Hilltop Kennels and Cattery

Welcome to Hilltop!

Here at Hilltop Boarding Kennels and Cat Hotel, we are proud to deliver an unrivalled experience for your pet, whether it’s to treat your four-legged family member to dog daycare/Kitty-Creche or a longer holiday. Hilltop Boarding Kennels and Cat Hotel has been providing quality pet boarding services for over 25 years.

We are a fully licensed, family owned and operated boarding kennels and cattery conveniently situated in a quiet rural Essex location, 10 minutes from the thriving town of Colchester and within 10 minutes of the coast at Brightlingsea and Clacton.

Our modern, purpose-built facilities are renovated to the highest standard, comprising spacious, heated accommodation located on secure, private grounds of over 7 acres.

Hilltop’s reputation as Essex’s leading provider of premier animal boarding services is thanks to the high standards of our experienced and dedicated team. Everything we do is underpinned by our principles of trust, transparency and fairness with the welfare of the animals entrusted to our care at the heart of our operation.

Although we provide boarding kennels, cattery, rabbit, guinea pig and small animal boarding and grooming services to Colchester, Wivenhoe, Brightlingsea, Clacton and surrounding Essex areas, we also have customers who travel from much further afield as they prefer the high standard of care we provide.

We recognise that choosing the right kennels or cattery for your pet’s stay is an important decision so we actively encourage you to come down for a no obligation visit to help you decide. No appointment is necessary, however we do ask that you avoid our busy times and visit between 11:00-13:00 and 14:00-16:00, Monday to Saturday (excluding Bank Holidays).

Hilltop Kennels 

Our spacious, individually heated kennels each have an attached private exercise run and are large enough to accommodate up to four dogs from the same family.

In addition to daily supervised one-to-one walks in our secure 7 acre grounds, each dog will have the opportunity to try one of our three purpose-built outdoor play areas which provide a variety of different surfaces (including the extremely popular tree stump and digging area!) and other enrichment activities.

Provided as standard, all dogs receive a quality daily food menu with both complete biscuit and tinned foods. If your dog prefers a specific brand of food, we offer most popular ranges. If you prefer, you may bring your pet’s own food. We have dedicated freezers and fridges to store fresh food such as raw feed and vegetable supplements or temperature sensitive medication such as insulin for diabetic animals.

At regular periods during the day, each kennel is provided with a Kong chewtoy to provide each pet additional stimulation and something to distract them from the scenic views of the grassy lawns outside their exercise run.

All required medications are accurately adhered to and administered free of charge (including insulin injections).

If there is any aspect of our services you wish to discuss, please do get in touch with us and we will be very happy to help.

The Small Print

We aim to offer a flexible service so please call to discuss anything not covered already. However there are certain rules we must enforce to ensure the safety and security of all the animals entrusted to our care.

Under absolutely no circumstances will we accept any animal without proof of their up to date vaccinations. In the absence of your pet’s vaccination card, we will contact your vet for their confirmation over the phone.

Vaccinations required:

• Canine parvovirus

• Canine distemper

• Leptospirosis

• Canine hepatitis

With the exception of annual boosters, no newly vaccinated animal can be boarded until 2 weeks after vaccination

For more information, please refer to the guidance on the RSPCA website.