“Smelly Cat” Phoebe Finally Finds a Friend-ly Family of her own!

With the pandemic sadly still in full swing, more and more kittens are being born on the streets every day due to organisations like Mayhew being unable to trap and neuter animals at their usual rates.

Five-month-old Phoebe was extremely frightened when our Animal Welfare Officers found her living in a pile of rubbish, not too far from us in North West London. She’d obviously been struggling and was smelly, scruffy, skinny and severely dehydrated.

• Luckily, she allowed us to get close enough to collect her, and we brought her straight back to Mayhew along with eight other strays found in the same area.
• We quickly checked all nine felines into our vet clinic for a full health examination, although Phoebe was by far the one suffering the most.
• After making sure there were no immediate medical concerns beyond her hunger and thirst, we bathed her and settled her and her eight neighbours into our Cattery to rest and recover.

Our Cattery staff spent the next few weeks ensuring Phoebe and her friends were well fed and watered, and implemented a socialisation programme to get them used to human company. Stray cats can usually be domesticated with the right kind of care and attention, as opposed to feral cats who are happier and healthier living in outdoor colonies of their kind.

Phoebe proved herself to be an extremely resilient kitten, quickly coming around to her new environment. Although she started off very nervous and twitchy, she soon started to enjoy playtime and was very happy to be picked up and stroked.

When she was back up to a healthy weight we made sure she was neutered, microchipped, vaccinated and given flea and worming treatment, before placing her up for adoption.

We are thrilled to say that she has now found a brand new home with a loving family, who will continue her socialisation programme and ensure that her life is as far away from a smelly rubbish dump as possible.

The eight cats who were admitted at the same time as Phoebe have also been adopted, and are very much enjoying their life off the streets.

Although we are so pleased that Phoebe and her fellow strays have all found their happily ever afters, we predict that we will see even more animals being born into less than ideal conditions this year.

We are trying our hardest to respond to every alert and rescue as many cats and kittens as we can during lockdown, and we very much hope that we will be able to run our crucial Trap, Neuter, Return programme at full capacity again as soon as possible.

The cat population crisis is something that we are taking very seriously, and we have also put together some advice on how members of the public can help support us in caring for feral and semi-feral cats in their local areas.

Please visit our website here to find out how you can become a Feral AdvoCAT, and as always, if you have concerns about the health or welfare of any cat then please get in touch with our Animal Welfare Officers by emailing awo@mayhewanimalhome.org.