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2023 Calendars are here!

Our gorgeous 2023 CPW calendars – filled with kitty goodness – are now available to buy! What better way to support your favourite cat charity? Our cover cat this year is Aroha, the epitome of feline resilience and grace. Every day she was in our shelter, she was happy to be there, and full of love for all our volunteers and staff. Every month showcases one of our fabulous alumni – including crowd-pleasing favourite such as Loki, Tibbs, Caspa and Matilda. As always, this calendar will...

Mr Magoo melts healts

Mr Magoo enjoys a cuddle with CPW team lead Delwyn....

Countdown to new building

We’re almost there with CPW’s new shelter building!  CPW, Cranko Architects, and DRD Builders Ltd are onto the last things to do, such as installing a downpipe and heat pump controls, and replacing a door in the laundry. The contents of our storage unit have been delivered and we now have brand new climbing towers in each of the new cat rooms, storage, and bookcases for our records. Heat pumps and cat doors are installed, as is the fire protection system in both buildings, which include...

CPW's oldest foster cat reaches 23

Gypsy had a close bond with Geena, who fostered and loved her for three years....

High demand for desexing help

Oreo was a stray who needed to be desexed before he came in to us. All cats in the CPW shelter are desexed....

Bostik's sticky situation

He was noticed in the machinery room of a local factory, which houses a moving conveyor belt.Unlike other feral cats which occasionally find their way into the building complex, this little tabby was clearly friendly and could potentially be rehomed.One of the factory managers called pest removal company Pestproof Wellington to see if they could rescue the cat. Pestproof rescued CPW cat Mystery in 2020. Production stopped while the cat was trapped, and he was extracted without any injuries. He w...

Nikau Foundation donates $5k to CPW

Tama is one of our cats who benefits from Nikau Foundation's donation. He has ongoing medical needs due to a number of conditions, and is cared for at the shelter....

Mystery's miracle rescue

A pest removal expert seems an unlikely ally to a cat rescue charity, but his rescue of Mystery from destruction was one of the high points of our year. Mystery’s story begins before the 2020 Covid lockdown, when she was still the much-loved companion of an elderly woman. Like many timid cats, she bonded with the one person closest to her and avoided interaction with most other people.  When her person sadly passed away at the beginning of lockdown, Mystery was initially left alone in the...

Keep your cats sun-safe this summer

Keep all your family sun-smart this summer – including your cats! While we’re slapping on our own sunscreen and hats, we also need to protect our pets from the harsh New Zealand sunlight. Cats are just as susceptible to skin cancers as we are, especially those with pale or white colouring. Many people don’t realise that a layer of fur is not always protection against harmful UV rays. At CPW, we often see cats come through who have lost ears due to cancers, and noses are also vulnerable to...

Farewell to Tasman Street Vets

One of CPW’s longest supporting vet partners has sadly closed its doors after a 50 year history.The Tasman Street Vet Centre has participated in our desexing programme for many years, and provided care for many of our foster cats in that time.Practice manager Laura Kaan says there were two main reasons for the decision to close.“We were impacted by Covid, and the building’s no longer meeting our needs.”Originally privately owned and independent, the clinic was sold to National Vet Care, ...

CPW T-shirts now online

CPW’s online shop now offers more items to buy, alongside our calendars and Christmas cards. Marketing subcommittee volunteers have been hard at work creating new products for our supporters to enjoy while raising funds for CPW. The CPW-branded “Dreaming Cat” T-shirts, created by designer and volunteer Helen Wang, are available in several sizes in our shop. Modelled above by Max Koh, these have already proved popular, disappearing like hotcakes at the Pride indoor market earlier ...

Shoutout to our volunteers

It's National Volunteer Week, which means it’s time to tell the world how awesome the CPW volunteers are! The one thing all our volunteers have in common is their love for our cats, which is obvious just if you look around the shelter any day of the week. The volunteers genuinely adore the cats, and this has a huge effect on the cats' general happiness and wellbeing. Whether people are helping to clean the shelter every day, part of the homing team, serving on CPW’s governance committee, rai...

