CatsofDurban

23/12/2025

JUST 2 MORE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!

Get your Cats of South Africa diary now as a fabulous stocking filler or secret Santa gift. 🎁

Collection, pudo or paxi delivery options are available 🩷😸

Send an email to [email protected] to receive an order form

17/12/2025

Today I was reminded of the importance of animal rights. Not only for the sake of animals, but also for the sake of people.

A woman phoned me yesterday in a state of utter despair.
She had recently begun feeding a stray cat, a beautiful snowshoe boy, who appeared to be an abandoned pet.
This cat is her island of calm and belonging.
Her landlord has started threatening to poison the cat.

As you can imagine, this elderly lady is in a state of collapse.

This is a difficult situation. The landlord is breaking the law, but taking up a position against him can get her evicted (she has no lease and is staying there as a 'poor relation' due to family influence).

She had organised a place of refuge for the cat, but was helpless to do anything more.

Our superhero Rodney went and trapped kitty this morning, and kitty is now safely awaiting transport to a temporary home while the lady looks for a place she can go that will take her and the cat.

This is wrong on so many levels.

People who find solace in animals deserve the peace of mind that goes with animal rights.

This is why we are fighting to get animal rights on the political agenda. It is not about tree-hugging or airy-fairy philosophies... we have case after case where animals have become almost literal life-savers for people. Lobbying for animal rights is not only about animals, it is also about people.

Research is showing, more and more, that people who harm animals are capable of harming people - either physically or mentally. So we need to start calling those people out.

Cats of Durban has a page on our website where we list our Heroes and Zeroes. This page is sadly out of date. We would like to update it. Please have a look at this page https://www.catsofdurban.co.za/heroes-zeroes/ and let us know who, in your opinion, deserves to be thanked for looking after their cats, and who is intolerant. You can send a mail to [email protected], subject line Hero/Zero

Give the name of the individual or company, along with a contact number. Your report will remain anonymous, but we will check.

Keeping a list is important - it gives credit where it is due, but also alerts the public to people who are not so kind.

Our Cat Champions On this page, we are paying homage to our Most Important People. These are the ones: Who get up on cold dark mornings to feed their cats; Who go out on rainy windy nights to trap ferals; Who climb into drain pipes and ceilings to rescue kittens; Who spend hours on a […]

10/12/2025

Our blue note books are SOLD OUT but we still have a few notebooks with the tortoiseshell cat!

We still have 2026 page a day and week to view diaries available 😸✨

Send an email to [email protected] to order

08/12/2025

On the day of Christmas my true love gave to me: a Cats of South Africa diaryyyyyy 😸 🤶

We have a few diaries left for sale so if you are looking for a fabulous Xmas gift look no farther!

!!!NOTEBOOKS ARE ALMOST SOLD OUT!!!

(All proceeds go towards sterilisation)

26/11/2025

Our diaries are here! We have limited stock, so order quickly.
These would make the best Christmas present for both cat lovers and cat-lovers-in-waiting (ie: everyone).
And the best is... every single diary that you buy will mean a cat gets sterilised, which means thousands fewer unwanted cats in 2026.
PS - Unfortunately the deadline has passed for personalisation, so you can ignore the August bookings deadline.

24/11/2025

What a terrible start to the week.

My first call this morning was from Shaista, who had made the huge mistake of taking a cat to the Springfield SPCA on Thursday afternoon, in the mistaken belief that it would be re-homed.

The cat had been left behind by a neighbour who moved, and Shaista thought it would be better off in a new home.

On Friday morning she realised that she was actually missing the animal, and phoned the SPCA to tell them she had made a mistake and wanted the cat back. They told her she would have to pay to re-adopt the cat. She told them she would be happy to do so.

This morning she phoned to organise the adoption, to find that the cat had been euthenased, because the SPCA manager said there was 'something wrong with it'.

Shaista has been unable to find out what was wrong with the cat, as the manager was merely very vague and did not give her any detail.

I cannot tell you how it ruins my day when someone phones me to tell me that they - for whatever reason - 'took a cat to the SPCA'.

I followed up with the SPCA to find out how a cat - a fully vaccinated, healthy young male of around one years old - suddenly developed overnight a condition that necessitated putting it down.

I will update this post once I get a reply.

In the meantime, the following:

Please, SPCA, do not lie to people.
Do not tell people that you will home their cat when you know full well it will be almost impossible to do so.
Do not tell people that the cat is waiting to be adopted when it is already dead.
Do not tell people that 'there was something wrong with the cat' when it was put down merely because it was a surplus animal.

Instead, warn people when they surrender their cats that the chances of the animal being euthenased is almost 100% and once they hand over the cat there is no going back.

The SPCA does not like to tell people that it kills animals because they risk their income from public donations. But according to their own figures, they kill around 10 000 animals a year.

I receive far too many calls from people who surrender cats to the SPCA in the mistaken belief that the animal will be homed. They are usually devastated to find out subsequently that the animal is dead.

The SPCA's kill policy has been a point of contention between the organisation and other welfare bodies for decades. While the SPCA inspectorate do excellent work, their organisation's haste to kill healthy animals is appalling. Their refusal to assist welfare organisations with TSR is also regrettable: they support TSR in theory but not in practice.

19/11/2025

So glad we were able to assist Jackie with a sterrie from our diary sales.... if you want to sponsor a sterrie, all you need to do is buy one of our diaries.

