Manchester Cat Clinic: new veterinary surgery which is only for cats set to open in the city

A new veterinary practice in Manchester which will be dedicated solely to looking after poorly cats is preparing to open. Manchester Cat Clinic will welcome its first four-legged patients at the beginning of May and will be located in an old veterinary surgery in Withington.

The new practice is the brainchild of couple Ellie and Dan Lee, who decided a place where they would not encounter other kinds of animals was best when it came to nursing cats back to health or getting them in for a check-up.

Having decided on opening a cat-only clinic, Ellie said she had experience working at a couple of similar venues elsewhere in the country and it was clear to her that the felines were happier visiting there than a standard veterinary practice.

She and Dan are now excited to bring the concept of a cat-only clinic to Manchester and hope that pet owners in the city will give it a go should they need the services of a vet.

What is Manchester Cat Clinic and when is it opening?

Manchester Cat Clinic will open in Withington in the Wilmslow Road premises next to The Christie hospital which was formerly used by Boundary Vets before it closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The surgery will open its doors and welcome its first patients on Tuesday 9 May and Ellie and Dan hope the cat-only surroundings will help the four-legged customers feel more at ease and make going to the vet, always a stressful experience for any cat owner, less painful.

Ellie and Dan are renovating the surgery so they can provide medical, surgical and dental care for felines. When it opens the cat clinic will have facilities including x-ray machines, ultrasound, endoscopy and dental equipment, an in-house laboratory, a purpose-built cat ward and a surgical theatre.

The couple are both veterinary surgeons who moved back to the north of England in 2020 after going to university in Bristol and then moving around the country for a while after graduating.

Once they had the idea for Manchester Cat Clinic (having realised there was no cat-only vets practice in the city) Ellie spent time working at Oxford Cat Clinic and Simply Cats in Durham to get ideas for the new business.

Ellie and Dan are also drawing on their experiences of being cat owners themselves, as they currently share their home with black and white moggy Ferris and tabby and white Marty.

What have Ellie and Dan said about opening Manchester Cat Clinic?

Ellie said: “Most people don’t know this but there are cat-only vets all over the world, there just hasn’t been one in Manchester. It felt like there was a gap in the market and someone else would get the idea if we didn’t do it ourselves.

“I just think cats are a lot happier when they are in a calmer and less stressful environment where they don’t have the sight and smell of dogs and other animals.

“When they are more relaxed it’s a lot easier to examine them or take bloods, and it’s just a much nicer experience for them and their owners.

“For the last 12 months we’ve been working so hard to bring this all together and we can’t wait to get started. We’ve had an amazing team of local veterinary nurses and support staff lined up for a while and we’re really excited to finally have them working with us very soon.”

Manchester Cat Clinic opening means the building, which has been somewhere for owners to bring their sick animals for treament since the 1940s, is back hosting an independent business again rather than a large corporate chain.

Dan said: “We’ve had a lot of support from local businesses and other vet practice owners across the UK. It’s really encouraging to be part of a community of small businesses who all want each other to succeed.”