Claire Patel with Chester: ‘It seems so unfair’

A MOTHER has hit out at the Town Hall after she was ordered to take down an enclosure which housed her now-missing pedigree cat.

Claire Patel, 38, of Eburne Road, Holloway, has been desperately searching for Xander, her two-year-old Abyssinian, for more than 15 days. He went missing six weeks after his enclosure was removed.

The mother-of-one built the enclosure to house Xander and her Burmese cat Chester after Xander went missing for four days and was found stuck up a tree in nearby Bennett Court last August. Abyssinians like to climb but should be kept indoors, according to animal welfare websites.

Ms Patel, a former letting agent, paid a carpenter £2,500 to build the “catio” at the back of the second-floor window of her flat.

The £2,500 enclosure built at the flat

She said: “It was literally two metres by two metres, very small. We put in plants to make it look nice. We just wanted a safe spot for our cat. All Xander really wanted to do was chase flies and look at the pigeons.”

But the council wrote to her a month after the structure was completed last October telling her it fell foul of planning rules, which say temporary structures must be less than two-and-a-half metres high when measured from the ground.

“It seems so unfair,” she said. “If you look out here at the back of shops, there’s air con units, there’s a roof with beds and rubbish and old pallets and constantly people climbing onto the back of the roofs.

“I called them [the council] and left messages but no one got back to me. Maybe they can use some discretion, some clemency. Talk to us, and see what we actually put there.”

The Town Hall sent an enforcement notice in May giving her a month to take down the structure.

Missing: Abyssinian Xander, ‘a very, very sweet boy’

She said all the neighbours told her they didn’t have a problem with the “catio”.

Ms Patel, who has had cats since she was a toddler, said Xander was a member of her family. “He’s just a very, very sweet boy. I’ve lain with the cat at night while I breast-fed the baby and he lay with me.”

According to Miss Patel, a neighbour spotted two men attempting to pick up a cat which resembled Xander when he went missing in Axminster Road on July 17. Aware of Ms Patel’s neighbour watching, the men left the road without the cat but Ms Patel worries that they may have come back.

An Islington Council spokesman said: “The enclosure’s size, design and location on the first floor meant it required planning permission, which the owner had not applied for.

“Current guidelines on acceptable development are available on our website. We advised the owner that this enclosure would be unlikely to be granted permission.

“We advised them to remove it within 28 days, which they have now done.”

Anyone with information on Xander’s whereabouts can contact the Tribune newsdesk on 020 7424 3257.