Our cattery we owned before we sold

Incredible, you must miss it!

Moyra

Yes and no about missing it.
Yes being with the pets and meeting owners and answering their concerns. Strangely enough keeping the 2 acres cut and leaves collection. Maintenance was something I liked doing. Just a couple of enjoyable things owning kennels and cattery
No
never having the chance to have weekends -bank holidays -or even a proper holiday for the first few years. Another drawback is the boarding Establishment licence says someone must be on the premises while animals are boarded. One other thing was weather, if cold making sure the animals were warm and thunderstorms being up all or most of a night looking after nervous dogs.

Then pet health problems occurred which were worrying and had to be dealt with.
In the end the place was really getting too much for us being licensed for 42 cats and 119 dogs even though we had staff and coming up for 70 years old things were getting hard to do.

Never having owned a business before let alone one like this was a very steep learning curve, not just on the paperwork side ,but how to look after animals properly (thanks mainly to Dawn who is or was a member here)who was our manageress.
When I left british telecom as a switchboard fitter for over 20 years the change was enormous. Stress was one of the main reasons I left BT but within 6 months of kennel ownership all that stress had gone even though there was a lot of pressure to get the place right. Just another place that was horrendous to start with, bare electrical wires in the kennels. kennel fronts you could kick in because of rust, concrete floors hard to keep clean- only half the cattery in the photo we added on this end from middle, etc etc.

meet Hector MK3 who did most of the grass upkeep

My dad would kill for that mower lol

had 2Aamerican Lawnflites mower before and they were rubbish, not designed fo UK grass and the drive belt was too long and kept breaking, a real pig to replace. This Countax was a dream, easy to remove cutting deck if necessary as well as belt replacement.

Hi TW nice piece of kit, I had one like it in CZ, a STIGA 4 wheel drive made in Sweeden, had a twin cutter in front which made it more manouvereable, but not quite as big as Hector

That is my dream job to own and run a cattery. I did a course on kennel and cattery management and hope some day in to next few years to buy somewhere with enough land to build my luxury cat hotel. Got all the ideas and dreams just haven't got the money or land. But I am sure that will come soon enough.
Also got to get my health slightly better. But glad to see you cattery and to hear that you had fun running it.

I could do with that mower Bazza