How to Start a Cattery Business in the UK

TL;DR: Start a UK cattery with licensing, cat accommodation, welfare records, vaccination checks, pricing, insurance, HMRC and booking terms.

These are the questions people usually search before they commit to starting a cattery business in the UK.

There is no single fixed startup cost for a cattery business. The practical budget depends on your setup, location, equipment choices and how much you can do yourself before paying for help. Common cost lines include:

• premises and cat units
• licence application costs
• insurance
• food and litter stock
• cleaning systems
• booking tools

Start with a conservative first-month budget and a simple break-even target. That gives you a clearer answer than copying a competitor's price list.

Commercial cat boarding in England normally sits under the animal activities licensing regime run by local councils. Check the council route before spending on premises or launch dates.

Because this business touches regulated or higher-risk responsibilities, check official rules before relying on a launch checklist.

Most new businesses need a small set of working documents rather than a huge admin folder. Useful starting documents usually include:

• booking forms
• vaccination checks
• owner agreements
• feeding and medication notes
• emergency vet authority
• cancellation terms

LaunchKit's Cattery business templates are designed to give you a structured starting point for that admin layer. They still need to be checked against your own business model, insurer requirements and local rules.

In the first month, focus on evidence and repeatable habits: confirm the rules that apply to your setup, choose your service list, price from real costs, prepare client-facing terms, set up record keeping, and test your first enquiry-to-payment workflow before scaling marketing.

Starting a cattery is not simply turning spare space into cat rooms. It is a licensed animal-care business where the premises, records, cleaning rhythm, vaccination checks, emergency planning and booking terms all have to work together.

That sounds heavy. In practice, it is a sequence.

You decide whether the premises can support cat boarding. You check the local authority licensing route. You design accommodation around welfare, hygiene and inspection. You build pricing around the number of cat-unit nights you can actually sell. Then you put the paperwork in place before the first booking is accepted.

This guide focuses mainly on England because commercial cat boarding sits within the animal activities licensing regime operated by local councils. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different local rules and enforcement routes, so check the relevant council and national guidance before using an English setup plan.

Use this as a working route map, not as legal, veterinary, tax, planning or insurance advice. A cattery founder should read the current GOV.UK guidance, speak to the local council animal licensing team, take planning advice where premises changes are likely, and ask an insurer exactly what they will and will not cover.

If you plan to board cats as a commercial business in England, start with the animal activities licence. GOV.UK's cat boarding statutory guidance for local authorities says that all cat boarding activities need a licence if they are carried out as a commercial business. The guidance is written for local authority inspectors, but it is still essential reading for founders because it shows the standards your council will inspect against.

The linked licensing framework is the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. GOV.UK also has a shorter boarding for cats or dogs licence page, which explains that boarding kennels and catteries are within the licence route and that serious penalties can apply if someone boards cats without the required licence or ignores licence conditions.

The practical rule is simple: do not spend serious money on units, websites, deposits or opening dates until your local council has told you what it expects. Councils set application fees, inspect premises, decide licence length and star rating, and state the maximum number of cats that can be kept on the licensed premises.

GOV.UK's current cat boarding guidance says an activity may be in scope where a business provides housing for other people's cats, arranges that housing, provides overnight housing in purpose-built cattery units, or home-boards cats when they are kept in cattery units.

That is different from visiting a cat in the owner's own home. The same GOV.UK guidance lists businesses that look after a cat within the owner's home, such as cat sitters, as an activity that does not require a cat boarding licence under that cat-boarding route. That does not remove every responsibility. A pet sitter still needs proper insurance, client keys handled carefully, animal welfare awareness and sound terms. But it is not the same business model as a licensed cattery.

Do not use that difference to squeeze a cattery into a pet-sitting label. If cats are coming to your premises for overnight care, treat licensing as a front-door issue.

The licensing regime sits against a wider welfare backdrop. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 places duties on people responsible for animals. Section 9 is the core idea: a person responsible for an animal must take reasonable steps to meet that animal's welfare needs.

