About Maggie

Maggie Roberts has been passionate about animals for as long as she can remember. ‘I was one of those little girls who wanted to be a vet from the moment I knew what one was. I also knew I wanted to work for a charity and was a junior member of the RSPCA.’

Originally from Cheshire, Maggie graduated from the University of Edinburgh’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in 1986 and spent the first half of her career in private companion animal practice, where she developed an interest in feline medicine. In Portsmouth she was introduced to feral cats, helping to neuter the population in the historic dockyard and worked with a myriad of animal charities.

She was appointed the first Cats Protection Veterinary Officer in 1997 where she started vaccination programmes, created cat welfare policies, ran training sessions, set up a system for utilising charity-discounted pharmaceutical products nationally and worked with private vets to raise the standards of care within the charity’s branches and adoption centres.

After two years she returned to private practice as a partner at the Harbour Veterinary Group to manage the Southsea practice, balancing clinical work with running the business. However, she missed shelter medicine and came back to Cats Protection as Head of Veterinary Services in 2006.

Maggie was made Director of Veterinary Services and then Director of Feline Welfare as her portfolio of teams expanded and she had responsibility for the strategic development of charity’s work on cat welfare and veterinary services, neutering, research, advocacy and education. Under her leadership neutering schemes were expanded and human behaviour change was introduced to help unowned cats in deprived areas, mandatory cat care and accommodation standards were introduced and supported by a team of Field Vets, a feline behaviour team was created and the education and advocacy teams developed to reach many more people.

She also represented Cats Protection on external groups including The Cat Group and the Canine and Feline Sector Group and has played a role in influencing governments and committees such as EFRA. Maggie was a member of the DEFRA Small Animal Expert Group, monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks in small animals. She was on the teams that developed guidance for cat care under the Animal Welfare Acts across the devolved nations of the UK and for commercial catteries and pet shops. She is proud that the work she led on compulsory microchipping of cats has come to fruition in June 2024 after many years of hard work.

She has worked widely with the media being interviewed by local and national press, on television and radio on a plethora of animal welfare topics and taken part in several documentaries on cats. She is a regular speaker at veterinary and animal welfare conferences in the UK and abroad. She has worked and volunteered overseas. As a new graduate she joined a voluntary expedition to Malawi to research methods of goat husbandry and travelled round Australia as a veterinary locum. She particularly enjoyed the opportunity to work with native wildlife charities. More recently Maggie has visited and supported shelters and charities in Spain, Austria, Netherlands and Sri Lanka amongst others and neutered feral cats in Portugal. She has advised many international charities on shelter design and management.

Maggie has been a trustee of the Feline Advisory Bureau (now International Cat Care) and Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare. She has recently been appointed the independent chair of the Microchipping Trade Association.

Her professional interests are shelter medicine and feline population control. She is a founder member of the Shelter and Charity Veterinary Association and the co-editor of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) Manual of Canine and Feline Shelter Medicine, the first shelter medicine textbook produced in Europe. She was the proud recipient of the BSAVA J A Wight (aka James Herriot) Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to the welfare of companion animals in 2013. Maggie has set up Advovet with Dominic to use their extensive experience and professional knowledge to improve standards in companion animal charities and other related organisations.

Outside of work Maggie enjoys cinema, music and theatre and sings in two choirs. She is passionate about wildlife, both in the UK and abroad and combines this with a love of travel to observe free-living animals in their natural habitats, whenever possible. She has recently undertaken a stand-up comedy course and her dream is to perform a show at the Edinburgh Fringe about life as a charity vet.

She lives in West Sussex with a rescued black cat called Ross Pawdark, who is master of the house.