‘You feel sorry for the person as well’: why are so many pet cats being abandoned?

Helen Lecointe answers the phone sounding frazzled. As the senior manager of the Woodside Animal Welfare Trust in Plymouth, she is tasked with not only herding cats, but accommodating them, too, and this autumn, she says, the shelter is rapidly approaching breaking point. “It just feels as if it’s been nonstop,” she says. Long after the supposed end of kitten season, the shelter is still receiving a steady stream of newborns, along with pregnant cats.

Out in the community, at the Plymouth dockyards and elsewhere, large colonies of feral cats have sprung up, and are multiplying exponentially. And then there is the increasing number of often beloved pets being relinquished by their owners, who can no longer look after them or afford their care.

With other animal rescue charities and shelters around the country reporting the same, it amounts to a national cat-astrophe, driven by the boom and bust in pet ownership since the pandemic and, lately, mounting pressure placed on owners by rising costs and insecure housing.

At the start of this month, Woodside was housing 100 cats and kittens, with a further 80 on the waiting list. “Every pen is full,” says Lecointe, but demand is showing no signs of slowing. “Our welfare worker is going out, then ringing us up saying, ‘I’ve got a pregnant cat’, ‘I’ve got a litter.’ It really is a scramble to try to find spaces for them.”

Lecointe’s colleagues are already fostering kittens in their own homes, she says; if the calls don’t slow down soon, they may be forced to erect temporary pens in the staff bathrooms. “It’s not much fun, to be honest.”

Lecointe has been with the trust since 1985 and says this recent surge of cats needing help has been one of the worst in memory. Other animal rescue charities are saying the same. Cats Protection has reported a 34% increase in the number of cats and kittens being abandoned in the UK this year, putting pressure on all its services.

“The fuller we get, the more calls we can’t help in that moment – and the longer our waiting list gets, the longer people have to wait to bring their cat in,” says Tania Marsh, the deputy manager of Cat Protection’s UK National Cat Adoption Centre.

Battersea Dogs & Cats Home has also seen a surge in stray cats, up about 8% in the past year – but most of their intake is pets being brought in by their owners to be rehomed, says Bridie Williams, the rehoming and welfare manager at the London cattery. “I’ve worked here for five-and-a-half years and the list of cats waiting for a space to come in is larger than I’ve ever seen it… It can be overwhelming sometimes, when you see just the sheer need that’s out there.”

Shelters say that the current crisis reflects the long tail of the pandemic. In the 12 months to March 2021, 3.2m UK households acquired a pet, according to industry association UK Pet Food (formerly the PFMA), amounting to an estimated total of 12 million cats.

The PFMA warned of welfare concerns at the time, with just 10% of new owners expressing concern about their eventual return to the office. Cats may be more independent than dogs but, three-and-a-half years later, those grim predictions are coming to pass: cat ownership is now falling after that pandemic surge, with many formerly favoured felines being relinquished or simply left to fend for themselves.

For shelters, the problem is now growing as abandoned pets give birth to first-generation ferals, even going on to form sizeable colonies. That may also be a hangover from the lockdowns, which put a pause on veterinary procedures and resulted in long waiting lists. “You couldn’t get your cat neutered, even if you wanted to,” says Lecointe.

But when one cat can have three or more litters in a single season, the problem can quickly escalate. In mid-October, a Cats Protection branch in Suffolk announced a drive to trap and neuter as many feral cats as possible, to stop their numbers from rising, even if they were found to be unsuitable for rehoming.

Lecointe says Woodside is currently working to contain a colony on a local housing estate comprising 80 or 90 cats. “Obviously, we have to do that gradually, because you can’t suddenly come back with that number of kittens without giving all the cattery girls a nervous breakdown.” They are on the edge as it is, Lecointe says, laughing.

Even the changing climate may be playing a part. Kitten season typically lasts for five months over the summer, but in recent years cats have been reproducing for longer. Lecointe “can’t help but connect it” to warming temperatures. “It’s impossible to prove – except that we’re literally seeing it.” Williams, at Battersea, also says that kitten season is now year-round, sometimes taking owners by surprise. “We have seen more people coming forward with large, multi-cat households, where it’s just got out of control quite quickly.”

In the bigger picture, shelters say, the current crisis of unwanted cats is being driven by others. Many people are being forced to give up beloved pets because they can no longer afford them (with veterinary costs also having skyrocketed), or they are having to move to accommodation where they are not allowed.

Those are the most heartbreaking cases to deal with, says Lecointe. “You feel desperately sorry for the animal, having to find a new home – but you also feel sorry for the person as well, because it’s not a choice, it’s circumstance.”

Some owners can’t face having that interaction at all. Lecointe says she will regularly arrive at work in the morning to find a box left at the sanctuary gates, with a cat – or multiple cats – inside. Sometimes, the box is empty by the time they get to it.

