The Wigan firm that is filling a niche caused by a building boom and the rise of the indoor cat

The North West is growing fast – and so is its cat population.

With government housebuilding targets across the region rising to around 37,800 new homes a year, and more cats than ever now living permanently indoors, demand for specialist, in-home cat care is rising sharply.

Now a new service has launched to meet it.

Lifelong cat lover Maxine Armes, from Lowton, has launched My Three Cats South Wigan, the newest franchise of the multi-award-winning, cat-only cat-sitting service.

She is joined by experienced cat-sitter Adam Wilkinson, who has cared for cats professionally for many years and will be the main sitter for clients across the area.

The launch follows the huge success of the main business in Warrington and is rooted in how the area is changing.

Industry figures suggest around 31 per cent of UK cats are now kept exclusively indoors, up from just 15 per cent in 2011 – a shift driven in part by busier roads and the kind of new-build estates springing up across the region.

Indoor cats are deeply attached to their own territory, which makes a stay in a cattery especially unsettling.

More owners are instead choosing to keep their cats at home and bring in a trusted sitter while they’re away.

Yet specialist provision hasn’t kept pace: dogs account for around 96 per cent of the UK pet-sitting market, leaving cats just four per cent.

For many owners that means that the only options are a cattery or asking a well-meaning friend, family member or neighbour to pop in.

It’s kind help, but not always the trained eye needed to spot the small signs a cat can use to mask illness, from a dip in appetite to a subtle change in routine.

“The towns around here are changing so quickly,” said Maxine. “There’s new housing going up everywhere, and more and more people are choosing to keep their cats safely indoors, especially near the busier roads.

“Those cats need proper care when their owners go away – and for a cat that’s used to its own home, a cattery often isn’t the answer.

“That’s the gap we’re here to fill.”

That is particularly true in the Lowton area which is one of several parts of Wigan borough to see the population rocket due to the large-scale building of housing estates.

Maxine comes to My Three Cats as a customer first.

A client of the original Warrington business, her own two cats, Chloe and Vinnie, have long been looked after by a My Three Cats sitter while she’s away – and she loved the service so much that she decided to bring it to her own corner of the North West.

Chloe and Vinnie – a mother-and-son pair – are very much the stars of Maxine’s home. Chloe loves to sleep in the warmest spots she can find, usually stretched out on top of a radiator, while Vinnie is never far from his mum – “though she’s more like the mother of a teenage son who’s lived at home a bit too long,” as their sitter Carolyn affectionately puts it.

Maxine’s love of cats can be traced back years, and began with an act of kindness.

When a neighbour’s cat, Cheeky, was diagnosed with FIV ( feline immunodeficiency virus) at the age of 12 and could no longer live alongside their other cats, she couldn’t bear the thought of him being sent anywhere else – so she took him in herself.

Cheeky was followed over the years by Thelma and Louise, and now by Chloe and Vinnie.

My Three Cats founder, Wendy Thomson Melling, said: “The way our towns are growing is changing how people live with their cats, and the care those cats need is changing too.

“There are an estimated 12 million cats in the UK, yet the pet industry is still largely dog-focused, and proper feline-first services remain hard to find.

“Maxine knows our business inside out as a customer, and with Adam’s years of experience behind her, local cats are in wonderful hands. South Wigan sits right on the doorstep of where it all started in Warrington, so it feels like a very natural next step for us.”

My Three Cats South Wigan covers Ashton-in-Makerfield, Golborne, Lowton, Atherton, Leigh, Astley, Tyldesley, Culcheth and Glazebury, offering in-home cat visits, feeding, play, medication and welfare checks – all carried out by people who treat every cat as if it were their own.

My Three Cats South Wigan is now open for bookings. Find out more at www.southwigan.mythreecats.co.uk.