About the rescue
How did you get started?
Holly’s Merry Moggies started in 2020 as a side project, and like all good side projects, eventually took over my life! I was living in a flat in London and my housemate moved out, leaving me with a spare room I couldn’t fill because we were in the middle of a pandemic and having random people round to view would not have been wise.
Then, I saw an article about people giving up their pets because they’d lost their jobs in the pandemic, or kicking them out because they (wrongly!) thought they could transmit covid. I’d always wanted to start a rescue for the neediest cats, and this was the push I needed to do it.
I had a chat to my (awesome) landlady Jessica, kitted out the (massive) spare room to make it kitty paradise, and put the word out for needy mogs in need of help. The first one, Duck, arrived the very same week.
(Side note: the shelter was originally called Holly’s Home For Manky Moggies, but 1. that was too long and 2. people objected to the word “manky” even though I used it affectionately, including about myself, so I changed it to more of a Robin Hood type thing. Because Nottingham).
Whereabouts are you located? What’s your address?
We’re in a village called Ruddington in the south of Nottinghamshire. However, we sadly can’t make our address public because if we do, people abandon cats on our driveway, and since the rescue HQ is our home, we also don’t want internet weirdos turning up (though they’ve tried). We’d let people leave cats here for us if we were home all the time and had endless space for more cats, but realistically, that’s not going to happen. We’re only tiny and have to be very selective about which cats we take to make sure the neediest ones come in first.
We had to have a registered address for our charity application, but that’s just a mailbox at the Renewal Trust charity in town — you can’t actually visit us there or send parcels to it.
How are you funded?
I (Holly) and my partner Longsuffering Colin put as much of our own resources into the rescue as we’re able, but we’re normal humans with day jobs (Colin’s is full time, I’m a freelance writer with a lot of health problems, which are a job in themselves!), bills to pay and not enough hours in the day.
We don’t have kids, which means the cats get all of our time, love and as much money as we can spare, but realistically, we wouldn’t be able to run a rescue without the generous support of cat lovers. We hugely appreciate donations, no matter how small — if you’d like to contribute, you can do that here.
Are you a “kill shelter”, ie do you put healthy animals to sleep?
We are a no-kill shelter. We only ever euthanise cats if there is absolutely no alternative, for example if they have a terminal illness and are suffering. In fact, many of our cats were scheduled for euthanasia before we took them in: we firmly believe disabled cats can have a wonderful quality of life in the right home and should be given more of a chance than they often are.
Are all your cats disabled?
Our speciality is disabled cats, especially wobbly ones (cerebellar hypoplasia), but no, not all Merry Moggies are disabled. Sometimes we just need to help out with a situation (like the time local rescue Cat Patrol got 20 cats in at once!) or get a cat out of terrible circumstances. In that case, we’re not going to say no just because they’re not missing any limbs!
Also, in the summer when Kitten Season hits, it’s all hands on deck, as there are far more mothers and kittens needing help than the shelters can manage.
How do you help your local community?
OK, admittedly, this isn’t a frequently asked question, we just wanted to answer it 😆
We try really hard to be a good neighbour to our fellow Nottinghamsters (no, that’s not the official term) and other rescues. Some of the ways we do that:
– We work with the University of Nottingham vet school to help student vets get hands-on experience of cats with interesting clinical conditions. I’ve also given a talk there about the wonders of wobbly cats, which I might get round to uploading eventually!
– We share things we don’t need with other rescues and charities. Since we’re only tiny, we sometimes get things we can’t make use of (like renal food when we don’t currently have any cats with kidney problems), or bulk donations of things like towels that we just don’t have space for.
We donate extra cat supplies to other rescues (primarily Cat Patrol and Mansfield Cat Rescue) and take extra towels and blankets to local homelessness charity The Friary, who always need them.
– We help the birds! We know cats are responsible for a lot of bird injuries and deaths, and we do our best to make up for that a bit. Most of our moggies are indoor-only, so it’s not actually them committing bird murder, but we love birds (I actually did bird rescue before cat rescue, but unfortunately you really can’t mix the two!) and want to help them. Especially since so many people treat them as pests.
