Pics from the Mill Road Switch-on

The RSPCA bookshop is just opposite this row of lights.

Romsey Recommends

As part of our contribution to the Mill Road Winter Fair event on 5th December we'll be putting up a window display in our bookshop at 188 on the theme of "Romsey Recommends". To take part, just drop into the shop and fill in a form giving the author and title of your book recommendation and we'll add it to the display.

Feel free to include a photo (of yourself or of the book), or you can be anonymous if you prefer.

Closing date for recommendations November 30th

Why subsidised veterinary care is part of our work

Occasionally people complain that we spend lots of money helping people who really ought to have thought whether they could afford pets, or at least whether they could afford to have so many of them. There are several reasons why this service is essential:

• It's much better to help otherwise good and caring owners to keep their pets than to force them to give them up for rehoming—particularly in the case of older animals who would spend a long time in kennels. There is no point spending even more money just to punish the owners.
• If there is no source of help then people may panic and do irrational things. They may abandon animals, or simply hope that the problem will go away if they ignore it. This can sometimes result in extreme suffering, for example if the animal has broken bones.
• A major part of the "law enforcement" side of the RSPCA involves prosecuting owners who didn't seek veterinary treatment for their animals, or who allowed their animals to breed until they had far more than they could look after. If we are to be tough about enforcing owners' "duty to care" we have a corresponding obligation to make it possible for them to care.

But... I would like to see some of the people we help recognise that our funds are not a bottomless pit. Many of them do take on more animals from a genuine desire to rescue them, but it does put more and more strain on us.

Mill Road Christmas lights switch-on this Saturday!

The Mill road Christmas lights will be switched on at 5 pm this Saturday, 14th November. The actual switch-on will happen just in front of Cutlacks ironmongers, so why not visit our bookshop at 188 before wandering on down?

Shop for Christmas online and support us

As well as our charity shops we have a webshop: basically this is an web page which acts as a starting point which links to sales pages of merchants who will pay us a small amount of commission for all purchases which began from a link on our page. You can see the link collection at http://buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge

When new customers subscribe to Sky+ HD via the webshop RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch will receive £120! If you are thinking of joining Sky please do so via our webshop so we can receive this huge donation.

Nostalgic children's books at 188 Mill Road

Many thanks for the generous donations of books we've had over the past few weeks. As you can see from our window display these included lots of very nice children's ones.

Animal Welfare Statistics for October 2009

During the past month our clinic treated 419 animals - 266 dogs, 137 cats, 10 rabbits and 6 miscellaneous small furries. We neutered 13 dogs and 11 cats and issued 24 vouchers for emergency treatment at private vets. Six dogs and five cats were terminally ill and had to be put to sleep to prevent suffering.

We rehomed three dogs, eight cats and a rabbit, and took in another six injured stray cats.

Christmas is coming!

Christmas cards and logo gift items now on sale at 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh Street, including these smart T-shirts and our very own photo-mugs with pics of animals rehomed by the branch. Emporium 61 in Burleigh St also has the 50/50 range of new clothes and accessories created by our talented staff.

Mole and Ratty

This is Mole looking out of his house a little apprehensively. He needs a home together with Ratty, his brother. They were both left with a friend by their previous owner, who never returned to collect them.

For some reason this seems to happen a lot with rats, possibly because it's more difficult to get permission to keep them than for other small animals, or perhaps because it's more likely that the person left holding the rat gets fed-up and contacts us than it would be if the pet was a hamster. Rats get a bit of a bad press, but most of them are actually much less inclined to bite than hamsters (who are solitary and have fewer inhibitions about inflicting summary chastisement on humans who prod them without being properly introduced).