Mystery Cat

In case you've missed it, the National RSPCA has a new twitter feed: RSPCA_Frontline, illustrating a selection of real incidents being responded to by RSPCA Inspectors and Animal Welfare Officers.

It's well worth looking at to get some idea of the sheer number of incidents staff are called to investigate, and also the inconclusive nature of many of them - for example call-outs to injured, but mobile, wild animals which are impossible to find.

For many of the incidents which actually do have an outcome of some kind, the local branch forms the next step in dealing with a problem. As a nice example, the final tweet for 1st November was:

"On 01/11/10 our officers were allocated 2093 incidents to attend. Good night."

Each of the 2093 incidents is given a log number so that it can be retrieved from the computer system at a later date, and lo, and behold, a cat is now sitting in the emergency vet in Milton with number 17** - fairly close to the tail end of the day. She's a feral cat who's been trapped and taken there by a member of the public, using a trap loaned by one of the inspectors. 

This was initially a complete mystery to us because the first we knew about her was a call from the vet asking what we wanted to do with her. There followed a daft conversation reminiscent of James Herriot and the dog who was "pretty lively" because we'd got no idea why someone thought she needed to go to a vet, and none of the vets fancied putting his hand inside the cage to do an examination. Best guess was that someone wanted her spayed, but it might have been need for a dental or something entirely different as the person who borrowed the trap seems to have assumed the vet would know. 

The only information the surgery had was her log number and the system does work, because I was able to phone in to the control centre and discover that she was being fed by an elderly lady who had to go into hospital and the person who took over the feeding was concerned her fur was very matted. No-one seems to know for sure whether or not she's been spayed (or has been having kittens) and the plan is to de-matt her under sedation and look for a spay scar at the same time. If she's not got a scar they'll do the spay operation.


Callers who are very concerned about individual animals sometimes think we're over-bureaucratic and causing delay when we insist on administrative details such as log numbers and post codes. The sheer numbers of animals handled by the RSPCA each day mean it's impossible to rely on memory and we have to record information in a systematic way. This cat was a perfect example—without her log number it would have been impossible to track back and verify that the people feeding her are happy to have her back on site. That's hugely important for her future welfare as she's completely unsuited to long-term confinement in a cattery and will have a much better quality of life in the familiar surroundings from which she came.

Release locations needed for outdoor cats

Do you have a large garden or other land or stables where you would be prepared to have one or more outdoor cats? We periodically take in strays who have been living rough and are too shy of human beings to be easily placed in ordinary pet homes.

All cats would be blood-tested, neutered and vaccinated. You would need to have a building or shed where they could be confined for an initial settling-in period to avoid the risk that they would try to "home" back to their original location.

If you might be able to help in this way, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Outdoor homes for shy cats

Mr Grumpy, one of the feral cats we treated, neutered and released.

We nearly always have a need for homes for cats who have never lived indoors and wouldn't easily adjust to a domestic environment. They need to go to a location where there is shelter (such as a garden shed, outhouse or barn) and someone who will put down food and check that they are OK.

If you might be able to offer a home to a timid cat, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

The Feral Cat Manual

Published by the Feline Advisory Bureau, The Feral Cat Manual is probably the best and most comprehensive guide to helping feral cats available in the UK. It's used by SNIP International and other groups for their training workshops.

Trapping and neutering feral cats

I noticed that the RSPCA policy on feral cats doesn't appear in searches because it's in a PDF document, so maybe it would be of interest to post it here.
The policy says:

"The RSPCA recommends that, where the welfare of feral cats is ensured and their presence is accepted by the owners of the site, the animals should be humanely trapped whereafter veterinary advice should be sought regarding their health status and attempts should be made to rehome very young kittens or other cats which are not totally feral. Euthanasia should be carried out on those cats which in the opinion of the veterinary surgeon are seriously ill or which are injured to the extent that returning to the site would result in continuing suffering and the remaining cats should be neutered. While under anaesthetic for such neutering, the left ear of the cat should be "tipped" to enable the cat to be easily recognised as having been neutered and the neutered and identified cats should be returned to the site and any further suitable advice given.

The treatment against fleas and round and tape worms of all cats selected for rehoming or for neutering as above is considered necessary.
"Tipping" means the removal of 6 mm, by a straight cut, of the tip of the ear.

The RSPCA recommends that, where the welfare of feral cats cannot be ensured or their presence is not accepted by the owners of the site, the contact should be told of the RSPCA policy given above and be given the opportunity to reconsider. If this fails to resolve the problem, or where the presence of feral cats cannot be permitted because of legal reasons, the RSPCA recommends that all cats are humanely trapped, treated and neutered, then rehomed or re-sited wherever possible, or humanely euthanased.

The RSPCA cannot guarantee that animals trapped by pest control firms will be destroyed in accordance with methods approved by the RSPCA."

We need more volunteers who would be willing to help with trapping and neutering cats. You would need to have the use of a car and to be fairly physically fit as the traps are quite large. If you might be interested in helping, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk
We don't get huge numbers of requests to trap and release feral cats, more a recurring trickle, but it is quite time-consuming, because several journeys are usually needed for each cat trapped.

Cats Protection will also help with neutering feral cats if they can. Click here to see their policy.

Cat facial recognition software?

Webomatica have been playing around with iPhoto and found that its face recognition component can apparently also identify cats from pictures of their faces. As you might expect, it doesn't work for all-black cats, but I wonder if there are potential uses for people managing large feral cat colonies or shelters trying to identify lost cats, and keep track of animals they've taken in. Taking a digital photo at the point of booking-in a cat would be a low-stress, un-invasive way to track that cat through the system.

Healthy animals

A dear old lady with six cats of her own had been feeding a scruffy-looking stray and periodically trying to confine him to get him neutered. Finally he disappeared for several weeks and she assumed he'd gone off and died, but he turned up again last night, looking even more the worse for wear and blind in one eye. Claire drove over and took him to Vet24. 

Sadly it turned out that he was a perfect example of why a "no-kill" shelter policy is not as simple as it may sound. If he'd had an owner able to give him tablets and a special renal diet there might well have been some point in having him castrated (so he'd no longer want to wander and fight younger, fitter cats), operating to remove the ruined eye and treating the eye with some remaining sight. As things were, it would have been simple cruelty to confine a cat like him in cattery conditions (most of the earlier to-ing and fro-ing on the old lady's part had been because she couldn't bear to shut him in her shed because he cried). She was in her eighties and wouldn't have been able to organise tablets and special diet. Euthanasia was really the only responsible option to avoid causing him more distress.