Choosing a Cattery? .... and looking at other options such as home-based pet feeding services

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At Apple Blossom Cattery we know you have a number of options for looking after your cat when you're away. We hope you'll choose us, but more than that we want you to choose well — so here is what we think is worth weighing up.

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Anyone can feed a cat. Looking after one properly, day after day, is a different thing, and it is what we are built to do. Our staff are genuine cat lovers, accredited through International Cat Care, and include members with qualifications in veterinary care and clinical practice experience. We are licensed and insured, inspected annually by the Vale of Glamorgan Council's Animal Welfare team, and registered with Shepherds the Vets for 24-hour cover. We have our own isolation facilities on site, and following our 2026 upgrade the whole cattery is now climate controlled and held at a steady temperature summer and winter, heatwave or frost.

 

The RSPCA's officers visit here almost every day. We work alongside them caring for their cats for rehoming, so ours is a cattery seen by independent expert eyes daily, not just at the annual inspection. We are confident enough in our care to keep our doors open to the experts, not only our customers.

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Some people ask a neighbour, a friend, or a visiting cat sitter to call in instead. That can work, but there is a real difference between someone popping in to put food down and a cattery that watches your cat throughout the day. A cat won't always be in the kitchen for the ten minutes the food goes down, and particularly in a multi-cat household, a sitter often has no way of knowing whether it ate, or even whether it came home that night — you would notice an empty bed by morning; they might not for days. We record and monitor how each cat is eating, how they're behaving, and their toilet habits, so anything out of the ordinary is spotted early rather than days later. A cat left alone in a suddenly quiet house, with the routine it knows turned upside down, can become anxious and withdrawn; with us it is somewhere calm, warm and supervised, among people whose job is to notice.

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We feed a wide and varied diet of good-quality premium brands and fresh ingredients, with water drawn from our own well and UV-treated on site. If your cat has a settled routine, bring its usual food along — a change of diet on top of a new place, new faces and a new routine is exactly the sort of thing that can upset a sensitive stomach, and it is easily avoided.

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A word of honest advice, whether you choose us or not. Standards between catteries vary more than they should, licence or no licence, so do your homework before you book. Price is part of that, but the question isn't who is cheapest or dearest — it is what the fee actually buys: how many staff, how well trained, how closely the cats are watched, and what the place is like to be in. Cheap care and good care are not the same thing, and neither is expensive care and good care.

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A good cattery will happily show you round before you commit, and you should take them up on it. See the pens and the space for yourself. Is it clean, light and well ventilated? Is the temperature right? Do the staff seem friendly, knowledgeable and willing to flex around your cat's needs? Do the other cats look settled and well cared for? Ask whatever is on your mind — about medication, about boarding cats from the same household together, about anything at all.

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It's a myth that cats are low-maintenance stand-ins for dogs who barely notice you've gone. They notice, and a break in routine asks something of them, so it's worth making proper provision rather than leaving it to chance.

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When your cat stays with us, it will be loved, watched over and properly looked after, and there will be no nasty surprises waiting for you when you get home. But don't take our word for it — come and see us, and if the RSPCA officers are here, seeing to their cats for rehoming, ask them what they think of us. 

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