The Pet Shop: from sending mice by train to a ‘missing’ snake - life in retail for Kirkcaldy family

The Pet Shop on the Lang Toun’s High Street opened its doors 67 years ago but rising costs and lower footfall means that it will not reopen in the new year.

The shop has been in Ken Galloway’s family since it first opened in 1956, but they has been involved in the animal business for much longer. His grandfather bred mice – “he was a mouse fancier and he showed them around pet shows, a bit like Oor Wullie,” he explained.

Ken’s father, David – a renowned figure within the town centre retail world – continued to breed mice during his father’s service in the Second World War but expanded the project into selling them, at first to fellow schoolmates before moving on to offering his trade to pet shops in Edinburgh and then to the rest of the country.

Ken explained: “In those days you could take a box of mice down to Kirkcaldy station and send them by parcel. The box would go into the guard’s van and off they would go to Newcastle, and be collected by the pet shop where postal orders would be exchanged!”

When David married Ken’s mother, Helen, he began selling mice from his back door, before opening the first shop on the High Street in 1956. It would soon become a family affair.

Ken explained: “My mother was a nurse and she said that so long as she didn’t have anything to do with it, it was fine by her – but, very quickly, she got involved in the shop as well.”

It quickly went from strength to strength and linked up with other Kirkcaldy businesses for cross-promotion, including the ABC Cinema. The pet shop would create elaborate window displays promoting the films showing in the nearby movie house. However, one promotion was designed to really get the people of Kirkcaldy talking, with the reported escape of one of the pet shop’s animals leading to headlines in the Fife Free Press.

Ken explained: “When you walked in the front door up the two staircases the cinema had a little display area in the centre. When Tarzan was screening, my dad filled it with animals. Between him and Douglas Adams, the manager of the ABC, they came up with a little story for publicity that a snake had disappeared.it hadn’t really! They had a picture of one of the ticket girls saying that she had found the snake – they did those types of things in those days for publicity.”

After Fife Council relocated parking metres outside the shop, The Pet Shop eventually moved to the William Burn designed premises at 226 High Street in 1996, where it has remained ever since. However, with their current premises now having an on-site car park, it is now set to be charged £250 per month in business rates; another major cost which impacts on its budgets.

Ken said: “In today’s climate with the cost of living crisis, the reduced footfall on the High Street, so many shops are closing. There are fewer and fewer to pull people down to the High Street. While there’s a cost of living crisis, to reduce the rateable value limit down to £12,000 was just the final tipping point. That money just doesn’t exist. I don’t like putting my prices up.”

Ken’s retirement at the end of the year will mark the end of job that has been all encompassing in his life. He explained: “On a Sunday, we used to go to stock car racing quite often, we would all get in the car and drive to the shop and all have to feed the animals and make sure they were all okay, before we piled back into the car and go to the races. It was, and is, 365 days a year running a pet shop – from a very young age we were involved, I would get to feed the tortoises.”

Ken said that he’s had many messages and memories from customers recalling buying their first pets from the shop in days gone by – some recalling buying their first puppy back in the 1970s, many recounting return visits with their own children and grandchildren.

However, he is now looking forward life with a different outlook, and possibly a back garden for the first time since moving in above the shop in 1996. He said: “I’m looking for something ground floor, with a garden that’s big enough for a few fruit trees and I’ll be happy!”