The cats living at Moggy Manor have a catproofed back garden but are not allowed in the front garden, so that’s where we’ve set up a big bird feeding station with all kinds of healthy food for different species of feathered friend. We positioned it right by a big window, then added one-way film so that the cats can see out to watch the birds but the birds don’t feel intimidated by predators ogling them. The windowsill on that window is our most popular, the mogs love sitting there going ekekek at the birds, even our blind boy Bertie!
About adopting from us
What cats do you have available for adoption?
We have an Available Cats page but it usually doesn’t have all our available cats on it, for three reasons:
- I don’t have time to update it most of the time
- Some cats are here and WILL be available but aren’t ready yet (eg if they’re being treated for an illness).
- Some cats we can’t advertise because they’re a fancy breed and would attract people who only care about that (we get INUNDATED when we show a fancy cat on our socials, and usually they don’t care at all about the cat’s personality and needs), or the cat is from a sensitive situation and the previous family doesn’t want anyone to recognise them.
If you’re hoping to adopt from us, the best thing to do is send us a message to tell us about you and what you’re looking for.
Is it really hard to adopt from you?
We’re aware that some shelters have long lists of requirements for cat adopters, and that a lot of people get rejected. We believe those rescues are doing it for the right reasons and have the cats’ best interests at heart, but we’ve also got to be realistic and accept that if we put too many barriers in place, people will just go and buy from a kitten mill on Facebook. We don’t want to put people off rescuing by making it too hard.
That said, we do have some preferences and requirements, depending on the cat: for instance, our wobbly cats can’t go to outdoor homes because they wouldn’t be safe. But we’ve homed to many excellent people who were turned away from other rescues, and we’ve been told we’re very reasonable in our preferences. So hopefully no, it’s not hard to adopt from us! There’s a page here detailing our process.
Are all your cats up for homing?
No, we have a number of ‘Permamogs’ who have lifelong places at Moggy Manor with us (including Smol Paul, sorry folks, he’s my baby). There are also some cats that aren’t ready for homing discussions yet — for instance, very ill cats who we’re not sure will be healthy enough to be rehomed or may not survive, or cats who we’re getting to know and don’t yet have an idea of the perfect home for.
Do you rehome outside Nottingham?
Very much so! We have Merry Moggies alumni from Devon to the Scottish highlands. We’re members of the excellent Animal Team transport network, meaning we can ask their fabulous volunteers to drive cats to and from homes for us, and we’ve also driven all over the place to pick up and drop off cats.
Fun fact: many of our cats come from Birmingham because they have a really terrible stray problem and the shelters there are constantly overwhelmed. Sort yourself out, Birmingham!
Do you home to flats and indoor homes?
Yes, all the time. In fact, we rehome indoor moggies more often than outdoor ones, because the majority are disabled, meaning it wouldn’t be safe for them to roam the streets freely. We love a catproofed garden or catio for those ones, but we don’t mandate it. We’d much rather a cat lives in a flat than a shelter pen!
Do you rehome single kittens?
In some cases, yes — depends on the cat and the home. But we don’t have a “no single kittens” policy like some rescues (understandably!) do.
How much is your adoption fee?
There’s a page about our adoption process here which has full details of each step and the donations we ask for, but currently we ask a £100 donation for one cat, £150 for two, or £75 when you take a cat home for foster-to-adopt, and another £75 when you fully adopt them. If you’re wondering why it costs more for foster-to-adopt, it’s because it’s a lot more admin work and logistics for us.
That said, adoption donations don’t come anywhere near covering what each cat costs us, they’re just a contribution to our work. And they represent a significant saving for you compared to doing all the prep work yourself: unless otherwise specified, all our cats are spayed/neutered, microchipped, flea and worm treated, and fully vaccinated.
Of course, if you want to donate more than the suggested amount, we would very much appreciate it!
Can cats be returned?
Yes, we will always take a Merry Moggy back, no matter how much time has passed. In fact, we ask that if your circumstances change and you can no longer keep your Merry Mog, that you please return them to us rather than rehoming to someone else or taking them to another rescue.
Holly's Merry Moggies 