RSPCA week isn't a success

To be honest it wasn't a big surprise that my inbox today contained a message from our HQ saying that Tesco are reducing the number of days during RSPCA week 2013 when we can collect donations outside their stores. 

RSPCA week has been incredibly valuable to branches over the years, but we've never been able to realise its full potential because we simply don't have enough volunteers to cover all the major Tesco stores over 7 days. Reasonably-enough Tesco now say it's not fair to say no to other charities who might be able to make full use of the opportunity.

The days we can collect will now be Friday May 3rd, Saturday 4th and Sunday May 5th.

If we make a real effort to achieve total cover in 2013, Tesco may  revise their decision and offer us the full 7 days again in 2014. If we don't ... we could well see our collection permission reduced even further.

Animal welfare is in crisis. Our inspectors are needed as never before and all the while there is the ticking time-bomb of people who have animals and won't be able to cope if they get ill, or injured, or if the price of feed goes up. 

Whether you think the RSPCA is too timid in its campaigns — or much too "activist" — please make a resolution to help us provide the basic welfare services that make animals' lives tolerable.

It would be an enormous help if you could spare just two hours to collect — either during 3-5 May 2013 or during 15-17 February 2013 when we have permission to collect at Pets at Home.

Sheep for live export at Ramsgate port

If you can help collect, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

We also need more volunteers to help at our three charity shops and to set up a fundraising group.

Please also consider joining the RSPCA. The more members we have, more likely it is that government will pay attention when we lobby for better treatment of animals. More members also means a larger pool of talent to draw on for local branch committees and stronger democracy.

Grand bookshop relaunch tomorrow!

By 7 pm this evening we decided the shop was as ready as it's ever going to be and staggered home, to be ready for an early start tomorrow. Our volunteers have repainted all the walls; put up extra shelving; shampooed the carpet; washed the windows; repaired the light fittings, then rationalised the book categories and filled the shelves with as much fresh stock as possible.

We'll probably still need to do a small amount of shifting around if the amounts allowed for the different    classes aren't yet quite right and some of the most interesting books are still in boxes that won't be accessible until we've completed the re-organisation of our basement stock-room. However there will still be lots of bargains and interest for book-addicts when we open tomorrow at 10 and the "hidden store" will gradually flow out onto the shop floor as we empty boxes.

Many thanks to former city MP Anne Campbell for agreeing to do the official opening and to everyone who worked so hard on the refurbishment or helped by loaning equipment or donating materials, including ASDA, Cutlacks, Halls of Cambridge, Cambridge Resale, Homebase, Lloyds TSB.

Special mention must go to Claire of ASDA's Community Life project who put in an enormous amount of work driving forward the renovation, and to Pat, Liz, Alison, Paul and Eileen who worked incredibly hard to get it done in the time available.

We still need your book donations!

Please keep donations of books, CDs, vinyl and DVDs coming: the interest of a shop like ours depends on a constant input of fresh items so that customers know it will always be worth their while to stop by and see what's new.

At the moment the bookshop is open from 10 am until 5 pm from Monday till Saturday (we'd very much like to recruit some extra volunteers to make it possible to open Sundays too).

Our current target is to increase our sales by £200 per week so that we can generate £1,000 profit which can be used to support our low-cost animal clinic.

Fun dog show: pics from last year

Just to whet your appetites for our Bigger and Better show in two weeks time.

This year's show will begin at 12 noon (registration) with the first class starting at 12.30. Lots of side shows and activities as well as the main show itself. Please come along and help raise even more money to help local animals.

Ben, our mascot for the day

Winners of the "mismatched pair"

Waiting for the command!

Fastest recall

Slightly lumbering recall

Flatten your ears to reduce wind resistance

I retrieve too!

Village Vet Whittlesford kindly provided sponsorship

Some of the winners

In a bit of a tangle

More winners

A bit hot for some

Face painting and ice-creams!

Getting a thorough examination

Heeelp!

Frenetic Sunday starting at 6 am feeding the cats, tableting those that need it and washing up a mountain of cat dishes.

Then to the bookshop at nine to load Nicola's car with boxes of books for our sale at ASDA. Unload, wave goodbye to Pat and Amy who stay to begin setting up, then return to shop and repeat the process.

Grab bike, off to Burleigh st to open up our shop there and let in Glenn with the large dog collecting box from the stall at Arbury Carnival.

On arrival, discover Saturday team evidently had several gigantic donations of sale items (good) but hadn't had time to do any processing (less good as stock room now so full I can't move).

Decide nothing I can do about this for the present and open up. 

Feed coffee to the wonderful volunteer who takes over the till and stagger back to do battle with the horror. 

Inspection of the bags fortunately reveals several of them contain things that can be processed while at the till; mostly this involves attaching gift aid stickers and a price and is easily done with small items such as DVDs and videos.

We recently put out an appeal for soft toys, and our supporters have done us proud; lots of these, and again quickly sorted and priced. Legally we can only sell soft toys if they have the "CE" kite mark which should mean they are safe for children.

In a couple of hours we must have put out at least 200 individual items between us. This is key to a successful shop as customers will only keep coming back if they see new stock coming out each day.

By 5 pm we are about ready to drop, but the level in the stock room has dropped enough for the remaining unsorted bags to be stacked fairly neatly in our sorting bins ready for the Monday team to start hanging and steaming clothes to fill the shop rails which have been depleted by shoppers during the day.

Cash up and reconcile the till and find we've taken £188.40; reasonably good for a Sunday. 

Unfortunately this means Pat and Nicola have to be left to pack up and transport the unsold book sale remains on their own, which is heavy work as only a proportion of books will go at any sale.

We need more help (or I need to be twins!)