2 cats for steri this morning.
Cat 1 is the mother cat found in Shelley Park with her 2 babies. Thank you of Durban and Moore
who sponsored this cat with proceeds from the sale of their diaries.
Cat 2 is another Congella cat sponsored by Feral Cat Rescue (Helping Feral & Stray Cats), thank you Hartley

13/11/2025

Our anxiously-awaited Cats of South Africa diaries were collected on Friday.
All weekend and Monday we did the reconciliations, put together the orders, wrapped books in newspaper and bubble-wrap, packed boxes, allocated orders, booked couriers.... the work was all done by Tuesday and people began picking up their orders.
Then..... Wednesday...... and disaster struck.
We got a note from a sharp-eyed customer, telling us that her diaries had a printing error.... the dates were wrong.
This was odd.
We checked a few of our books, and our books were fine. And so we checked a few more.... and found that random books had errors! We could not send out books like this!
However, we had no way of knowing which books had errors and which were fine. There was only one thing to do - unpack every single box, undo every single parcel, unwrap every single book, and check every single diary. Every. Single. One.
We had already notified the printer, and they were sending a driver to collect the flawed books for re-printing. We had to cancel the courier and recall all the books which had already been collected.
More than half of the books had mistakes.
So.... this is what my lounge looks like now - with the remaining books in piles, packaging everywhere, empty boxes waiting for replacements...
Of course, the cats think this is Disneyland.
So many empty boxes! So many scrunched up pieces of paper! So much bubble-wrap! Such a mess! Heaven!
If you have ordered a Cats of South Africa diary, there will be a delay of a few days. As the telephone voice always says: "Please be patient, your call will be answered."
And in the meantime, you can rest assured that the mistake, the re-print, and the delay have made a couple of cats very happy.....

31/10/2025

Happy Halloween from a spooky Cats of Durban 👻

24/10/2025

With Christmas round the corner, it is time to think about gifts for the most important being in the house - the cat!

Which is why we are raffling off our Cat Hamper - a selection of really top class PussyCat Presents.

Each R50 ticket gives you a chance for the draw to win one of the following prizes:
1. Cat Tree (no description needed)
2. MicroChip Cat Feeder (attach the microchip to the cat's collar so that it opens only for them)
3. Cat Carrypack (to take kitty on walks with an 180-degree view)
4. Cat Igloo (for curling up for a good night's sleep)
5. Cat Warmer with Sheepskin Blanket (for elderly cats, or cats that really feel the cold)
6. Cat Toilet (train your cat to use the loo..... with luck you can even train them to flush afterwards)

Bank account to EFT ticket purchases:
Cats of Durban
Standard Bank
Br Code: 042526
Acc: 056 592 523

How to enter:
Buy as many R50 tickets as you want via an EFT to the Cats of Durban bank account.
Use the word Raffle and any six-digit number as your reference (this is to keep entries anonymous).
Send your name and reference number via Whatsapp to 0719328925. In this way we can match the winning ticket to your name, and have a number to contact you.

Each ticket counts for one entry - the more tickets you buy, the more chance you have of winning!

Proceeds will go towards our sterilisation clinics.

Entries close on December 7. The draw begins on December 8th, with one lucky number announced on each day. Each prize winner gets to choose their prize from the remaining options. Winners will be contacted on the day of the draw and announced publicly the day after on Facebook.

The prizes are offered in Durban, so if you live outside Durban please consider courier or delivery costs, as they are not covered in the prize.

The winners get to choose which prize they would prefer in order of their draw.

This is a Christmas gift that keeps on giving... even if you do not win a prize, your ticket price goes towards sterilising a stray or feral cat and giving them the chance of a better life.

20/10/2025

Happy Diwali to those that are celebrating this week ✨🎊🎉🎆🎇

19/10/2025

It was Thursday morning this last week when we began to hear about a cat trapped on the 16th floor of an abandoned building in mid-town Durban. The cat had been meowing out of an open window for the last few days.
The video of the desperate cat circulated for a while, but no-one knew what to do... how would anyone be able to get to the 16th floor of an abandoned block of flats?
However, Owen Neal, who feeds cats around the Old Fort Road area, saw the video. He knew someone who knew someone who owned the building. He phoned the owner, who told him simply to go to the building and go in through the front door and up the stairs - he would arrange for security to let him in.
The building has long since had electricity cut off, so Owen went through the front door and began to climb sets of stairs in the pitch dark, counting the floors as he went and checking each floor as he got nearer. Eventually he arrived on a floor that had a window open and he guessed the cat would be nearby.
"I saw the cat, hiding behind a pile of broken furniture," says Owen, "so I put food down and coaxed him to come and eat. It took a long time because he was very nervous, but eventually I was able to grab him and put him in a carrier."
The cat was carried all the way back down the 16 floors in the pitch dark, and taken to the vet for a check up. Besides being severely dehydrated and very hungry, he was in good condition and responded to his rescue with massive purrs and headbutts.
How he got up to the 16th floor is a mystery, unless he was trapped lower down and just kept going up until he found a window to call for help.
He was christened Saltori in memory of Saltori's restaurant that used to occupy this building, and he is now looking for a loving home.
Anyone who would like to give Saltori a happy ending can contact Owen at 083 628 7244