For a cattery, that duty becomes practical. The Act describes welfare needs including a suitable environment, suitable diet, protection from pain, suffering, injury and disease, and the ability to behave in ways appropriate to the species. A boarding cat is also in a strange place. Many will be anxious at first. The cattery should be designed to reduce stress, not simply prevent escape.

That is why your setup should begin with welfare design, not branding. A beautiful logo will not help if the units are hard to disinfect, the corridor lets cats see every other cat, the emergency vet process is vague, or the booking form fails to capture medication instructions.

Premises are the biggest early decision because they shape almost everything else: licence capacity, planning risk, neighbour impact, build cost, staff movement, cleaning time, heating, ventilation, drainage, parking, customer handovers and emergency evacuation.

A cattery can look profitable on paper and fail in the building. Too few units and the fixed costs swamp you. Too many units and you struggle to clean, observe, feed and record properly. A poor layout forces staff into awkward movements, increases stress for cats and makes inspection harder. A site with poor access can annoy neighbours before the business is even established.

Before you buy or build, sketch the site as a working system:

• Where will owners park and hand over cats?
• Where will clean bedding, food and litter be stored?
• How will waste leave the cat area without crossing food prep?
• Where will isolation or emergency holding happen?
• How will staff check cats throughout the day?
• How will noise, smell and traffic feel to neighbouring homes?
• How will you evacuate cats if the building becomes unusable?

That sketch should happen before the sales forecast. In a cattery, the building is not just overhead. It is the service.

You may need planning permission if you are changing the use of land or buildings, adding units, increasing traffic, altering access, or creating a business use that affects neighbours. Planning is separate from the animal activities licence. A council licensing officer may inspect welfare conditions, while the planning authority considers land use, noise, parking, visual impact and local policy.

The National Planning Policy Framework is national policy, but actual decisions are local. A rural outbuilding, a suburban garden and a small commercial unit will raise different questions.

Neighbour impact deserves serious attention. A cattery is quieter than a dog kennel, but it is not invisible. Owners arrive and leave. Car doors close. Waste is stored. Lights go on. Deliveries arrive. Staff may be on site early and late. If a neighbour feels blindsided, they may object to planning or complain once you open.

The best default is to design for low friction:

• timed drop-off and collection windows
• off-road parking where possible
• clear signage without visual clutter
• waste storage away from boundaries
• no casual visitor traffic into cat areas
• good external lighting that does not spill into neighbouring homes
• a written complaints process

If you are working from home, check your mortgage, lease, tenancy agreement and home insurance. Some agreements restrict business use. Some insurers need to know before business visitors come on site. Do not assume quiet work is automatically permitted.

GOV.UK's cattery guidance is detailed because cat boarding has real risks: escape, disease spread, stress, temperature extremes, poor hygiene, injury, poor medication handling and weak emergency response.

The accommodation described in GOV.UK guidance is robust, durable, cleanable and escape-resistant, with welfare and inspection in mind. Surfaces need to be smooth and waterproof where appropriate. Floors should be solid and non-slip. Doors and windows need to secure properly. Wire mesh, gaps, drainage, barriers, cat flaps and unit corridors all matter.

That detail can feel fussy until you imagine an actual busy morning: one cat refusing breakfast, one needing medication, one litter tray overturned, one owner phoning about a changed collection time, one staff member cleaning a unit for the next arrival, and an inspector asking to see records. The design either supports calm work or turns routine care into a scramble.

Cats from different households must not share a unit. Same-household cats can share only with owner consent, and they still need monitoring with authority to separate them if problems appear. This matters commercially because a "two-cat booking" is not just extra income. It may require a larger unit, more resources, more observation and a clear consent record.

Each unit needs enough separation between feeding, resting and toileting areas. The GOV.UK guidance gives minimum dimensions for sleeping accommodation and exercise runs, and it distinguishes older catteries from new builds. Read those figures before instructing a builder. A small measurement error repeated across ten units can become a licensing problem.

