Westie Cat Support Services

22/08/2025

See you all there tomorrow!

20/08/2025

This Saturday, 11am top of Martin Place, Sydney City. Me, Marg and Deb will be speaking. Organised by the indomitable warrior for cats, Deb Rouse.

The NSW Cat Enquiry report has dropped and a cursory glance suggests that the complexity of the cat situation has been well understood but the fallout needs to be addressed. WC will address the recommendations shortly and will certainly be addressing certain aspects at the rally on Saturday.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BSw72goZM/

Stand Up for Community Cats this August! 🐈
Abandoned and community cats didn’t choose this life, many were once loved and cared for, then left behind through no fault of their own. Today, they face hunger, injury and cruel control methods.

Every day, rescuers and carers pour their hearts, time and resources into giving these cats safety and care. But too often, both the cats and the compassionate people who help them are ignored or even vilified.

It’s time to show NSW that cats matter. ✊

📅 Saturday 23 August
🕒 11:00am – 12:00pm
📍 East top of Martin Place, near Macquarie Street & Parliament House

RSVP & Event Details: https://www.facebook.com/share/1CeQQuQZJU/

We’ll be joining passionate rescuers, carers, and advocates to call on the NSW Government to:
✅ Fund humane, non-lethal programs
✅ Support rehoming, vaccination & community engagement
✅ Respect and work with grassroots rescuers and carers
✅ End the demonisation of cats and their carers

Let’s stand together for compassion, collaboration, and change. Join us!

12/08/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/171Shhysy3/

08/08/2025

Happy International Cat Day.
The fight goes on to protect our unique, vulnerable and beautiful cats.

30/06/2025

We recently received a donation from ARC that will help feed the foster, sanctuary and colony cats as well as kitty litter and other useful items. Very much appreciated and helps out a lot. Pictured is Fleur the firebrand scoffing her Hills Science Diet pouch which she loves. She's still being socialised and is being very resistant! Her 2 siblings came around but her and her sister are being Torty terrors still.

14/04/2025

🆘❗️ Help needed ❗️📣
We need new foster carers for Raffi, Carlos and Florence who can be fostered together or separately. Very sadly their current foster carer has terminal cancer and is no longer in a position to care for them. It's a very sad situation, the lady has been a stalwart carer of cats and helping community cats for several years. Raffi, Carlos and Florence have all been in care since they were kittens rescued from a community outreach situation and have been waiting patiently for their furever homes for 2 years now. They are all sweet natured, are no fuss and are kitty litter trained. If yourself or anyone you know may be able to help, please message us.

13/04/2025

The article is pretty thin but brings attention to Prof. Jackie Rand's research. Get the 6th photo...🤦

Jennifer Cotterell would bring dozens of cats to the pound that would eventually be put down — under traditional management strategies, it was all she could do.

29/03/2025

The Threatened Species Commissioner talking about the need to better understand how deceased native animals died. So eradication can be better targeted. Why are scientists releasing native animals into areas where wild cats live? It happens fairly regularly actually. See one of my previous posts.

Get a load of the comments on the post. As always happens when the TSC or anyone else talks about wild cats you see comments about cruelty to domestic cats. One man references the killing of Mango, the owned domestic cat in Coffs Harbour trapped and drowned in a wheelie bin.

Curiously, the comments stay on the post, are obviously deemed acceptable while others have been banned from the page who question anything to do with what a post is talking about.

So does the TSC condone violence towards cats? It would seem so...Following in the footsteps of the first appointed TSC, Gregory Andrews who wrote some very controversial posts and were littered with cat cruelty comments. Really not acceptable from a public official.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bk3RCZ938/?mibextid=oFDknk

Whodunnit? Understanding how much feral cat predation is occurring at a site is important for effective management but it’s not always an easy task.

Necropsies are the gold standard for confirming cause of death of animals in the field, but it is difficult to access vets in remote areas. This means ecologists often have to rely on field evidence to make an educated guess about if an animal has died from cat predation, which can be inaccurate.

New research from UNSW shows DNA may be a more practical and accurate way of confirming cat predation in the field. Better information on cat predation levels will support conservation managers to make more informed decisions about intensity and location of cat control.

Read more here: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/03/native-animal-deaths-feral-cat-dna-testing.

📷: Feral cat with text (Original image by Tom Hunt, CC BY-NC 4.0)

19/02/2025

From 2014...😅😬

As the year draws to an end WC is working on a colony in the Liverpool area where several cats are being fed and generally looked after but desexing needed. Miraculously or perhaps more worrying is that there are no kittens about. Searches haven't found any - yet.

In terms of a new year dawning, I have a few wishes or perhaps dreams is a better word...that less if not zero animals turn up at pounds, that certain people on this planet take care of their animals and stop seeing them as disposable, that no kittens are born on the streets, that street cats everywhere are given a chance and seen as worthy of love and care, that Australia gets its head around TNR, that I never see a "free to good home" ad again, that the larger animal welfare organisations put their animals and not their politics first and stand out as shining beacons of what animal welfare and management should be, that intensive factory farming ends, that the racing industry has a good long hard look at itself and its practices, that questionable experiments on animals in labs stops, that puppy and cat mills are run out of town, that all the fakes and pretenders and obstructionists that claim to be about helping animals go join Rotary, that endangered species numbers increase and the animals are left alone, that canned hunting stops, that pet shops sell rescue animals only, that more people buy free range and organic, that animals stop getting treated abominably in developing and not so developing countries, that rich people plough their money into creating animal sanctuaries and shelters around the world and arrest the misery - The Eastern Block, Mexico, Spain, Asia - to name but a few.

WC would like to wish our followers a Happy New Year. Keep the faith people.

24/01/2025

We are living a nightmare and it's getting worse. There is currently a cat crisis at the moment and it's a massive animal welfare issue. The reasons of which are varied but easily identifiable and certain Sydney suburbs are affected more than others. How we got to this crisis level is also easily identifiable, but nobody with regulatory or political power doesn't want to really go there, not in any meaningful way that would affect real change.

We currently have kittens in care, some that are sick, and adult cats. It's costing a bomb.

Every single day Westie Cat receives messages, texts and phone calls from members of the public seeking help wanting to surrender their own cats, or with cats and kittens on their properties, workplaces and on the street. Other organisations cop the same. We also find dumped cats and kittens at various colonies.

If people seeking help contact a pound they get told that pound is full and can't help them, that they don't accept cats in unless under specific circumstances or to contact a rescue. Large not for profit animal organisations tell people the same and give people a list of rescues.

There is a list longer than my arm of jobs that need sorting. The absolute ridiculousness of this cannot be overstated nor the stress it causes, not helped by the fact that the majority (but not all, some are great) of people seeking help expect us to solve the problem ASAP and lack any willingness to help or contribute on their part. The unrealistic expectations are considerable.

Westie Cat is closed for business while we try and sort our way through and out of this nightmare. Don't contact us, we can't help you.

09/01/2025

Adoption Update.
Towards the end of last year Claire Bear was adopted into a loving home that included new fur and human siblings and two wonderful pawparents. Such a pleasing result for the little girl considering the miserable existence she had on the street when she was trapped and taken into care two years earlier.

30/12/2024

TNRR, who woulda thought? With a problem that won't go away with more regulation as our politicians seem to believe, helping semi owned and unowned cats via such an initiative is an interesting strategy. Well done RSPCA NSW. There's a few other councils that could be as proactive as this. And they are:
Cumberland Council.
Fairfield Council.
Penrith Council.
Canterbury-Bankstown Council.
Hawkesbury Council.