Help us to help them - PACT Animal Sanctuary

In ten years the cat crisis has been continual, but we have done well with our rehoming programme, in ten years we have successfully rescued and rehomed 916 cats and returned 29 strays to their owners. We have had big cats, little cats, wild cats, friendly cute cats, cats with attitude and all colours and types, the one thing they have all had in common is that they needed someone to love. Many dear moggies have stayed with us for life, and many more are still looking for that special person.

It has always been our policy to only euthanase in cases of severe ill health with no hope for any sustained quality of life, and to give a chance to those animals that other welfare organisation couldn't or wouldn't help. This in itself has given us major problems, as many of our dogs become long termers therefore restricting the number of dogs we can rescue and rehome. For this reason we now operate a scheme where we home from home and this is proving very successful, in the last year we have rehomed 10 dogs in this way, and altogether in ten years we have rescued and rehomed 706 dogs and returned 67 strays to their rightful owners.

In the early years rabbits and guinea pigs didn't seem to be a big problem and we only needed to give permanent sanctuary to just a few. That soon changed, rabbits are now the third most popular pet, and the situation is now desperate. So far we have rescued and rehomed 327 and never have less than 70 rabbits looking for good homes. Guinea pigs however do seem to home quite well, possibly because they do make much more suitable pets for children, with adult supervision of course. We have altogether rescued and rehomed 61 guinea pigs.

Since PACT began we have rescued 14 horses and ponies, 6 sheep, 11 pigs and 72 goats. Still living here at the Sanctuary are 9 horses and ponies, 4 pigs, 4 sheep, and 24 goats, others have been rehomed or ended their days peacefully at River Farm.

In addition to the more usual pets we have rescued some of the less common species and found suitable foster homes for them including a monkey, tree frog, terrapins, chinchillas, degus, ferrets, and many rats, mice, hamsters. We have many exotic birds including conures, lovebirds, finches, kakaris, and of course cockatiels and budgies, although we prefer not to rehome our birds as we can give them a good life here in the aviaries and they do help with education. Just as giant oaks from little acorns grow, from small beginnings PACT has grown to become the second largest all animal sanctuary in the east of England, and we are justly proud of the work hat we continue to do for animal welfare.