Cats also need choice. A boarding unit should give the cat places to sleep, hide, scratch, climb or sit higher up, while allowing staff to inspect and clean properly. The RSPCA's cat environment guidance is useful background because it explains how attached cats can be to familiar places and why familiar bedding or toys may reduce stress when boarding.

Temperature is not an afterthought. GOV.UK guidance says part of the sleeping area must be kept within a suitable range and must not fall below the minimum stated in the guidance. Cats should be monitored for signs of heat or cold stress. Ventilation must avoid excess humidity, and heating equipment must not create burns, electrocution or fire risks.

Cleaning has to be designed, written and repeated. Occupied units are inspected and cleaned daily. Units are disinfected between occupants. Bedding, bowls, litter trays, toys and enrichment items need a system. Food prep needs hygienic facilities. Waste needs marked storage and daily removal or removal when full.

Good cattery hygiene is boring by design. The same routine happens when you are quiet, busy, tired, fully booked, short-staffed or dealing with a difficult customer. That is what makes it inspectable.

A cattery sells unit-nights. That sounds obvious, but many first forecasts skip it.

If you have 12 usable cat units and each can be occupied for one night, you have 12 unit-nights to sell each night. Over a 30-day month, that is 360 theoretical unit-nights before you account for gaps, cleaning resets, illness exclusions, late cancellations, quieter months and any units held back for operational flexibility.

That ceiling matters more than your social media reach. A fully booked August will not fix underpriced winter capacity if your daily rate does not cover labour, cleaning, utilities, insurance, waste, marketing, card fees, repairs, tax and your own pay.

GOV.UK guidance says the licence must state the maximum number of cats allowed on the premises and that the number must be reasonable given facilities and staffing. It also says each staff member should have 25 cats or less to care for.

Treat that as a ceiling, not a target. A cattery with elderly cats, medication needs, nervous boarders, shared household units, long-haired cats needing grooming checks, or awkward unit layout may need more staff time than a clean spreadsheet suggests.

Build your capacity model around the real day:

• morning checks, feeding and medication
• cleaning each occupied unit
• disinfecting departures
• arrivals and vaccination checks
• owner calls and booking admin
• evening feeding and health checks
• waste handling
• laundry
• record updates
• emergency margin

If you cannot explain how those tasks happen on a peak turnover day, reduce the assumed capacity or increase staffing.

Cattery demand is often strongest around school holidays, bank holidays, summer trips and Christmas travel. It can be patchier in term time. That creates a dangerous temptation: set prices low to fill quiet weeks, then discover that peak weeks sell out too cheaply.

A better approach is to model three seasons:

• peak weeks where deposits and cancellation terms protect scarce space
• shoulder periods where repeat customers and local trust matter
• quieter weeks where cash flow needs careful monitoring

Do not price from what the cheapest local cattery charges. Price from your cost base, welfare model, unit quality, staff time and the kind of owner you want to attract.

The arrival process is one of the most important controls in the whole business. If a cat enters without the right vaccination evidence, owner authority, emergency contact, vet details or medication instructions, you carry the problem inside the licensed premises.

GOV.UK's cat boarding guidance says the business owner must see an up-to-date veterinary vaccination record for all cats. It lists core vaccination expectations, including feline panleukopenia, feline parvovirus, also known as feline infectious enteritis, and feline respiratory viruses. It also explains how protective titre certification may be considered and says homeopathic vaccination is not acceptable.

Your booking terms should say clearly that admission depends on acceptable vaccination evidence. Your arrival process should allow enough time to check the record calmly. If a customer arrives in a rush without the documents, your staff need a written rule to follow.

The cattery register should capture more than a cat's name. GOV.UK guidance expects records including arrival and departure dates, cat identity details, owner contact details, local emergency contact details, the cat's normal vet, insurance details relating to the cat, medical and behavioural history, diet, consent forms, vaccination, worming and flea treatment dates, and any current medical treatment.

That is not paperwork for its own sake. It is the information you need when something goes wrong at 7pm on a bank holiday.

