Willowslea Kennels & Cattery Heathrow

Having assured me that they could transport my dog to Australia without any problems despite him having an allergy condition (I told them this from the start) they then changed their minds with no vet consultation or anything. They were then extremely rude, especially their operations manager in the follow up. No explanation, threatening emails, all sorts going on. Ghastly. Feel free to contact me,
for more details. We ended up using Pet Air UK, who were brilliant throughout.

Don’t trust these people with your pets!!! They filled out my dogs US customs forms wrong, meaning we almost weren’t allowed to take him home. It took a lot of pleading with the customs agent for them to release him to us. They also gave us the wrong information on where to collect him, told me they could pick him up from our hotel when they couldn’t, and told me they could do a fit to fly certificate before the flight but it turned out they couldn’t because of our early flight time. It was a good job I called and double checked everything as the original person I spoke to was utterly useless. After this ordeal I emailed them to complain, I got a rude response, then when I asked for compensation I was completely ignored. I can’t believe I paid £950 for this service. They shouldn’t be able to get away with it! Horrible people.

Emigrating from the UK to California my husband and I decided to use Airpets to transport our 2 cats.
We sent numerous emails to and from one of their representatives who was very helpful.
We arranged for our cats to stay in their Willowslea Cattery for a week before we were due to leave the country as to save the cats extra stress of seeing their home packed up. When the guy came to collect them he brought their own carrier as we had paid extra for them to supply a special one for the flight, I saw them safely into the back of the van and handed the guy 2 blankets (one each) for my cats while they were away. We had arranged with this them beforehand and the company were happy for us to supply any little extra’s for our cats.
Come the day we arrived in California to our new life we were told that our cats flight will come in before ours and would be ready for us to collect straight away but going through customs we found this wasn’t true and there was a dalay so we had to go back 3 hours later.
We went back eager to collect our cats and get them settled in their new home. The lady at customs directed us to a warehouse where we were told we could pick them up — Yay!
Now, what happened next wasn’t down to Airpets. A guy was sat outside the warehouse and asked ”you here to collect the cats” we announced that yes, we were and the man disappeared inside. Now we thought this meant he had gone to get them for us as he closed the door behind him but 15 minutes later we were still outside waiting so my husband stuck his head around the door then went inside. He found the guy sat at a table reading the newspaper and could see our cats in the corner!
My husband emerged a couple of minutes later with 2 huge wooden crates and my poor shaking kitties. Clearly shook up my the ordeal of being on an airplane we loaded them into the car and quickly got them to their new home.
Upon getting home and opening the crates my 2 cats still shaking somewhat but so glad to see us.
The crates they were in were really heavy and of good size with a water feeder attached (which was now empty). At the bottom of the crate was about 6 small pieces of shredded newspaper and the blanket I had supplied. If it wasn’t for the blanket my poor cats would have just been sat on the hard wood bottom.
The bottom of the crate was also soaking wet! Yup — cat pee! No wonder my cats were so shaken having to go through a 10 – 11 hour flight sitting in their own Urine. Maybe I’m expecting a bit much here as cleaning it might have been quite difficult but still — human passengers on a flight are not expected to not use the toilet.
I also noticed that Twinkle (my little girl cat) had a fairly large chunk of flesh missing from her nose!!! It looked quite recent, maybe 2 days old. This isn’t something she could (or would) do to herself. or even her brother for that matter so I simply cannot understand how she could get injured in such a way. We were not informed of any accident either which I would expect as it was very clearly noticeable. So much for their ”5* cattery and kennels”.
I did email Airpets once we got internet set up but never got a reply.
Giving this company a 2 star ”I’ve experienced better” rating although not having had pets sent abroad I haven’t experienced anything even similar before but you get the drift.
Overall, I would not recommend. I trusted this company with 2 of the things that mean most to me (apart from my husband of course!) and the service we got wasn’t something we would expect. Our pets are like family and they should be treated as such.