A Pawsome Experience

A Pawsome Experience By Victoria Corcoran of Pets Country Manor

The Pets Country Manor is a

luxury cattery in Liverpool. We serve a niche market providing luxury high end accommodation for cats. Our premises comprises of 69 suites - 61 of these rooms are for up to 2 cats and 8 of these rooms are for up to 4 cats. We have lots of customers from surrounding areas using our cattery such as Warrington, Widnes, Southport and the Wirral.

HOW WE STARTED

Myself (Victoria) and my fiancé Craig were going away on holiday in 2007 and couldn’t find anyone to look after our guinea pigs so once we returned we looked into it further and realised that there was no one who catered for small animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, bearded dragons etc so we decided to build the small animal hotel in our back garden. We went onto win numerous awards and were featured in local magazines and newspapers and soon we were receiving calls from people wanting to book their cats in with us but we didn’t cater for cats and the feedback we received indicated there was a gap in the market for a truly luxury hotel for cats in Liverpool. We built our first cattery in 2009 in our back garden which had 14 rooms and four poster beds, within 18 months of opening we had turned away 984 customers due to being fully booked so we realised we needed to expand. In 2012 we moved house to somewhere just 10 minutes down the road and built the Pets Country Manor luxury cat hotel, we started with 40 rooms and have since expanded to have 73 rooms. (the place we bought was a derelict country pub, this former pub is now our family home and we built the pets country manor in the former beer garden of the pub).

ABOUT THE PETS COUNTRY MANOR

The Pets Country Manor is a luxury, five-star licensed hotel for cats based in Tarbock Green, Merseyside.

We look after around 100 cats on a daily basis and were titled the number one boarding establishment for cats in the UK several years ago at the Pet Industry Federation Awards.

Our standard room is 40 square foot, plus has an additional 25 square foot ceiling height climbing wall in each playroom and an extra 8 square foot raised platform in each bedroom.

We also have 8 family suites which are 50 square foot with the same facilities of the climbing walls.

The bedrooms have thermostatically-controlled slimline radiators and we provide beds, blankets, toys, scratch posts, bowls plus a wide selection from our a la cat menu. Our rooms have panoramic windows overlooking our landscaped countryside gardens and customers can choose from either a sunrise or sunset view.

We have thousands of reviews on our Google, Yell and Facebook pages, all of which are 5 Star and we are very proud of our 98% repeat business.

We were initially supported by the Princes Trust when we first started and were asked to represent the North West on behalf of the Princes Trust and traveled to Westminster to meet HRH Prince Charles.

We have since been featured in the Daily Telegraph and subsequently we have customers that travel from all over the UK to use our cat hotel.

We have customers from Edinburgh, Croyden and Norfolk who will book flights out of Liverpool or Manchester airport so they can travel to us the day before to drop their cats off!

Each cat we look after is an individual and whether they want to be groomed, cuddled or played with, we are on hand to make sure every furbaby settles in brilliantly and goes home happy and content, ensuring owners want them to return for another holiday with us.

We are definitely one of a kind in Merseyside and have no other competition.

During lockdown which was obviously really quiet, we decided to start a YouTube channel about the Pets Country Manor and also cat care/advice videos.

We upload videos on a regular basis and offer tips such as ‘how to introduce a new cat into your household’ or ‘how to help your cat start using its litter tray’ and virtual tours and behind the scenes at the pets country manor.

We also introduced luxury upgrades into our cat hotel during August last year, so if owners would like their cat to have a little bit of extra luxury, they can simply select some optional upgrades on the booking form.

Some of the upgrades we have available are Pawsome Afternoon Tea which is served to guests on a raised bamboo dining table complete with a picture sent to owners, we offer orthopaedic four poster beds, daily iPad interactive entertainment, fresh filtered water fountains and a wide range of snacks from our onsite mini bar – kitty tapas meals include things like: fresh white fish, juicy prawns and succulent ham.

Our drinks menu include: kitty cataccinos and your catsastar martinis, served with a side order of chicken strips, mini fillets and a toy catnip mouse, and our dessert menu include: holiday cupcakes, puddycat pudding with kitty custard, and home made ice cream kitty lollies in a variety of flavours.

We also provide a chauffeur service, so if clients would like us to collect or drop off their cat, we can offer this service too – complete with uniformed cat chauffeur!

Due to our rooms having lift our panels, it is also possible for customers to upgrade their cats room up to a whopping 400 square foot! So far we have had one customer book 4 rooms (160 square foot room) for their 1 cat to give them extra space.

WWW.KITTYHAMPURRS.COM

At the Pets Country Manor, we also have an onsite cat-lovers gift shop.

However, due to covid we have now set up an online business called Kitty Hampurrs, so now we sell individual items or pre-designed kitty package hampurrs including subscriptions, to these hampurrs online and we send them out via the post or local people can arrange collection. So whether customers would like a birthday kitty hampurr, spa day, or date night kitty hampurr or they’d like a hampurr for a friend or themselves we have a wide range of quality and unusual cat themed gifts for cat loving humans too!

MERSEYSIDE’S FELINE FOOD BANK

At the beginning of the year we decided to set up as Merseyside’s Feline Food Bank, so people can either drop off donations of food to us, have cat food delivered, or buy boxes of cat food from ourselves to donate to the feline food bank.

All the food that we collect is then split between cat rescue centres across the Merseyside region (such as Liverpool Cat Welfare, Boote Home for Cats, Carla Lane, Freshfields, Warrington Animal Welfare, Laurel Animal Rescue, Garston Animal Rescue, Animal Aid and County Cats Rescue – are to name just a few!)

Or if someone has a particular favourite rescue that they would like all their donations to go to they can just let us know or write it on their donations and we’ll make sure that this donation goes to that specific rescue centre.

During lockdown lots of people ended up getting pets – sadly as restrictions start to lift, lots of people are deciding a cat is no longer for them and dumping them at rescue centres.

Rescue centres are normally full at the best of times, so unfortunately this year they are going to be past bursting point.

We decided to help in anyway we could, so set up as Merseyside’s Feline Food Bank.

It also saves the rescue centre having lots of people calling in to drop off food donations when they are usually very busy caring for the cats in their care, so this way if everyone uses us a drop off point, we can then make one trip every couple of months to each rescue centre which can help free up their time.

The Merseyside Feline Food Bank is going great and we’ve had hundreds of donations from people including some cat food manufacturers, so were really pleased with the kindness and generosity of people. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR OUR MONTHLY COLUMN IN FUTURE LANCASHIRE MAGAZINE ISSUES, IN WHICH WE WILL ANSWER THE MOST POPULAR QUESTIONS ABOUT CATS, SUCH AS:

• How to Smoothly Introduce a New Cat to Your Existing Cat • How to Help Your Cat to Start Using Their Litter Tray • How to Encourage Your Cat to Drink More Water/Take More Fluids • Keeping Indoor Cats Entertained/Occupied • How to Choose a Good Cattery for Your Furbaby

• Tips to Help Your Cat to Stop Scratching the Furniture

M PETS COUNTRY MANOR

Netherley Road, Prescot, Merseyside L35 1QE D www.petscountrymanor.com | www.kittyhampurrs.com N 07746 741 382 E petscountrymanor@hotmail.co.uk