Essential business documents every UK cattery should have ready

TL;DR: A UK cattery owner needs about eight core documents to run a tidy, defensible business: an owner booking contract, a cat intake and information form, a vaccination declaration, an emergency veterinary authorisation, a medication consent and administration log, a feeding and routine record, a GDPR privacy notice, and clear terms and conditions covering deposits, cancellations, and abandoned-cat policy. None of these are veterinary advice or licensing approvals. Each one solves a specific problem you'll meet sooner or later: an owner disputes a boarding fee, a cat arrives without proof of vaccination, an emergency vet trip needs sign-off, an owner doesn't collect when booked, an inspector asks for routine records. Get these in place once. Use them with every booking.

If you run a UK cattery, you already know the day-to-day care side. The paperwork side is where most independent cattery owners leak time, money, and goodwill. A booking confirmed by phone feels efficient. Then an owner doesn't show up at collection time, and you have nothing in writing about the abandonment policy.

This is the practical case for documentation. Not bureaucracy. Not theatre. Just the eight documents that protect a cattery operating under a UK local-authority licence.

The three categories of risk these documents cover:

1. Care risk — what you knew about each cat's health, vaccination status, dietary needs, and routine, what consent the owner gave, and what happened during the stay.
2. Compliance risk — UK GDPR for owner data, the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 (or equivalent elsewhere) for licensing, vaccination record-keeping, and inspector documentation requirements.
3. Commercial risk — what happens when an owner cancels late, doesn't pay the balance, doesn't collect on time, or wants a refund after the cat has stayed.

The documents below map directly to those three categories. None of them substitute for a current local-authority licence, vet-recommended vaccination protocols, or your professional judgement about an individual cat's welfare.

The foundation. A written agreement between you and each owner covering the booking dates, daily rate, total fee, deposit, balance due date, cancellation terms, peak-season surcharges, and the agreed collection date and time.

The contract is the single biggest piece of legal protection if a fee, late-collection, or cancellation dispute arises. A typed two-page document signed at booking is enough — it doesn't need to be solicitor-drafted. What matters is that both sides agreed before the cat arrived, and both sides have a copy.

A separate document capturing the cat's name, age, breed, microchip number, vaccination status, current medications, dietary requirements (brand, frequency, portion size), behavioural notes (nervous, aggressive, dislikes other cats, requires solo pen), known medical conditions, and the owner's confirmation that the information is accurate.

This form is renewed at every booking. Cats' needs change between stays; medications change; behavioural patterns shift. A 60-second "anything new since last time?" tick-box at drop-off is enough to keep it current.

A separate (or combined) declaration confirming the cat's vaccinations are current per your stated requirement (typically annual booster, with proof of vaccination shown at drop-off and recorded). Most catteries won't accept unvaccinated cats — this is the document that records the owner's confirmation and your sighting of the certificate.

Cattery vaccination requirements are an industry-norm matter, not a legal mandate. Your specific protocol (what you require, what you accept as proof, how recent the vaccination must be) is your call, made with your vet's input. The document records the owner's compliance with your protocol.

A separate consent giving you authority to seek veterinary care for the cat in an emergency, up to a stated cost ceiling, with the owner agreeing to reimburse. The form should also capture the owner's preferred vet (some prefer their own vet for non-urgent matters; emergencies typically go to the nearest available registered vet) and emergency contact details for two people who can be reached during the stay.

This is one of the documents that genuinely matters in a real emergency. A cat in distress at 11pm on a Saturday with no veterinary authorisation and no contactable owner is a situation no cattery wants. The form pre-empts it.

A two-part document: owner consent to administer specified medications (with dose, frequency, conditions), plus a log of every dose actually given (date, time, dose, your initial). The consent gets signed at drop-off; the log gets filled in every time you administer.

This is the highest-risk paperwork area in cattery work. Cats requiring twice-daily medication need a clean record. A missed dose recorded honestly is far better than a missed dose unrecorded.

A simple per-cat card that captures the cat's normal feeding times, food brand and amount, where they sleep, what they like (warmer pen, higher shelf, particular toy), and what they don't (loud noises, certain handling). It's not a legal document — it's an operational one that improves the stay and reduces stress for the cat.

Owners notice when you remember the small things. A returning cat whose card is already on the pen door before the owner walks in is a regular for life.

You collect names, contact details, payment details, vet practice details, and increasingly photos of the cat. Under UK GDPR, this requires a privacy notice explaining what you collect, why, how long you keep it, and how owners can exercise their rights. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) publishes a small-business privacy notice template you can adapt.

Photo consent for social media is the area most catteries handle informally. Put it on the intake form as a separate tick-box. Some owners are happy with photos of their cat on Instagram. Some emphatically aren't. The form should let owners say so.

The "small print" that defines what happens when things go sideways. Deposit-and-balance payment schedule, late-collection charges (per hour or per day after the agreed collection time), abandoned-cat policy (when does the cat become legally abandoned, what action you can take), refund policy (typically no refund on cancelled stays inside the deposit window), peak-season surcharges, cat-incompatibility policy (if you discover a cat is unsuitable for your environment after intake), and complaint procedures.

Plain English wins. A two-page document owners actually skim once at booking is more legally useful than 12 pages of unreadable boilerplate.

If you don't currently have these documents, treat this as a 3-hour project, not a 3-month one.

1. Pick or buy a template pack for catteries. Adapt it to your business (number of pens, peak-season pricing, your specific vaccination protocol, your local-authority licence conditions).
2. Save the templates in cloud storage so they're on your phone or office tablet when an owner enquires.
3. Build them into your booking-to-stay flow. Send the booking contract and intake form via email after booking confirmation; vaccination declaration confirmed at drop-off.
4. Keep signed copies in a structured filing system (digital is fine, encrypted is better).
5. Decide your weekly admin slot (Sunday evening, last collection done) for filing the week's signed forms and medication logs. The same 15-minute habit that handles your MTD records handles your booking records.

If you do nothing else this month: the emergency veterinary authorisation form. Most disputes can be traced to a verbal "yes, do whatever's needed" at drop-off that nobody can prove later. The worst route is no route.

For the income-and-expense side that pairs with these documents (and the MTD changes coming in April 2026), see Making Tax Digital for cattery owners. Same operational discipline, broader category.

LaunchKit makes a niche-specific business documents bundle for catteries at £19.99 (Premium tier, interactive fillable PDFs and editable DOCX in one pack). The bundle includes owner booking contract, cat intake and information form, vaccination declaration, emergency veterinary authorisation, medication consent and administration log, photo consent, GDPR privacy notice, and cattery-specific terms and conditions calibrated to UK pet-boarding work.

If you want to start lighter, the Standard tier is £11.99, same documents, fillable header only on the PDFs. Custom is £13.99 if you'd rather edit colours and branding in the browser.

For the MTD record-keeping side that pairs with these documents, the cattery MTD Compliance Kit is £16.99 and includes the income and expense categories that map directly to your booking-to-record flow.

This article is general guidance, not legal advice or veterinary advice. For your specific contractual or licensing position, consult a qualified solicitor or your local-authority animal-licensing officer. For animal-health matters, consult a registered veterinary surgeon.