Ask for:

• owner name, address, phone and email
• local emergency contact who can act if the owner is away
• normal vet and permission to use an alternative vet if needed
• pet insurance details where available
• vaccination record
• flea and worming information
• medication name, dose, timing and storage instructions
• diet, feeding times and appetite notes
• known stress triggers, handling preferences and hiding habits
• consent to separate same-household cats if welfare requires it
• list of baskets, bedding, toys or belongings left on site

Make the intake form part of the service. Owners notice when you ask good questions.

Cattery disputes often start with silence. The owner thought the deposit was refundable. The cattery thought it was not. The owner expects a discount for early collection. The cattery has held a peak-season unit empty. The owner forgot vaccination documents. The cattery refuses admission. Everyone is annoyed.

Clear booking terms reduce that friction. They do not remove judgement, but they give you a fair starting point.

Write terms for:

• how bookings are confirmed
• deposit amount or percentage
• when the balance is due
• what happens if the owner cancels
• what happens if the cattery has to refuse admission
• late collection fees
• early collection and unused nights
• medication administration
• owner-provided food, bedding and belongings
• vaccination evidence
• emergency veterinary treatment authority
• behaviour, stress or illness during the stay
• complaints and refunds

Use plain English. If a term would surprise a reasonable customer, make it prominent before payment.

Peak weeks are where deposit discipline matters most. A unit held for two weeks in August cannot be resold easily if the owner cancels at short notice. But consumer-facing terms still need to be fair, transparent and proportionate.

A practical structure is:

• small booking deposit to reserve the unit
• balance due before arrival or at check-in
• staged cancellation terms based on notice period
• written discretion for illness or genuine emergencies
• no admission without required vaccination evidence
• clear rule for late collection where the unit is needed for cleaning and next arrival

Avoid angry wording. Your terms should sound calm even when they are firm.

The right cattery price is not just a nightly local average. It is a number that covers the work and keeps the service healthy.

Start with unit-night maths. List every unit, its normal occupancy type, any larger same-household unit, and the number of nights available in a month. Then add realistic occupancy rates by season. Then subtract gaps: cleaning resets, maintenance, isolation margin, refused admissions and quieter weekdays.

Next, cost the day:

• your labour
• staff wages if used
• employer costs if you employ people
• utilities and heating
• litter, cleaning chemicals and laundry
• bedding and enrichment replacement
• waste disposal
• insurance
• licence fees and professional advice
• card fees and booking software
• repairs and equipment
• marketing
• accountancy or bookkeeping support
• tax set-aside

Now add service complexity. Medication, extra grooming checks, difficult feeding routines, large same-household units, holiday surcharges, late collections and peak dates may need separate rules.

For a small cattery, a strong default is:

1. Set a base nightly rate for one cat in a standard unit.
2. Set a same-household multi-cat rate only for units designed for it.
3. Add a peak-period rule for scarce dates.
4. Charge separately for clearly extra work where appropriate, such as medication complexity or late collection.
5. Review actual occupancy and costs monthly for the first year.

Do not bury margin inside hope. If the business needs impossible occupancy to pay you properly, the problem is the model.

Daily records are where the business becomes visible. An inspector, insurer, owner or vet may need to see what happened, when it happened and who acted.

GOV.UK guidance says records required as a licence condition must be available for inspection, legible, and kept for at least three years. Electronic records need backing up. The guidance also expects written procedures for feeding, cleaning, transport, disease control, health and welfare monitoring, death or escape, and emergency care.

At a working level, keep daily records for:

• arrival and departure
• feeding and appetite
• water intake concerns
• litter output concerns
• medication given
• cleaning and disinfection
• behaviour and stress signs
• human interaction where suitable
• injury, illness or escape concerns
• vet contact
• owner contact
• temperature or weather issues

Daily observation is especially important because cats often hide illness. A cat that has not eaten, is drinking unusually, is withdrawn, has diarrhoea, is grooming excessively, or is refusing interaction may need action before the issue becomes obvious to a non-cat person.

