Veterinary nurse

This requires qualifications but can be an extremely rewarding job. It takes approximately four years of study to become a veterinary nurse, and you will also need to build up hands-on work experience within a veterinary practice. Your role as a vet nurse will be assisting the veterinarian in his role which may include pre and post-operative care, assisting the veterinarian in surgery and consultations, treating minor wounds, applying dressings, caring for the animals staying in the practice, giving medications and general veterinary practice duties.

• Pros: Working with animals.
• Cons: The pay is low, and it can be challenging — exposure to trauma, neglect and animal abuse.

Veterinarian

This is the next step up; a veterinarian is a qualified doctor. It takes approximately eight years to become a qualified veterinarian, depending on the country. High school grades are essential to be accepted into a university as places are extremely limited.

Working as a vet can be a challenge, your role is varied and will include consolations with pet owners and their pets to assess and diagnose medical conditions, offering general pet care advice such as nutrition, care, behaviour, surgery, diagnostic testing, spay and neuter, vaccinations, ongoing treatment of medical conditions, and much more.

You may choose to go into general practice and work with a range of animals or specialise in one area.

• Pros: Working with animals and saving lives.
• Cons: It is a difficult field to get into and costs a lot to earn a degree, the pay is not great, and it can be extremely challenging — exposure to trauma, neglect and animal abuse.

Pet sitter

This is a relatively easy one with low set-up costs. You would need to check with your local council about specific rules and regulations. Do you need a first-aid certificate of some sort, what about insurance? A little medical knowledge would go a long way, such as being able to identify if a cat is sick while in your care. Are you able to administer medications such as tablets, injections? What about handling a difficult cat? Do you have a car? Reliability is an absolute must when people are relying on you to care for their pets while they are away. But, this can be a marvellous job that you can do from home.

Word of mouth is especially important for pet sitting work. Build up a good reputation and people will gladly refer you to their friends and acquaintances.

• Pros: Easy to set up.
• Cons: None that I can think of.

Boarding cattery

Set up costs are more expensive than that of a pet sitter. You will have to obtain council permission to erect an adequate shelter for pets in your care. Pros are that you can work from home, so no travelling involved. Cons include difficulty getting time off.

As with pet sitting work, basic medical knowledge is advantageous as you have to medicate a cat in your care. Check with your local council about rules and regulations in setting up and running a boarding cattery.

• Pros: Work from home, spend time with cats.
• Cons: Can be expensive to set up. Possible council regulations.

Pet photographer

Do you have an interest in photography? What about becoming a cat photographer? You should obtain the relevant qualifications to call yourself a professional photographer. Set up costs can be expensive as camera equipment isn’t cheap. You may wish to have your studio at home or take photos on location such as at cat shows or in the cat’s own home.

• Pros: Turning a passion for photography into a career and working with animals.
• Cons: Expensive to set up.

Pet groomer

Nationally accredited courses are available for people wishing to become a pet groomer. Most countries don’t require formal qualifications to work as a pet groomer, but they certainly help. You have the choice to either find work with an established groomer or set up shop yourself; however, this will come with expenses.

Obtaining qualifications is highly recommended and gaining the experience necessary. You can offer your services for free to animal shelters such as the RSPCA or see if any pet grooming salons are willing to give you work experience.

• Pros:  you can set up shop and work for yourself, but it’s not all grooming pampered felines. Your job will involve handling sometimes difficult cats who resent being bathed, clipping some cats whose fur is too long or matted, animals who have parasites, impacted anal glands. But on the plus side, you get to hang out with cats all day. What’s better than that?
• Cons: Sometimes working with stressed animals.

Cat blogger

Blogging is much harder than in the early days of the Internet with more competition and ever-changing algorithms; the goalposts constantly shift. Add to the fact that brands dominate; it is not an easy way to make money.

With hard work, expertise and dedication, it is possible to find your own niche among the many cat blogs. You will need a good command of English, extensive knowledge of cats, excellent research skills. Setting up a blog can be cheap with free sites such as blogger and Wix, or if you would prefer your own site, you will need to purchase a domain name (I recommend .com) and install a content management system (CMS). WordPress is one, if not the most popular CMS out there and is very easy to use.

• Pros: If you are successful, you can work from home and get to talk about cats all the time.
• Cons: It is very hard to get traffic on an ever-expanding Internet.

Shelter worker

In most cases, shelter workers are not paid; they rely on volunteers to keep shelters running; however, some of the larger shelters do employ full and part-time staff. The role is varied and may include receiving animals brought to the shelter, temperament testing them,  general care such as cleaning out cages, grooming, giving basic medicines etc.

• Pros: It can rewarding and satisfying job knowing that you are helping less fortunate animals find the perfect home.
• Cons: It can be a sad job at times, seeing how disposable animals are and knowing perfectly healthy animals are routinely euthanised due to chronic over-population.