The veterinary treatment crisis goes on...

Wood Green Animal Shelters are trying to publicise the dire situation of animals whose owners have no means of paying for necessary treatment:

Wood Green, The Animals Charity is being forced to turn away more than 14 pets in need of veterinary care every week because their owners have neglected to insure them.

The Charity is receiving daily requests to treat issues including broken legs, jaws, ear infections, skin disorders and dental problems of dogs, cats and rabbits because pet owners cannot afford the treatment.

We had a call this morning from someone in Sawtry (sadly well outside our clinic catchment area) who'd been given our details by Wood Green in the desperate hope that we could do something to help them, and another request via the shelter for help with neutering.

A collie was abandoned at another vet, almost certainly because her owners knew they couldn't possibly pay the cost of her treatment.

Personally I am haunted by some of the calls I've received where owners beg and plead for us to help their pets.

The bottom line is that we can't put the existence of our clinic at risk to help people who could have saved their pets by taking the minimal action of getting them registered and therefore making them eligible for low-cost out of hours treatment from our own veterinary provider.

Our of hours emergency treatment at private vets is now hugely expensive and we simply cannot currently afford even the comparatively small (£100-£150!) cost of emergency euthanasia if we're going to end up paying it two or three times each week.

Before we can consider reinstating help of any kind at private vets we have to raise enough funds to be certain of the clinic's long-term viability, and that means we have to build a proper fundraising team.

If you can help, please email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

We're now gearing up for RSPCA week, which is our single biggest fundraising event of the year, when we have permission to collect outside all 7 major Tesco stores in our branch area. Every extra person willing to give a couple of hours to collect means £20-£40 raised to help suffering animals.

Please consider whether you can spare those hours this year.

Gift Aid: Thank You Everyone!

Our Newmarket shop achieved a fantastic 40% gift-aided sales in December, meaning that we will be able to claim around £500 from HMRC. Total gift aided sales for all three shops were nearly £4,000 meaning that we are very close to achieving our initial target of raising an extra £1,000 income for the branch each month through gift aid.

Thank you to everyone who completed a form, and thank you to the staff and volunteers for putting in all the extra work involved in stickering and tagging sales items. It really is starting to pay off and help us towards our goal of maintaining as much of our animal welfare services as we possibly can.

Spend at our shops and help keep animals in homes this Christmas

Reports of animals being abandoned or relinquished by owners who can't afford to care for them are coming in from all sides.

It seems that a toxic spiral is building up in which owners put off vaccination, spaying and neutering because of cost and then are faced with sick animals they can't afford to get treated, or with litters of unwanted babies they can't rehome.

Pumpkin, Little Owl and the three Shepherd cross puppies were all probably abandoned because they were ill and their owners were afraid of the cost of seeking treatment.

Some owners are so neglectful or so incompetent that  their animals are better off without them, but in the vast majority of cases it is far better to help animals to stay in their own homes than to spend funds keeping them in boarding kennels until they can be found new ones.  If animals are being relinquished because they are ill and the owner can't afford a vet, it's much more efficient to spend money on treatment than to spend money on treatment and boarding.

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Times are tough, and we all need to spend our money as efficiently as possible. Over the next months—probably years—there are going to be more demands on our ability to provide help with veterinary care than ever.

Can you help us by diverting some of the spending you would be doing anyway in the direction of our shops? Most of us are going to spend something on Christmas cards and presents in the next few weeks. By purchasing some of them from our charity shops you'll be helping to keep our welfare services in action.

In the Alice in Wonderland times in which we live, prices for rags are good—to the point where we have to keep a sharp eye on the bags we're hauling out to the rag collector's van or they get nicked! If you're having a clear-out, we can turn clothes and other textiles into useful funds even if they are too worn to sell in the shop. Don't throw them out; drop them off to us. 

Christmas is coming!

These are the pics from the Burleigh Street shop today.

Many thanks to Ben for providing superb publicity for our new Christmas display: all the children (and the grown-ups!) loved the dalmatian costume and it was a fantastic attraction to draw people in.

Ben will be visiting us again for the Mill Road Winter Fair on 3rd December, probably in a Border Collie costume this time—look out for him at our shop at 188 Mill Road.

These photos are a bit dark because I was taking them from inside the shop; I hope to get some better ones on the 3rd.

Christmas cards, Advent Calendars and 2012 calendars are now on sale at our shops, also lots of items that would make wonderful and unique presents.

Look out on Burleigh Street tomorrow!

Ben Pettit, who kindly collected for us at our dog show, is supporting us again this Saturday at our Burleigh Street charity shop. The picture below was taken at our dog show - those costumes are VERY HOT!

He'll probably be bringing the dalmatian costume this time and, depending on the weather, will either be in the shop welcoming customers inside, or walking up and down Burleigh street to drum up trade.

Watch out for Ben again at our Mill Road bookshop for the Winter Fair on 3rd December. Winter Fair collecting is usually very chilly, so Ben may be glad of his dog costume then.

Hallowe'en at 188 Mill Road

Spent the afternoon setting up a hallowe'en themed window display featuring a selection of books from our horror, folklore, esoteric and children's sections.

Many thanks to the donors who brought more vampire fiction, as well as lots of other books in beautiful condition, this afternoon - most appropriate to the season.

Our current volunteers are doing a wonderful job keeping the shop running with no paid staff, but we could still do with more people to achieve our target of 7-day opening. We pay rent whether we're open or not, so every extra day's cover is all profit for the animals.
188 is also very important to us as "feeder" for the larger shop in Burleigh street because many donors find it more convenient to leave items here instead of going into town.

If you might be interested in helping at any of the shops, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk, or just drop in when we're open.