With monthly fees as high as £10,000, South Yorkshire Street Cats say they are becoming ‘unable to cope’ as their rescue grows.

Founded and run by Lynnsey Pumford, Rachel Dunning and Sian Evans, South Yorkshire Street Cats is based in Barnsley and focuses on helping stray, lost, injured or feral cats from across South Yorkshire.

Lynnsey Pumford, 46, said: “What people don’t realise is it takes a long, long time to rehabilitate cats. I just don’t think people see cats as they do dogs, they also need care and love and human help.”

With over 50% of the cats they help being feral, Ms Pumford said: “There used to be programs that allowed your cat to get neutered and chipped for £20 but those don’t exist anymore – to neuter a single cat costs us about £140.

“Neutering cats massively decreases the risk of them running away from home, it also makes them less aggressive towards other cats.”

Ms Pumford estimated that the charity spends around £7000 per month on neutering the cats, and that is excluding the cost of microchipping them.

With an increase in abandoned cats this year, the team are seeing cat colonies (groups of feral female cats living together to fend for food and protect offspring) with up to twenty-one cats in one.

Despite new government law making microchipping mandatory for pet cats, earlier research from 2024 showed over 1.5 million UK cat owners had not microchipped their cats.

This can be a problem for cats and rescues alike, as pet cats wander too far from home and are taken in by rescuers, who think it’s a stray. 

Ms Pumford said: “A few months ago, somebody found a cat who had a horrific broken leg and when they took it to the vets, the vets said ‘put it back’ so they came to us.” 

All 75 cats at South Yorkshire Street Cats currently reside with fosters, but Lynnsey thinks it’s unsustainable, saying: “It never, ever stops. They’re suffering – the work is mentally draining. We run entirely on generous donations, food donations and our own auctions.”

The entire organisation is run by 25 volunteers.

“We just want to better the life of street cats,” Ms Pumford said. “We all love cats, and nobody else is helping them.” 

You can help support South Yorkshire Street Cats by directly donating, or purchasing items on their Amazon wishlist.