Helen Lecointe answers the phone sounding frazzled. As the senior manager of the Woodside Animal Welfare Trust in Plymouth, she is tasked with not only herding cats, but accommodating them, too, and this autumn, she says, the shelter is rapidly approaching breaking point. “It just feels as if it’s been nonstop,” she says. Long after the supposed end of kitten season, the shelter is still receiving a steady stream of newborns, along with pregnant cats.
Out in the community, at the Plymouth dockyards and elsewhere, large colonies of feral cats have sprung up, and are multiplying exponentially. And then there is the increasing number of often beloved pets being relinquished by their owners, who can no longer look after them or afford their care.
