Help! Everything is terrible and we are drowning

Hello! I'm Holly-the-Perpetually-Exhausted, owner of Holly's Merry Moggies rescue for disabled, difficult and different cats for the past 5 years.

In that time, the situation for animal rescues in the UK has gradually become worse and worse, until last year it reached breaking point -- and then somehow this year is even worse than that?! Oof.

What do I mean? Well:

Since we specialise in the difficult cases (disabled, ill, older, and generally unlucky moggies), our costs have always been higher than for other rescues. We've also always had high demand for places, because so few shelters are equipped and able to take the wobbly and wonky cats we specialise in. That said, this year has been something else.

This month, for the first time ever, we've had to put disabled cats on our waiting list rather than letting them come straight in. Usually, our waiting list is for healthy cats and other non-urgent cases, but we can usually accommodate a wobbly or disabled cat straight away. But with adoptions slowing to almost nothing, and multiple people going through the whole rehoming process only to have to pull out at the last second, we've got cats coming out of our ears.

It's worth saying at this point that we don't get any kind of funding. No government funds, no grants. I don't know why the government doesn't help rescues when they're clearly an essential part of UK infrastructure (official bodies refer people to us all the time which is a bit rude when they don't give any kind of help or resources), but that's a problem for a different day.

Today's problem is that alongside all the issues above, the public donations that we rely on and literally cannot exist without have fallen to an all-time low. It's no one's fault -- people have lost their jobs, or their own costs have gone up beyond all reason and they just can't afford to help us anymore. We completely understand, but with this happening to so many people at once, it's put a major dent in our finances -- to the point that we've now spent our entire emergency fund and are exhausting the whole month's finances in the first two weeks.

There is some hope on the horizon -- we've recently put in a (giant) application for registered charity status, and if it gets approved, we can start to apply for grants (probably at 5am while hand-feeding a sickly kitten, but we'll take it!). And the economy will probably sort itself out eventually, as it usually does.

In the short term, though, we REALLY need some extra help. Here are some of the very deserving cases we've got in at the moment:

Thomasina

This poor old lady was living on the streets for at least the last two years, but as often happens, no one told us about her until she started looking really sick. She's bone-thin, has a mouthful of rotten teeth that need extracting, and is on a very high dose of thyroid medication. She's improving, but there's a long way to go yet.

Onyx

This beautiful mini panther has a very wobbly head, likely because of an inner-ear problem that wasn't addressed when she was a kitten. Now 1, she needs some vet investigations to find out what's going on and whether there's anything we can do to help. These, as you can probably imagine, do not come cheap.

Stevie

Another older cat who was inexplicably living on the streets without a warm lap to come home to. Stevie has extremely high blood pressure which sadly caused his vision to fail. He absolutely hated his blood pressure pills so we've had to get him the human version which comes as a liquid (can't say we blame him, no one wants to be made to swallow tablets they can't even see) but is really expensive, and he also needs some other tests and treatments before he'll be ready for a potential new home.

And all the others

We have between 10 and 15 permanent cats at Moggy Manor at any given time, most of whom are very disabled and a lot of work (but worth it!). We did have an emergency fund for any vet bills that arise for them (most can't be insured because of their conditions) but as mentioned above, we've had to plunder it to pay for some of the really desperate, clinging-onto-life situations that have come in recently. Fingers crossed no one does any big yeets onto hard surfaces until we've built it up again!

I can't always update GoFundMe and our social pages quickly because I'm only one person with a boring bunch of health conditions of my own, plus it's hard to post compelling TikToks when you're washing the brown stuff off a disabled kitten for the third time today. But I look after our cats 24/7, and if you'd like to see any proof of any of the treatments / things we'll use the money for, please do message me and I'm happy to share.

Thank you for reading this essay, if nothing else I feel a bit better for having had a cry about it