Cats Protection to open new Site

My wife Bren had been donating to the Cats Protection for some time and a couple of weeks ago she recieved a letter through the post inviting her along to a meeting in Bapchild near Sittingbourne about future volunteering for the organization. Unfortunately She could not go along so I went in her place and was delighted to find this is the place to be if you want to do productive forward thinking voluntary work for cats.

Don't Mention the League

I had obviously heard about this voluntary organization before and as I found I had more and more time at weekends I had been thinking of going down to the local Adoption Centre in Bredhurst to find out how I could help out. But as Murphys' law would have it, that time never really matirialized until I got the chance at this meeting to hear it from the horses mouth...so to speak. The first thing I learnt was it was not the Cats Protection League at all. It is now called just Cats Protection. A little trivial you may think. But the fact is there are good reasons behind it. It seems when it first started it was a little restricted in its outlook. It tended to be facilitated by elderly women centering it on thier own cultural group. They obviously did very precious work and layed the foundations of the organization now but there were areas in the community that perhaps were not being catered for and marketing opportunities were perhaps not being used as well as they could. The organization decided to modernize and in order to make it clear to the public - it changed its name.

What are Cats Protection Services?

The Charity has three main aims. To promote a good understanding of cats and their care; to find good homes for stray or homeless cats; to raise funds to compliment the service and the care of Cats. Cats Protection believes very strongly that all domestic cats should be neutered before 4 months. According to statistics a female cat if not neutered can be the source of 20,000 other cats in her lifetime. The dangers of spreading diseases, cats becoming homeless or stray speak for themselves. Promotion is done through talks; factsheets, leaflets, the magazine and the web site. Fundraising is all ploughed back into the charity and the care of cats and is done through the charity shops, special events, or direct donation via the web site. A lot of good work is done through re-homing. There are adoption centres throughout the UK; and volunteers act as Homing officers to match the Cat with the most apropriate family.There are also Foster Carers who look after cats in thier own homes until they are ready to be re-homed.

The new Service in Sittingbourne

This meeting as I soon learned was to extend the current service that is available on the Isle of Sheppey to neighbouring Sittingbourne. People willing to act as volunteers were invited to think about taking up certain roles such as Co-ordinater, Treasurer, Web site Officer, Homing Officer, Fosterers and fostering Liaison. I am contemplating doing some voluntary work as a Homing officer or maybe a Web site officer. I'll let you know how things go. But for the monment all the best of luck to Cats Protection with their new venture!