When you head off on holiday, leaving your pet in a shabby cattery can leave you racked with guilt.
Why should you get to enjoy buffet dinners and luxury lounging when they’re cooped up in a cage?
Answering that need for finer dwellings for our feline pals is Liverpool’s Pets Country Manor, created by Victoria Corcoran, 38, and her fiancé, Craig Hailes, 41.
This is not your average catsitter’s. The manor has space for 100 cats at a time, each in rooms with plush four-poster beds and plenty of toys.
We all know that food is the most important part of any holiday, so that’s well-covered here. Cat guests are served with a welcome drink of chicken-flavoured water, followed by treats such as ‘catachinos’ and ‘kitty tapas’.
All this service comes at a cost – but far less than your usual five-star residency, with rooms coming in at between £15.50 and £32 a day.
Cat lover Victoria said: ‘Cats have a reputation for being sassy and independent.
‘They know what they want and very much know what they don’t want.
‘As a cat owner myself, I wanted to create a cattery that wasn’t just somewhere for the animals to stay while their owners are away, but a place where they can really enjoy spending time, too.’
The couple first started looking into opening some kind of animal hotel back in 2007 when they could not find anywhere to board their own pets.
They started out by opening an animal hotel for small creatures in their back garden, then in 2009, took the plunge and built their very own dedicated cattery, inspired by their own five cats: Nevada, Havana, Francisco, Coco, and Cayo.
‘I’m a complete animal lover and knew that if I was going to start allowing cats into the hotel it needed to be up to scratch for them,’ said Victoria.
‘I didn’t want to run a bog-standard cattery, I wanted the moggies to receive five-star treatment.
‘There was an old derelict pub with 1.6 acres of land for sale just 10 minutes down the road.
‘We moved into our new home in 2012 and got to work on building the cattery, costing £650,000.’
Now, the cattery is complete and able to house over 100 cats a day, with most rooms offering 40 sq ft of space while larger suites have a five-tier built-in climbing wall.
And the manor has been hugely popular among people who want to properly pamper their pets.
Victoria said: ‘We offer paw-some afternoon tea, which is served every day to cats on a raised bamboo dining table. We offer catachinos and meow-tinis and puddings such as kitty custard.
‘We also offer water fountains and orthopaedic four poster beds. People can add on daily iPad time, too, which is interactive entertainment for their cat.
‘We get so much positive feedback online from happy customers, which is fantastic.
‘At the end of the day, we go above and beyond to make sure our cats are happy and healthy during their stay.
‘The luxury treats are there to keep them purring – and the cats absolutely love them.’
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