Where do people get cats from now?

Absolutely from rescue.
Yes there's a cost but given the cat/kitten will be neutered and vaccinated plus money leftover helps more cats and kittens, it's always money well spent rather than going to some dickhead on Facebook selling animals.

Cat Chat is a good directory of smaller shelters in the UK

https://www.catchat.org/index.php

Battersea do cats as well as dogs, if you are in/near London. My sister has a really excellent cat she adopted from them as a young adult a couple of years ago.

Not many rescues say that for cats, if you end up looking to get another for any reason I’d try a few rescues, sounds like you got unlucky! But it’s a bonus for your Dcat though so sounds like he’s having a lovely live 🙂

Ours is sadly to say from freeads, because we have young children and rescues say come back when the youngest is 8. He was 1yo, not neutered, microchipped or vaccinated which we have had all done now. He wasn't from a litter they had bred so in that respect I didn't feel like we were contributing to the breeding of cats for sale. He came from a house with 4 young kids which is why we got him, turns out he doesn't like kids too much 😂 but we only have 2 and he is slowly getting used to them, the house we picked him up from was pretty chaotic. He has lots of space here, we have a big house in the countryside. He's got cat shelves and lots of places in the house to get away from the kids and be somewhere quiet. So overall I'd say he's got lucky! Id rather get one from a rescue though. It would also have been much cheaper! We only paid £50 for Dcat himself but then had a health check, neutering, vaccination, microchip and also had a full stool analysis done as he had runny poo which I thought was probably stress but wanted to rule anything else out. It's gradually improving the longer he is with us. He is also on a high quality diet instead of pouches which seems to help too.

Cat 1 - from a woman on Gumtree (I know) advertising 3 cats for new homes as she had too many and was struggling to look after them (she had 7 in total). She hasn’t neutered any of them and they kept having kittens, which was horrendous. I was really quite judgemental but didn’t say too much, just wanted to get one of the cats out of there.

Two were kittens and one was 3 years old - we took the 3 year old, it was her kittens she was advertising.

Cat 2 - Cat’s Protection. Very easy, went to see cat and took her home that night. Paid £85 adoption fee and got a ‘starter pack’ with food, scratch post, bed etc.

I’d really advise cats protection, they are brilliant. Our girl was fostered by a lady so they didn’t have an actual centre you could visit, but she had a sort of large shed/hut in her garden with different compartments for the cats.

https://www.battersea.org.uk/cats/cat-rehoming-gallery

You can view available cats on Battersea

I follow a couple of rescues in the area on FB which is how I came to have mine. There are loads of cats with them at the moment who are pregnant or just had kittens, I would imagine it's the same everywhere so maybe have a look at your local rescues.

My current 2 are from a local rescue. There are some local rescues who will only rehome cats to be indoor-only, but the one I used came out to do a home check to look at suitability of the garden/local roads etc - (less strict than it sounds). I haven’t encountered the kind of overly strict policies people sometimes complain about, local organisations have been happy to rehome to my home with young children and where we’re out working during the day, so long as that’s suitable for the particular cats.

Cats protection for one and a local adoption place for the other. It was easy. We applied, set up a viewing and then collected within a week ( both were waiting for jabs). Better than buying. Both are well settled and happy. You can filter for whether they will live with other cats.

I got mine from a local rescue, £80 each fully vaccinated, voucher for spaying, microchipped and flea/wormed!

I find the universe’s Cat Distribution System really good. I had a tiny kitten appear in my garden a few months ago. Couldn’t find his owner and he’s part of the family now.

😁

That aside- local rescues or word of mouth!

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We got ours from a friend who found a feral cat had given birth to kittens in his garage! Nobody could ever get close to the mum but the kittens were used to humans almost from birth and were completely tame.

We have four "indoor" cats from a rescue. We paid to get the garden cat proofed though so they do go outside safely now

Local smaller cat rescue, he was £60 and is an absolute dude

My two kittens came from a shelter at 9 weeks old.

i have rescued 2 cats one from CPL and one a stray who turned up on my doorstep. I applied to CPL a month ago for a kitten on their website and I have heard nothing! I had a acknowledge of receipt but the kitten has now been reserved.

Our lovely boy was from a rescue, we paid £60, he was chipped, neutered and vaccinated. He was 4 years old when we adopted him and he's the biggest softie in the world.

We buy ours from rescue centres, although our current cat I found stuck in a road drain as a kitten, the vet guessed she was around 4 weeks old so who knows what happened to the rest of the litter.

Our neighbours are in their 80's, but very active. 1 of their elderly cats died and they wanted another older cat. The local shelters and rescue centres wouldn't let them adopt/buy another, saying our neighbours were too old.

They contacted the cinnamon trust who were excellent. The company transported the cat in an air conditioned van several summers ago. I think it was fostered, because the cinnamon trust paid all future vet bills! My neighbours, and both cats are still going strong.

https://cinnamon.org.uk/

Yep. We got kittens from Cat Protection, neutered and jabbed, microchipped etc. My older cat I ended up getting on Freecycle of all places, just someone that couldn't manage any more.

We were rejected by Battersea when we got our first pair, whereas CH wanted us to take more than 2!

Rescue! I got our two as kittens a couple of years ago - I just needed to send pics of my house and have a quick chat as I’d already had cats before. Apart from a kitten my dm’s colleague gave us 40 years ago I’ve always got cats/ kittens from rescue centres.

@Ddakji ours came from Celia Hammond too and I completely agree that whilst they obviously need to know the cats will be well cared for, they do seem to acknowledge most homes will be better than being in a centre.