Could You Run a Boarding Cattery?

Ever fancied making money out of your hobby? Or better still, out of something that you already willingly do every day?

As a cat owner, you have practically all the skills you need to run a boarding cattery and potentially have a second income - all without leaving your own home!

Many people extend their love of cats to looking after other people’s pets whilst they are away from home.  Thousands of neighbours think nothing of caring for a friend’s cat during the holiday period but few consider making it into a business.

There are three business models - build a small number of boarding ‘chalets’ in your own back garden,  purchase an existing boarding establishment or offer a home visiting service , caring for pets in their own homes.

Below is an extract from this week’s Cat Owners Confidential newsletter on this very subject. Read through it and leave a comment letting me know whether it’s the sort of thing you’d like to do yourself and if you don’t already receive your copy of the newsletter, sign up in the box provided - you’ll be glad you did!

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So, what would you need to run your own boarding cattery business? Well, firstly, you would need to think long and hard about how it would fit into your life - or rather, how your life would fit around your business! Look at your daily routine with your own cat.  

 Nothing too taxing there, you might think. But with a boarding cattery you will need to multiply all that by 10, 20, 30 or even 50!  It’s quite a time commitment, isn’t it? Factor in need to answer the telephone taking bookings and enquiries. You’ll need an office - or at least permanent space in your home for your paperwork, phone and computer. You will need to work out a system for receiving cats when they are being booked in and collected. Will you deal with incoming and outgoing clients whenever you are available, or at specified times each day? How about weekends? Most of your clients will need to bring their pets to you when they are not at work and that means that you will need to be available when it suits your clients - not you! Of course, if you have staff, all these inconveniences can be covered by them but staff means that you need to be making the sort of profit that will enable you to pay them.  As I told you last week, once the owner loses the personal touch, the cats sometimes aren’t cared for as well as you would like them to be cared for……. All the above points need to be carefully thought about even before getting out of your chair to search for a suitable property, or plan to build a cattery in your own back garden. But before all that, there is one burning question that I am sure you would like answered -  How Much Money Can I Make From Running a Boarding Cattery? Well, as a rule of thumb, here in the UK you can realistically expect to produce around £1000 ($2000) per year, per chalet.  So, if you have a total of 25 chalets in your cattery, (which would be a small to medium sized establishment),  you can expect to produce an income of around £25000 ($50000) per annum.  Not bad for a job that you are already skilled for and that doesn’t require you to join the daily commute from home to some concrete jungle. And often, running a cattery is a secondary income for a household. Not bad for doing something you already do, just on a grander scale, don’t you think?