Cat rescue charity forced to turn away animals

AN animal lover who started a group from her bedroom to care for dozens of sick and injured cats says she may have to close her door to ailing animals.

Angela Smith, from Dundee, launched Angus Cat Rescue to help look after a few stray cats but quickly found herself homing up to 30 animals a week.

Angela pays for the cats’ vet bills and food and drink before rehoming animals that are well enough to be adopted.

While fundraising helps cover some of these costs, a four-figure vet bill and several bouts of illness have combined to cast serious doubt over the viability of Angela’s charitable efforts.

She said: “We’ve had quite a large number of illnesses and cats needing a lot of vet care. One of our cats ran up vet bills of a few thousands pounds.

“We can work with 30 cats at one time, some of which are kept in pens and some that are fostered in other homes.

“We’re at the stage where I am turning cats away because we can’t help any others — we have enough in at the moment.

“If things continue like this, then we need to seriously look at who we can help. It’s hard.”

Angela is concerned that should the fundraising picture not improve, more and more ailing cats will be left to suffer.

She said: “We home cats from Angus, Dundee, Perth and Fife.

“The Scottish SPCA and Cats Protection are both full as well.

“I go out every weekend to car boot sales and we do have a few things coming up.

“I started the rescue group with my own money and it’s all self funded but we can be contacted about 10 cats a week who need help — and we are already full.

“Everything we do is for the sake of the cats.”

Donations can be made to Angela’s Paypal account at anguscatrescue1@ gmail.com

Angela Smith