Volumes of support for CPW

Tucked away in Left Bank, just off Cuba Mall, is one of Wellington’s best-loved bookshops. Pegasus Books is well-known for its charming maze of rooms, floor to ceiling shelving, cosy reading nooks, quirky art and décor, and climbing ladders.Owner John Hoskins is a long-time supporter of CPW, and he keeps two collection boxes and CPW information in his shop near the counter. The steady donations show that many of his customers are also generous supporters.John first opened Pegasus Books i...

Powering into paintjob

Two volunteer teams from Wellington Electricity, Northpower and Treescape spent an afternoon each at the shelter recently, as part of their annual community volunteer days.Between them they prepped the woodwork, wielded the sanders and got a couple of coats of paint on the catwalks out on the Timids Deck. It now looks brighter and whiter (and cobweb free for at least a little while).Thanks so much for your help, Braden, Rebecca, Bill and Joe (Wellington Electricity), Rachel and Zoe (Northpower),...

New desexing programme prices

Our desexing subsidy programme, which has seen hundreds of cats desexed since it was established in 2014, has raised its prices slightly to meet increasing costs. CPW provides subsidies for people who hold community services or student ID cards, to make it easier for them to desex their cats. This helps limit the number of unwanted cats in the Wellington region. The cost of desexing each cat is split between CPW, the participating vet, and the owner. The cost to the owner was pre...

New CPW building starts to go up

A new two-storey addition to the CPW shelter is well under way, with the subfloor almost completed.  The building, which was approved by CPW members in 2019, will provide additional facilities for care of our cats. It will have an additional isolation unit, room to introduce cats to potential adopters, additional storage space, and facilities for staff and volunteers. After making sure the shelter would still have power and phone connections once construction began, the ...

Beau's safe new home

Anyone visiting the CPW shelter over summer had to have seen gentle giant Beau. The huge, handsome tabby is a slow-moving, relaxed fella, who could usually be found peacefully lounging in the middle of the floor, or on the deck.  At nearly 8kg, the 6 year old is one of the biggest cats to come to CPW in recent years.With his liquid green eyes and gentle nature, Beau had many admirers, but he needed a particularly safe and caring home due to his epilepsy. His previous owner was elderly and c...

CPW now on YouTube

It's true - we now have our own channel, where you can see all our Furever Friday cat videos. Click on the link above to watch a classic featuring Maurice, Puff and others, or click here to see the whole selection: https://www.youtube.com/channe.... Share our stories with your friends. You never know, your next cat might already be a screen star!...

Leo: From foster to adoption

Ten year old Mr Tigger was brought to CPW when the owner couldn’t take him into rental accommodation. It’s a traumatic decision for owners and cats both, and sadly we see it often at our shelter.Mr Tigger showed resilience in the shelter, making the best of the situation and settling in patiently. But sadly, it was clear he wouldn’t have a straight-forward adoption.He had ongoing digestive issues and was on vet-prescribed food. He would also need regular vet checkups, so he was accept...

Wellington supports CPW street appeal

Wellington people once again proved to be generous on CPW’s annual street appeal day, with thousands of dollars donated to care for our cats. In a post-Covid environment, we thought street collectors would be less successful than in other years because of physical distancing.However, the local community were as willing as ever to approach volunteers, push cash into buckets, and chat about their own cats.More than $5,500 was collected on the streets on Friday 16 Oc...

Abbie’s absolute heaven

Tortoiseshell lady Abbie was 14 years old when Wellington’s rental crisis left her without a home of her own.Her owner sadly couldn’t find a place to live where she could keep Abbie, and she came to CPW in March 2018. She was a little shy, but friendly and keen for affection.What she didn’t know was that she was exactly what Carolyn, a former volunteer with CPW, was looking for.Carolyn had volunteered while she was working part-time, and she enjoyed spending time with the cats since she wa...

Peppi’s homing miracle

In the first wave of post-Covid demand for our shelter cats, we were thrilled that independent Peppi found her perfect home and family.Peppi is a feisty, intelligent girl who lost her home when her former person went into care. She was taken to the vet to be put down, but the vet brought her to us instead.She waited patiently in our shelter for more than a year for the right folks to come along. And then the perfect couple met her, fell in love, and she adored them right away.We couldn’t have ...