also have figured out how to deal with her hatred of other cats… by ensuring she never has to meet any. 😾❤️

Finally got home at 7:45pm. 🥴

Of course every cat in the house was absolutely starving and clearly fading away from hunger, so naturally I had little choice but to feed them 🙄🍽️🐱

Now for the best bit…

The “pregnant cat”. 🤦‍♂️😂

I was so busy this morning that I literally got the lady to put the cat into my carrier and off I went without even scanning it.

Collected “her” from the vets to discover “she” is actually a neutered male… and microchipped! 🤣🐈‍⬛

He’s 8 years old and does look like he possibly has a flea allergy or something similar as the fur on his back end is very thin.

I’ve contacted the registered owner and left a message but haven’t had a return call yet.

For now he’s safe here tonight. ❤️🐾

Also here is a cheeky pic of Mrs Chunky Kitten 😹
Will write more about her tomorrow ❤️

17/05/2026

With another completely full-on week ahead according to my diary, I’m honestly not sure 24 hours in a day is going to be enough 😅🐾⏰

📅 **Monday** – 3 cats booked in for neutering (so far!) ✂️🐱 as we are still in the middle of trapping ferals and the list keeps growing.
I am also taking another cat in for a dental 🦷🐈 and this particular cat absolutely goes BALLISTIC when she sees other cats 😳
Honestly… a wild tiger could not be more ferocious, I kid you not 😂🐅
The vets usually hear her before they see her 🙈

📅 **Tuesday** – Trap watch duty 🎣🐈
We have a mum cat and kittens to catch who are literally in the middle of nowhere 🌲⛰️ A trap can’t be left unattended, so this means parking up and waiting… and waiting ⏳🚗

These are some of the hardest jobs:
🚫 No toilets nearby
🥪 Packed lunch essential
📵 Mobile signal questionable
🚗 Sitting for hours hoping mum appears

If we could magically gather an army of volunteers willing to do a couple of hours each, it would make jobs like this so much easier 🙏❤️

And let’s just hope mum cat hasn’t moved her kittens now we’ve discovered them 🤞🐾 because if she has, it’s back to square one again 😩
Sadly, when kittens are born “in the wild”, the odds are heavily stacked against them 💔
Only around 25% survive to 6 months of age 😢 which is exactly why trapping and rescuing these families matters so much ❤️

📅 **Wednesday** – Most people know about the cats… but I also keep an eye on a few humans too ❤️👵
I’m taking one lovely 80-year-old lady to the doctors and hopefully for her latest Covid jab 💉 Then afterwards I need to visit my elderly aunt who is 92 and needs a little help now and again 🫶

Not technically “cat rescue” jobs… but the cats still need:
🐱 Feeding
💊 Medication
🧹 Cleaning and litter trays

Which takes around 7 hours of every single day anyway 😵‍💫

📅 **Thursday** – Vet appointment day with Fluffy plus our oldies Oscar and Barbara 🐾🏥
Barbara lives in permanent foster care, so I have to travel to Esh Winning to collect her and then return her home afterwards 🚗 which turns a “quick vet visit” into half a day gone.

📅 **Friday** – More trap watching for half the day ⏳ then trying to tackle the endless housework 🧼🪣 because we have adopters visiting on Saturday 🏡🐈

One thing people often don’t realise about running a home-based rescue is just how much constant cleaning is involved 😅

And before anyone volunteers an army of cleaners 😂 remember this rescue runs from our private home, not a cattery environment. I’m actually a very private person, so having lots of people in my home really isn’t something I’d feel comfortable with ❤️

📅 **Saturday** – Adoption visitors coming to meet a cat 🏡🐾😻

📅 **Sunday** – Probably more trap watching unless a miracle occurs and we catch everyone before then 🙈🐱

And even after these are caught, I still have several trapping jobs waiting across County Durham 📍 — the furthest currently being Middleton-in-Teesdale 🌄

At this time of year, mums and kittens always have to take priority 👩‍👧🐾❤️ Sadly that means the male cats often get bumped further down the waiting list.

People sometimes ask why rescues can be slow replying or why we can’t instantly help every situation immediately. This… is why ❤️

But we keep going, one cat at a time 🐾❤️

15/05/2026

Apologies for the lack of updates lately — it’s been an incredibly busy week here at Consett Cat Rescue with vet appointments every single day! 🐾💉

First up… Fluffy 🐱
The lovely Fluffy, who we are caring for on behalf of a friend, finally had his feeding tube removed this week 🎉 and he has certainly made up for lost time! He’s now scoffing down 3 hearty meals a day 😹

All we need now is for his liver values to return to normal and he can finally go home to his dad ❤️
His dad is visiting again tomorrow armed with Fluffy’s absolute favourite snack — prawns 🍤
And not just any prawns either… apparently only the “finest” ones from the “Every Little Helps” supermarket will do for Mr Fancy Pants 😹

We’ve also really cracked on with trapping and neutering this week ✂️🐈

✅ 4 cats neutered so far this week
✅ At least another 2 booked for Monday
✅ Plus we’re hoping to trap 3 feral youngsters over the weekend if they’re big enough to be done

I already have 2 tom cats booked in as backup appointments just in case the youngsters evade capture for now!

On top of that:
💉 3 cats had booster vaccinations this week
💊 Uma, our hypothyroid girl, also got another 6 months supply of her levothyroxine

We also had a poorly kitten this week suffering with awful diarrhoea 😔
We’d already tried all the usual treatments with no improvement, so p**p samples will be heading off for testing early next week 💩🔬

She became very dehydrated and needed a vet visit for fluids — but honestly the difference afterwards was amazing. She perked up almost immediately and started eating again 🥹❤️

Unfortunately we’ve had a few cats with upset tummies lately and preventing things spreading in a home-based rescue environment is incredibly difficult. We do not operate from a cattery, so cats are not all housed separately. That means litter trays are cleaned multiple times daily, floors disinfected constantly, and hygiene routines are basically never-ending 🧼🪣

Then there’s Dennis the Menace 💔
Dennis had a follow-up appointment this week at Bridge Referrals.

Dennis has battled chronic bowel issues for years, but sadly he has now developed small cell lymphoma. He has started the standard treatment of chemotherapy medication alongside steroids.

There is no cure unfortunately, so we know his time with us will likely be shorter than most cats — but we will make sure every bit of that time is filled with love, comfort, and the best care possible ❤️🐾

Alongside all of that:
📄 Plenty of neuter vouchers have been issued
📞 Sadly we’ve also had to turn away a number of people needing to rehome cats because we are simply beyond full
🏡 We’ve had a couple of adoption enquiries too, with some visits arranged for potential adopters to meet cats

I think that’s about everything… although knowing rescue life I’ve probably forgotten something 😹

Thank you as always for your support, donations, shares, kind messages and encouragement. We genuinely couldn’t keep going without you all ❤️🐾