About PlumPets

We have been saving strays since 2006

Paulette Bousfield and Duncan Stevens (veterinarian) established PlumPets Animal Shelter, a no-kill shelter in Plumstead, Cape Town in 2006. They have dedicated their lives to rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming strays in the area. The animals are housed in a residential home behind the hospital and in kennel rooms and cages in the hospital itself. They started the shelter in response to a need among the clients at Plumstead Animal Hospital. Clients were rescuing and bringing in stray animals, desperate for both medical assistance and help with homing them. It grew from that need and word got out, and soon locals were bringing in more strays (puppies, dogs, kittens and cats). 

Paulette and Duncan are close to 60 and realised that they could not continue rescuing dogs that could potentially end up at the shelter long-term. But once in rescue, always in rescue, so Paulette decided to re-envision how they do rescue. She looked at the local rescue organisations and realised that there were a number that did not have a physical shelter or medical care, but relied on their network of fosters and finding forever homes. 

Paulette decided that although they were no longer taking in new dogs, they could help other organisations with medically fragile cases. If the puppy or dog was too sick or injured to be homed, we would take them in and help with temporary medical care until the dog was well enough for homing, leaving that part of the process to the other rescue organisation. Under these new criteria, the numbers have crept up slightly, and we are currently helping and housing 19 dogs between the hospital and shelter.

On the cat side of the shelter, we found the dire need was for adult cats and cats with some medical or emotional/behaviour issues. The kittens were easy to home, but finding homes for adult cats is much more difficult. Many of the other rescue organisations would take in mommy cats with kittens but the adult cats were turned away. So, Paulette decided to focus her energy on this need and not just rehoming but also rehabilitating adult cats that had had a difficult start, had medical challenges or had been in tough home situations. This side of the shelter does not rely on expenses like dog walkers, and requires limited contact with other people. Our home checks have also gone virtual now.

The real work is in the daily housekeeping around the cats with feeding, giving medication (which can be a struggle), laundry and infection control (especially for the sick cats), litter trays (up to 60 a day), etc. The challenge is also finding them homes as it is hard to get the cats seen and photographing cats can be a real challenge. The shelter is stretched to its capacity with the cats and we currently have just over 100 adult cats.