Ashford Garden Cattery goes viral on TikTok for bizarre Valentine's Day offer
05:00, 14 February 2023
updated: 14:26, 14 February 2023
A cat rescue centre has come up with a bizarre Valentine's Day marketing campaign offering the chance to get back at unfavourable ex-partners.
The RSPCA's Ashford Garden Cattery in Station Road has gone viral on TikTok after inviting vengeful people to have their ex's name written on the bottom of a cat's litter tray.
The video, which has racked up more than 400k views and more than 50k likes, was the brainwave of animal care assistant Rachel Sinden.
Rachel told KentOnline: "The main inspiration for it was a zoo somewhere that was naming cockroaches after exes and feeding them to bearded dragons and reptiles.
"That did really well for them, so we decided to do our own sort of naughty revenge thing this Valentine’s Day.
"We had lots of cat poo going round so we thought we would pop the names on the bottom of the litter trays to get back on bad exes."
In the video, set to the soundtrack of Blank Space by Taylor Swift, a series of cats can be seen walking in and out of litter trays adorned with names, with a caption reading: "Get revenge on your toxic ex."
Donors can give £5 to see an old flame's name written under litter, and will receive a photo back of the cats' subsequent work.
More than £300 has been raised since the video was posted at the weekend.
The 21-year-old explained: "I wasn’t expecting such a huge response from it, I went to bed after I posted it and when I woke up in the morning I had so many notifications on my phone and so many emails with names to write.
"We’ve never had something like that happen to our little branch so it’s really amazing.
"I’m expecting Valentine’s Day will be when most of the donations come in."
Ashford Garden Cattery has received donations from as far as France, Finland, Romania and even Canada.
The success of the fundraiser couldn't have come at a better time for the rescue, as the cost of living crisis has forced it to "pay out more money than before, and people aren’t able to donate as much money as they used to".
"The cost of everything has gone up even for us in the cattery; neutering the cats, vet treatment and even just heating," Rachel said.
"There's more cats coming in as well.
"We’ve had lots of people unable to afford vets bills - we had one diabetic cat come in whose owners couldn’t afford the insulin for them.
"It's adding up more and more for us.
"A lot of the money from this fundraiser will go into helping kitties like that get better so they can go to lovely homes."
Rachel, who started at the sanctuary in November 2021, has been running the TikTok page for just over a year and hopes the following will continue to grow.
"We’re trying to work on getting a following and showing what we do at the cattery so we can do more fundraisers like this," she added.
In her job as an animal care assistant, she does "a bit of everything" alongside four other assistants, a manager and lots of volunteers at the centre.
"We have a dedicated, amazing team of volunteers who come in for fundraising, socialising cats and cleaning them," she said.
"They’ve been cackling every morning looking at the names."
The cattery recently hit a milestone in adopting their 5,000th cat - six-year-old Timmy - who has already found his forever home.
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