Branch Christmas Appeal

Help us reach our target of raising £2000 to fund our services over the Christmas period.

Message from Katie, who will be trying to pull together our branch volunteering activities

Just to let everyone know that the volunteers meeting will be held, as usual, at Emporium 61 on Burleigh Street next Thursday (16th December) beginning at 7.30pm. I hope to see as many of you there as possible!  As of January we will be holding these regular meetings at the Cornerhouse Pub on Newmarket Road and hope that this will make for a nicer atmosphere as well as encourage a few more new faces!

 

I have attached the proposed fundraising calendar for next year and as always we will require any help that you can offer. Be it an hour, a day or a week! (Particularly for fundraisers during RSPCA week really anytime you can spare will make a difference).

 

Just to introduce myself a little more formally, my name is Katie and I recently graduated from the University of Exeter, currently I am working in Sawston for a small market research company. As I work 9-5.30, email is the best way to get in touch with me but I am hoping to become a central point of contact for all volunteers. I want to make sure that everyone is happy so any feedback you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Another part of my role is recruiting new volunteers as well as coordinating the volunteers needed for some of our larger events such as RSPCA week and hopefully next year our sponsored dog walk and dog show!

 

I will be using an email list to let you all know what is going on, any events that are coming up and general reminders. I fully appreciate that no one wants to be bombarded with emails and so I will try and keep this to a bare minimum. If you would like to be taken off of this list for ANY reason please do let me know!

 

Anyway Happy Holidays to all of you and thank you for all of your hard work this year!!

 

Best Wishes

 

Katie

(If you would like to be added to the volunteering email list, please send an email to volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk)

January
February	One World Week @ University of Cambridge : Work for A charity  event
March
April
May	RSPCA Week (2nd-8th May) Sponsored Dog Walk Half term (30th May- 3rd of June)
June	Microchipping day/ Dog Show we are hoping to combine an ‘alternative dog show’ with a microchipping event for dogs £10 per microchip with an average saving of £10 which raises £6 for each microchip RSPCA AGM-end of June
July	Summer activities- Bingo night/ Pub Quiz/ Treasure Hunt/ Race night/ bat walk one activity a fortnight over the summer
August	Pole Dancing/ Pilates/ Yoga trials
September	Freshers Fair @ Cambridge university
October
November	Mill Road Christmas light switch on
December	Mill Road Winter Fair Meeting for next year’s fundraising calendar Christmas Event- All ideas welcome!!

Animal Welfare Statistics for November

In November, our clinic treated 218 dogs, 119 cats, three rabbits and seven miscellaneous "small furries".

We rehomed six cats, but took in an alarming total of eleven rabbits, which had been signed over to our local inspector for welfare reasons. As a result, the total number of animals we currently have in our care has gone up from 42 to 52. 

Fortunately the rabbits can be kept in foster care, which is less expensive for us than commercial boarding, but it's a worrying trend as rabbit adoptions tend to be lower during the winter months when potential adopters really don't feel like doing outdoor carpentry to erect rabbit runs. If our inspectors had another large intake of rabbits we would have to tell them we have no space.

Interest in keeping rabbits as indoor pets - just like our cats or dogs - is growing and may be part of the solution to the problem of unwanted rabbits. 

You can view some of the rabbits on our rehoming gallery.

If you are interested in adopting a pair of rabbits from the branch, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

Depressed

Three days running I've had desperate people ringing late at night with animals who need to see a vet urgently. At that time of day it costs £100 just for the consultation and at the moment there isn't any way we could afford to pay that much each evening because it would mean an annual spend of £36,500. That  would be more than the annual cost of running our clinic, which treats ten times as many animals each year.

Last night I was called about a dog who had been badly mauled by another and needed £700 of emergency treatment, followed by transfer to our clinic for surgery on his broken leg. Again - that's just not possible for us and it is tragic that the owner hadn't registered his dog at our clinic because that would have meant our own veterinary provider would have been prepared to see him at a much lower rate.

By and large these are not people who are bad owners or unwilling to pay for routine veterinary care, but they just don't have the resources to find £100 at 5 minutes notice. Getting the animals signed over to us to be rehomed is not a solution because it would just add the cost of boarding to the treatment cost which we have not got.

Please give us your support so that we can do at least something to help these animals in future. Any saleable unwanted items that you can donate to our shops at 188 Mill Road or 61 Burleigh Street will help us to raise more funds.

We also need fundraising volunteers and more volunteers to help out with running the shops and collecting items to sell. Could you organise a "donate, don't dump" day at your place of work, with everyone being asked to bring in at least one item to give to the shops?

Pictures from the Mill Road Winter Fair

Remaining tombola prizes

Guess the name of the pink pony (slip us a fiver and we'll make sure you don't have to take it home)

Katie and Ffiona looking very cold!

Total amount raised (including books sold in the shop) was £540. One of the benefits of the Winter Fair event is that it helps publicise the bookshop to local people who never normally walk down Mill Road.