Marsh, at Cats Protection, says most of the abandoned cats they take in have been left behind when their owners moved house. But there are also people who go to greater lengths to ensure that their pet won’t return home, or can’t be traced back to them. “They put them in a box, take them for a long drive or a long walk, put them there and then take off,” says Marsh. The day we speak, one Cats Protection branch had been contacted by a member of the public who’d found a sealed cardboard box containing two adult cats and two kittens, dumped in a park.

Abandoning a pet violates the Animal Welfare Act in England and Wales (and is a specific crime in Scotland and Northern Ireland), but prosecution depends on being able to identify the culprit. Microchipping was made a legal requirement for all adult cats (including those kept indoors) this past June; owners who don’t comply risk a fine of up to £500. Shelters are hopeful that this might result in more lost pets being returned to their owners and penalties for welfare breaches, but it may be only piecemeal protection.

“Quite often, you’re finding a telephone number that’s out of date,” says Lecointe. That was the case with one of the strays recently received by Woodside. The cat did have a microchip with a linked address, but when they followed up, the registered owner hadn’t lived there for five years, and none of the neighbours knew where they’d gone. “This cat was just living from house to house in the area.”

For most cat owners, the idea is unthinkable, but it’s not just reflective of callousness. Marsh says some people may be driven by shame to abandon their pets in this way. “They feel like they can’t actually say out loud, ‘I can’t have this cat any more.’ They’re worried about how they will be perceived or judged.”

There might also be some wishful thinking that their cat will be able to fend for itself, Marsh suggests. “People see their kitty in the garden, catching five mice a day, and think, ‘He’ll be all right’.” But that fails to account for their reliance on people to provide regular food, shelter and veterinary care. “Contrary to popular belief, a cat cannot live a strong, healthy life on its own, without our involvement. They just can’t.”

Even feral cats, which Cats Protection rehome to farms and stables to control vermin, need supplementary food, Marsh says. “If you don’t feed them, they’ll get weak and have no energy to hunt.”

To Claude Béata, a vet and cat behaviourist, the surge in strays reflects our somewhat contradictory ideas about cat ownership. “Do we think of them as pets, or just as a part of the wild that we can invite inside – so we can also say, ‘Go back to the wild’?” he says.

The Interpretation of Cats by Béata – a bestseller in his native France, and recently published in translation in the UK – makes the point that cats are not only nonsocial creatures, they exist simultaneously as predators and prey, which can make it difficult to register and meet their needs. Even responsible cat owners can fail to account for their innate complexity, reflected in spraying or other behavioural problems, or else mistake their independence for convenience. The surge in adoption through the pandemic reflects the sense of pets as a flexible tie or short-term commitment.

But “the real contract” between humans and domestic animals is lifelong, says Béata. Over 40 years in clinical practice, he has seen people on very low incomes nonetheless prioritise spending on their cats’ welfare. Some people abandoning their pets will truly be desperate, and Béata supports measures to reduce the cost of veterinary care. But the general trend, he suggests, may reflect attitudes to pet ownership: “We’ll relinquish a cat when it’s more of an object than an individual.”

For shelters, the current challenge is not only more cats in need – it’s fewer cats being adopted. This could be because adopting cats comes with certain requirements, including: time commitment, amount of outdoor space and age of your children. At Cats Protection, “rehoming has stalled a little bit,” says Marsh. That, too, reflects rising living costs and housing insecurity, she says. “People are thinking twice: ‘Well, can we really afford to get a cat?’ But if they’re not going out the door quick enough, for the same reason that more are coming in, you get stuck.”

Cats Protection has been pushing for more landlords to accept pets in their properties, to prevent renters from having to give up their beloved pets and increase the market for rehoming. “You’ve got a lot of rental homes that would love to have a cat, but they’re not allowed,” says Marsh. “I think you’ve probably got more risk of your tenants causing damage to your property than their pet.”

But beyond urging people to adopt, not shop, there’s not much that shelters can do to increase their turnover. “You’ve either got room for a cat in your life, or you haven’t,” says Marsh. “All we can do is let people know that we’re here.” That also applies to any cat owners who might be struggling, she adds. “We are here to listen, to help and advise. If you’re about to be evicted, or whatever the situation might be, don’t leave it to the last minute.”

For now, charities are struggling to stay afloat through the current demand and rising costs. Basic veterinary care for abandoned cats cost Cats Protection £50,000 in the first six months of this year alone. Some, such as Wilmslow Animal Sanctuary in Cheshire, are appealing for donations to pay for spaying and neutering, in the hopes of reducing the number of unwanted kittens in the future.

Woodside’s vet has also been running extra clinics, says Lecointe. “It’s as if we’ve had a tidal wave and we’re paddling like mad, just to keep our heads up.” Her hope is that they can rehome enough cats from this recent surge in time to prepare for the next one. “Then at least we would have space.”

The Interpretation of Cats and Their Owners by Claude Béata is published by Allen Lane at £20. Buy a copy for £17 at guardianbookshop.com