A cattery is a place where cats are housed, maintained, cared for, and bred. It can be any building, collection of buildings, or property that is designed for this purpose. Catteries can range from a simple building associated with a residence to a state-of-the-art facility with CCTV. There are different types of catteries, including:

• Boarding Cattery: This is a place where cats are housed temporarily for a fee. Boarding catteries typically have familiar objects, cat trees, climbing frames, scratching posts, and places for the cats to sleep during the day, and blankets and toys from home are also permitted at many catteries. Some catteries offer onsite grooming and nail trimming.

• Communal Cattery: Cats in communal catteries benefit from the much greater space available for roaming and playing. These are usually the cheapest form of boarding cattery.

• Semi-Communal Cattery: These are individual cells for cats, similar to an aviary, within a much larger facility. As with the semi-communal cattery, celled catteries can feed specialized diets and monitor toileting, and medicate where required.

• Breeding Cattery: This is a place specialized in breeding valuable pet cats for sale and profit. Unlike traditional pet shops, pet hospitals, or some boarding catteries, breeding catteries do not.

Most cats find the experience of staying in a cattery stressful, as they are territorial and prefer to stay in their home environment. Even the experience of getting your cat into a carrier and driving them to a cattery can provoke anxiety in your pet. Most cats also don’t like other cats outside of their family, so the experience of sharing space with a lot of new cats can be stressful.