Honey

Honey is a lovely, friendly girl, one of the eight cats we took in after their owners were evicted. Ideally she would like to be adopted together with one of her friends as she is very sociable.

If you might be interested in adopting Honey, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Today's dog - Ben

Ben is playful and energetic in spite of being thirteen years old and a little chubby. We think he's not a pure-bred golden retriever, although that's obviously a major part of his ancestry. He's very healthy considering his age, but has had some problems with irritation of his ears and may need regular ear-drops to keep this under control.

If you might be interested in adopting Ben, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Update on Emily

Emily's now had her stitches out and looks more normal except for a bald patch. She was originally found in Burwell.

Latest stray

This little cat was brought in from the Cambridge area with quite severe mastitis, which presumably means she had kittens but they died.

Today's dog - Maddison

Maddison is a lovely, friendly longhaired German Shepherd who came into our care as the result of a cruelty case (she wasn't severely neglected, but a second dog was).

She's about four years old and needs an experienced owner willing to make sure she gets the training, mental stimulation and exercise she needs.

If you think she might be the dog for you, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

61 Burleigh Street

This is the unit we're hoping to lease to set up a new charity shop in Burleigh street. We're in the early stages of negotiation with the landlords, so nothing is definite yet, but it would be very nice if we could be open for the run-up to Christmas.

The rent would be an eye-watering step-up from the old shop at 184 Mill Road, but we would have more than twice the current sales area and be in a location with more people walking by and hopefully making purchases.

Spent an hour yesterday counting passers-by and recorded 486 - or roughly eight per minute. I'll do another count at the weekend to get an idea of the difference between weekdays and Saturdays.

We're not planning to move the bookshop at 188 Mill Road as that is doing well and still increasing sales. 

We need volunteer helpers at all three shops. If you might be interested, please email camshop@rspcabookshop.co.uk (for the two Cambridge shops) or newmarket@rspcabookshop.co.uk (for the shop in Newmarket)

Pedigree dogs?

Controversy this evening on the BBC with a documentary on the health problems of pedigree dogs. I can certainly go along with the comment about the problems some Westie's have with allergies and how awful it can be to have an otherwise perfect dog but be considering euthanasia because he's in permanent misery with itching skin that won't heal whatever the vets try.

Ironically, the despised Staffie must come out pretty well in the health stakes. I don't think I've ever seen one with health problems which had an underlying genetic basis. They're a normal "doggy shape" with no exaggerations and they're probably reasonably out-bred because most of them seem to be the result of ordinary pet owners deciding to let their dog have a litter. Most of the ones we see at our clinic have infections, accidents and so on, but are basically normal dogs.

The dog in the picture is poor old Ghost, still looking for a home. If you would like to visit him to see if he would suit you, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

National Dog Adoption Month

August is National Dog Adoption Month, so this week I'm going to feature the dogs we have waiting for new homes. This is Wee Man, a funny-looking chap with rather short legs, who is rather shy, but good with cats and other dogs. He would like a quiet home, but would be happy to fit in with other pets.

If you would like to visit him in our kennels, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Depressed-looking fence

This was once a fence and gate to the area behind our animal clinic, but there's not a lot left of it.

Irritatingly, the smaller building just off the picture to the left, is a bicycle shed, which we had to have constructed as a condition of getting planning permission to build the clinic. When the fencing was intact we didn't use it because it was a major operation to unlock the padlocks and open the gate. Now, we don't use it because no-one fancies sharing a bike shed with various undesirable objects left there by other people. 

As you can see, the windows are heftily reinforced. The state of the fence has fairly well proved to us that there's no point simply repairing it and we're probably going to have to replace it with metal palings and a metal gate. Ultimately, this is where we'd like to build a sluice room for improved disinfection and cleaning, filling in the gap and making another gate into the bike shed so that it might actually become useable.

Wilkinsons store in Ely

Wilkinsons have very kindly offered RSPCA branches the chance to collect outside their stores over the weekend 27/28 September. As the stores are on public thoroughfares we would also need to get permission from the local authority, so if we are to do a collection in the Cambridge branch area, we need to know whether we have enough volunteers within the next week. The only Wilkinsons store in our branch area is the one in Ely (see map below this post), and unfortunately the majority of our current volunteers live further South, or in Newmarket.

If you live in Ely and would be interested in collecting for the RSPCA local branch that weekend, please email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk as soon as possible. Our spring collections outside Tesco stores are usually very successful (although we've never had enough volunteers to collect at the Ely Tesco). It would be very nice to be able to run an additional autumn collection to raise funds at the other end of the year.

View Larger Map