How Apple Blossom began

We were customers here first

We were among their first customers. We started boarding our own cats here in June 2019, barely a month after the cattery opened, and after years of trying different catteries and never quite settling on one we trusted, that was that. From the moment we set foot in Apple Blossom we used nowhere else. So when Greg and Di decided to retire, and asked whether we'd like to take it on, there was only ever one answer.

We are Laura and Rhys. We have two girls, Phoebe (8) and Pippa (5), and five cats of our own: Gus, our ragdoll; Maddie, a maine coon; Figgy, a Norwegian Forest Cat crossed with Siberian; and Cosmo and Kramer, two moggies who would like it noted that pedigree is overrated.

Both of us have completed International Cat Care training, and we are joined during the week by Charmaine, a qualified veterinary nurse with substantial clinical experience.

We came to this as customers, not a business plan. The standard we hold ourselves to is simple: is this good enough for a cat of our own, and would it have reassured us when we were the ones dropping a nervous cat off and driving away worrying. If the answer to either is no, it isn't good enough.

We are a doors-open business. We welcome visits, viewings and inspections — we would genuinely rather you came and looked than simply took our word for it. We also work alongside RSPCA Wyth Sir, caring for their cats awaiting rehoming, and their officers are here almost every day — so we're watched over by independent eyes the year round.

We are not here to reinvent something that already worked. Our job is to look after it — and your cats — at least as well as Greg and Di did, not to put our own stamp on it for the sake of it.