Your cleaning procedure should be written as if a new staff member has to follow it on their first week. Which product is used? At what dilution? What contact time? Which cloths, mops or tools are used in which area? What happens after an infectious concern? Where is soiled bedding stored? What is disinfected between cats? What is disposed of?

Isolation also needs a real process. GOV.UK guidance expects appropriate isolation in separate self-contained facilities for sick, injured or potentially infectious animals, and it explains that another location, such as a local veterinary practice, may be used if there is evidence it is ready to use.

Your emergency vet process should answer:

• which veterinary practice is normally used
• which out-of-hours route applies
• who can authorise transport
• who contacts the owner
• what consent is already recorded
• how costs are handled
• how medication instructions are recorded afterwards
• how the cat is isolated or returned to its unit

Write this before opening. Emergencies are a bad time to invent a workflow.

Once the licensing, premises and welfare model are clear, the admin layer needs to be consistent. This is where LaunchKit's cattery hub can help, because the cattery products are built around the records and customer paperwork a UK cat-boarding business commonly uses.

The important point is not to use templates as a substitute for reading council guidance. Your local authority licence conditions, veterinary advice, planning position and insurance wording still come first. Templates are useful because they stop you rebuilding the same forms from a blank page while you are also dealing with units, cleaning, bookings and owners.

The cattery Business Documents - Standard pack includes PDF documents with a fillable business-name header, including cat boarding registration, vaccination record, boarding consent agreement, veterinary contact authority, feeding and dietary instructions, medication administration, emergency authorisation, cancellation policy and complaint procedure. That maps neatly to the front-door intake and owner-terms side of the business.

If you want editable Word files as well as PDF, the cattery Business Documents - Premium pack is the better fit because Premium includes PDF plus DOCX. That matters when your council, insurer or vet suggests wording changes and you want the whole set to stay consistent.

LaunchKit also has supporting reading on essential documents for UK catteries, which is useful when you are deciding which forms belong in the booking flow and which belong behind the scenes as operating records.

The useful way to use those documents is to build one paper trail for each stay. A booking enquiry becomes an intake record. The intake record leads to vaccination evidence, diet notes, medication instructions and emergency authority. The daily record then sits behind the stay, and the cancellation policy, complaint procedure and privacy notice sit around the customer relationship. When those pieces use the same names, dates and service language, staff have less to interpret under pressure.

For a new cattery, that consistency is not cosmetic. It helps you spot missing information before a cat is admitted. It helps a relief staff member understand which form to update. It gives an owner confidence that their cat's food, medication and vet details have not been scribbled onto separate scraps of paper. And if your council, insurer or vet asks how the business records boarding decisions, you have one coherent set to review and amend.

Do not treat any template as fixed forever. The first few months will show where your real business differs from the draft version. You may need a sharper medication section, clearer wording for insulin storage, a better same-household consent line, a stronger late-collection term, or a simpler handover sheet for busy Saturdays. The advantage of starting from a cattery-specific set is that the first version already speaks the language of cat boarding rather than a generic service business.

The pricing layer benefits from the same discipline. The cattery Pricing Calculator is an Excel workbook, so it fits the unit-night model discussed earlier: rooms, nightly rates, seasonal demand, service add-ons, costs and monthly review. Use it to test awkward questions before customers ask them. What happens if August reaches 95% occupancy but February sits at 45%? How much does a larger unit need to earn if it blocks two standard bookings? How many late cancellations can you absorb before a deposit rule needs tightening?

The cattery MTD Compliance Kit sits on the bookkeeping side. It is also an Excel workbook, and the practical value is rhythm: log income, categorise expenses, keep quarterly numbers tidy and avoid letting boarding deposits, refunds, owner balances and cleaning purchases blur together. A cattery has lots of small transactions. The earlier you keep those tidy, the less painful Self Assessment and MTD preparation become.

