Time running out for cat charity seeking a home HOUSING WORRIES: Lou Tyack, pictured with Toffee the catPicture: Antony Moore By David Horne

Witney Reporter A CHARITY for unwanted and abandoned pets faces losing its home in west Oxfordshire at the end of this month.

The woman who runs the local branch of Cats Protection, the country's leading cat welfare charity, has to leave her rented farmhouse on Thursday, October 31.

Despite an appeal in the Oxford Mail and its sister paper the Oxford Star to find alternative accommodation, Lou Tyack has been unsuccessful.

At present, she is looking after more than 20 cats and kittens at the foster and rehoming centre at Merriscourt, Sarsden, near Chipping Norton.

Ms Tyack, who has worked voluntarily for the charity for the past 11 years, said: "Nowhere else has come up where I can continue to run the cattery.

"The animals can for a while be sent out to fosterers, but once I have to quit here there is no longer a Cats Protection centre in the district.

"It's particularly bad at the moment because we seem to have been inundated over the past few months with unwanted cats and kittens."

Problem

Part of her problem is that she does not earn enough as a nursing assistant at Moreton-in-Marsh Hospital, in Gloucestershire, to afford the high rents for alternative accommodation in west Oxfordshire.

The district council's housing department is trying to help her, but so far has been unable to find social housing that can also be used to look after cats.

The charity's press officer Emma Osborne said: "It would be a great shame if we lost our centre in the area, but Lou's position is becoming desperate."

witney@nqo.com