The cattery startup guide is best used as a checklist companion to council guidance. Read the official licensing guidance first, then use the guide to organise decisions into a founder sequence: premises, licence application, insurance, pricing, records, marketing and first bookings. That order matters because a cattery is not made inspection-ready by doing one large task. It launches by connecting many small tasks that have to agree with each other.

There is also a brand-trust angle. Owners are leaving a family animal with you while they travel, move house, attend hospital, work away or deal with a family event. They may feel guilty. They may be anxious. A clean document pack will not make a nervous cat relaxed by itself, but it tells the owner that you run the business with structure. The questions you ask, the terms you explain, the vaccination record you check and the daily note you keep all say: this is a calm place with a system.

Insurance for a cattery should be discussed with a broker or insurer that understands animal boarding. Do not rely on ordinary home insurance or generic business insurance without written confirmation.

Ask about:

• public liability
• care, custody and control of animals
• veterinary fee liability and exclusions
• employer duties if you take on staff
• property, stock, equipment and outbuildings
• business interruption
• key loss if you hold customer keys for any collection service
• professional advice or legal expenses cover
• vehicle cover if transporting cats

Be specific about the premises, maximum cats, whether you employ staff, whether you board only cats, whether there are other animals on site, and whether any collection or delivery is offered. Insurance gaps often appear in the details.

For tax, choose the business structure early. Many small catteries begin as a sole trader business. Some use a partnership or limited company. Each structure changes registration, tax, records, liability, banking and accounting.

GOV.UK's working for yourself guidance is a sensible starting point. If you are self-employed, you usually register for Self Assessment when required and keep proper business records. GOV.UK explains the route for registering as self-employed, and it is worth checking whether VAT registration becomes relevant using the VAT registration guidance.

Keep income and expenses clean from day one. GOV.UK's self-employed expenses guidance explains that allowable business costs can reduce taxable profit, but costs must be business-related and personal use must be separated. For a cattery, common categories may include insurance, cleaning supplies, bedding, litter, utilities, repairs, marketing, professional fees, card fees and training, depending on your circumstances.

The cattery MTD Compliance Kit is an Excel workbook designed for cattery bookkeeping rhythm: income, expenses, quarterly summaries and records you can keep tidy before Self Assessment season. It does not file tax returns for you. It gives you a structured spreadsheet so you are not reconstructing a year of boarding income from bank statements in January. LaunchKit's cattery MTD article is useful background if you are watching Making Tax Digital timing.

The first 90 days should be boring in the right way. You are not trying to look busy. You are trying to build a cattery that a council officer, insurer, vet and cautious owner can understand.

Start with your council. Find the animal licensing team, read its application page and ask what it expects before an inspection. Read the GOV.UK cat boarding guidance line by line. Make a premises checklist against it.

At the same time, check planning risk. If you are building units, converting space or increasing business traffic, ask the planning question early. Speak to your mortgage provider, landlord or freeholder if the premises are not fully under your unrestricted control.

Then make your first financial model. Use unit-nights, not vibes. Estimate build or conversion cost, licence fees, insurance, utilities, cleaning, waste, equipment, marketing and your own drawings. If the model needs full occupancy from month one, rewrite it.

This is the paperwork-and-process month. Draft booking terms, vaccination rules, intake form, emergency vet consent, medication form, cleaning procedure, daily record, incident record, complaint procedure and cancellation policy.

This is also where LaunchKit's cattery startup guide and business document packs can save time. Use them as a structured starting point, then adapt them to the council, insurer, vet and premises you actually have.

Price the service with the cattery Pricing Calculator, which is an Excel workbook for modelling rates, services, booking patterns and costs. The point is not to find a magic price. The point is to see whether a unit-night rate covers the real work after cleaning, utilities, insurance, quiet weeks and peak-season pressure.

Before opening widely, test the flow with a small number of carefully managed bookings once licensing and premises permissions allow. Walk through the arrival process. Check how long vaccination review takes. Time cleaning. Time medication records. Test your owner updates. Review how the booking terms feel when a customer asks a cancellation question.

Use your first bookings to refine:

• arrival appointment length
• unit turnover time
• owner reminder emails
• medication check process
• emergency contact wording
• peak-date deposit rules
• daily observation notes
• end-of-stay feedback

For marketing, keep it local and trust-based. Show the premises accurately, explain vaccination requirements, state that spaces are limited by licensed capacity, and avoid promising outcomes you cannot control. LaunchKit's cattery peak-season bookings guide can help you think about school holidays and Christmas booking rhythm without turning your terms into a hard sell.

If you want to compare adjacent care businesses, the Family & Care hub shows how different high-trust service niches handle paperwork. A childminding business has a different regulator and safeguarding context, but a similar need for parent-facing records. A dog walking business has a different risk profile, but the same problem of owner trust, emergency contacts and clear service terms.

The first mistake is treating the licence as an afterthought. If the council will inspect the premises and records, the guidance needs to shape the business from the start.

The second mistake is overbuilding before planning, licensing and neighbour issues are understood. A beautiful row of units can become an expensive problem if the site use is challenged or the layout does not match current guidance.

The third mistake is accepting every cat. A cattery needs a refusal policy for missing vaccination evidence, illness, parasite concern, serious behavioural risk, late paperwork or any situation where welfare cannot be protected.

The fourth mistake is weak cancellation terms. Peak spaces are perishable. Once a school-holiday unit-night is gone, you cannot sell it next month. Deposits and cancellation rules should be fair, visible and written before payment.

The fifth mistake is pricing from local fear. If you copy the cheapest local rate and then add higher standards, better records, proper staffing and stronger owner communication, you may have built a loss-making service.

Usually, yes, if you are commercially boarding other people's cats at your premises. Commercial cat boarding in England is handled through local council animal activities licensing. Speak to your council before spending money on units or taking bookings.

No. GOV.UK cat boarding guidance distinguishes businesses that look after a cat within the owner's home, such as cat sitters, from cat boarding activities where cats are housed by the business. Pet sitting still needs proper insurance, animal welfare awareness and client terms, but it is a different model from a licensed cattery.

Possibly. Planning depends on the premises, building work, business use, traffic, noise, waste and local policy. Check with the local planning authority before converting buildings, adding units or relying on a home or garden site.

GOV.UK cat boarding guidance says the business owner must see an up-to-date veterinary vaccination record for all cats. It lists core vaccinations including feline panleukopenia, feline parvovirus, also known as feline infectious enteritis, and feline respiratory viruses. Your council and vet can help you apply the current guidance.

The licence will state the maximum number of cats allowed on the premises. GOV.UK guidance says each staff member should have 25 cats or less to care for, but your real staffing need may be lower depending on layout, medication, cleaning, turnover, age and welfare needs.

Expect to keep booking, arrival, departure, owner, emergency contact, vet, vaccination, diet, medication, daily observation, cleaning, consent, incident and complaint records. GOV.UK guidance says records required under licence conditions must be available for inspection and kept for at least three years.

Ask a specialist insurer or broker about public liability, care of animals, vet-fee liability, employer duties if you use staff, buildings or contents, equipment, business interruption and vehicle cover if transporting cats. Ordinary home insurance is unlikely to be enough unless the insurer confirms the business use in writing.

If you are self-employed, you may need to register for Self Assessment and keep business income and expense records. Monitor VAT registration thresholds as the business grows, and consider accounting advice if you are unsure whether sole trader, partnership or limited company structure fits.

Last reviewed: May 2026.

Sources checked while preparing this guide:

• cat boarding statutory guidance for local authorities
• boarding for cats or dogs licence page
• Animal Welfare Act 2006
• National Planning Policy Framework
• working for yourself

LaunchKit guides and templates are designed to help with business admin, planning, pricing, records and customer-facing paperwork. They are not legal, tax, medical, safeguarding, planning or regulatory advice. For regulated work, check the current official guidance and take professional advice where needed.

Written by the LaunchKit team for UK cattery founders and small business owners.