Ethan turns out to be Felix!

We took in a ginger cat a little while ago after he was hit by a car and suffered head injuries. When he was fit enough to go to a new home we posted his details in our rehoming gallery. To everyone's delight, his owners recognised his photo and he's now reunited with them.

This shows the benefits of advertising our animals online, and also that, if you've lost an animal, one important avenue to search is local shelters' lists of animals in need of homes. Obviously you should also contact them direct, but a picture is much more easily identified than a description in words.

Anyway, nice to have a happy ending.

Missing Cat

Last seen Tuesday 7th July.

Intact male, Wears a blue collar and red name tag, answers to the name of Dexter and is very vocal. Went missing from Moor Close area of Little Shelford.

Please if you have any information as to his whereabouts or have seen him please call the number below. He is much loved and much missed.

Any information, please email Lorna webbl@rsc.org

Microchipping and older cats

Fenella is off to the vet tomorrow after giving me a nasty scare. She's not yet chipped, mainly because every time she sees a vet they say, "Poor old lady," (her, not me!), "Why not wait a bit to see how she's going to go on before bothering her?" It's been seven months now, and they're quite right, her kidneys might pack up any day and she'd have to be put to sleep.

However, at the moment she's feeling perfectly well and the latest course of antibiotic has energised her to the point at which a quiet totter round the garden and back to bed is no longer enough, so she took herself off for the day. This is precisely the sort of behaviour that leads to older cats being picked up and handed in as strays. To someone who doesn't know, they look thin and people assume it means no-one is feeding them and they ought to be taken to a rescue organisation. This is probably why Fen was brought to us in the first place. Older cats may not normally wander far, but it is particularly important that they are chipped so that they don't end up taking places needed by genuinely unwanted animals.

Anyway, lesson learned; she's not going out again until she has her identichip.

Missing Oscar — FOUND

Please would anyone who sees a strange tabby and white short-haired cat in the Petersfield/St Matthews area of Cambridge give his worried owner a call on 01223 311828, or email me at rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

The long-haired tabby and white cat who moves around the same area is Elvis, and he is not lost.

Oscar was adopted fairly recently from an animal welfare group in Liverpool and he had previously lived indoors all the time, so his behaviour isn't quite normal.

Update 03/04/2009
He's turned up, a street away, bit thin and full of ticks, but otherwise fine.

Found Cat: Royston

She's a tabby, wearing a collar with magnetic tag. She was taken to Royston Veterinary Centre, Valley Rise, Newmarket Road, Royston, on Tuesday evening after being hit by a car. Now at the University Vet School Hospital. She has a badly fractured pelvis which will need surgical repair, but otherwise seems fairly bright. Email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk if you think she might be yours.

Lost Cat

Thistle, who has been lost from Tenison Avenue (CB1 2DX) since the weekend. He is a small, very nervous male, who is microchipped. His collar contains his phone number but he may have lost it. The numbers are 01223 328 490 or 07714 090 064

Lost Cat

Missing after a run in with another cat on Friday 13th March 2009 at around 11pm - very friendly and talkative, very pretty sandy grey shorthair tabby female with distinctive stripy markings/swirls with fluffy caramel coloured belly.

She is around 5 years old. She likes to get in small spaces/cupboards and is very curious of garages/sheds

Lost from the Duxford area. Any sightings, please phone +44 (0) 845 497 3718 (work 9-5pm) or
01223 830 702 (home)

Lost Cat - NOW FOUND

He's a tabby and white, neutered male, very recently adopted (not from us!) and got out of the house only a few days afterwards, so may be trying to make his way back to his old home. Please email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk if a new cat of this description turns up in the Cambridge area. Adopter is an OAP and worried about him.

Update: now found.

Lost cats again

From our inbox:

"Dear RSPCA,

I filled in a form yesterday regarding my cat “Toffee” who had gone missing. I just wanted to let you know that we found him last night. He had been accidentally shut in a garage in a house in an adjoining road to us.

I also wanted to let you know that I found the advice on your website saying that cats normally patrol a territory of up to 7 gardens in all directions particularly helpful. It was this that prompted us to renew our search of that area and to keep calling his name. Eventually we heard him miaowing in reply and were able to track down where he was shut in."

It's worth stressing again that many "lost" cats are actually stuck in some way. Healthy adult cats very rarely get lost in the sense of not knowing where home is unless they have been moved away from familiar surroundings (for example escaping while en route to the vet). Even when a cat has been badly frightened (e.g. by a dog or by fireworks) he or she will normally hide and try to work their way back home once things have settled down. This may not be possible if the cat has crossed some kind of barrier, such as a busy road or a fence that can only be jumped in one direction. Cats who have some kind of illness (e.g. epilepsy) which causes them to become disorientated may stray and need to be confined.  Un-neutered tom cats will wander over great distances and probably do know where home is, but won't "check-in" very regularly. They may be prevented from returning home if a more ferocious male takes over the land where their house is situated. This is one of the reasons why neutering has such a positive effect in prolonging the life of a male cat.

Comparing our site statistics for lost and found cats it's extremely striking that more than half of our incoming injured male strays are entire while less than a third of male cats reported missing are un-neutered (and those are mainly kittens).

Update on Santa

Hallelujah!

The wound flap has closed up except for a very small area at the lowest point (where all the pus and gunk was draining). He still needs to have it monitored and dressings changed daily, but a student has offered to take him home for a trial period. Hopefully by the end of next week he may be ready to go to his permanent adoptive home. As some of the healing is by "granulation," which is the formation of scar tissue, he may be left with some permanent lack of flexibility, but they're now confident that he'll live.

This just serves to demonstrate what terrible damage a rigid, unbreakable collar can do to a cat. This was a flea collar, and it probably didn't have any beneficial effect in killing fleas, but it very nearly killed poor Santa. As it didn't carry any identity tag it didn't even serve any useful function in linking him to his previous owner.

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.

Cat updates

Gizmo, our longest-staying cat, is booked to go to a home this weekend.

Joshua's various fracture repairs went well and he's due to go out to a foster home (with a view to permanent adoption if he gets on with the resident cats) today.

I picked up Sox yesterday evening and Janine's fostering him for a few days, and has a possible permanent home lined up.

Unfortunately Santa's collar wound has been giving some problems and the vets are planning to do another surgical repair once they get back the results of a bacterial culture of the infection. If these are OK, he'll have a graft from the fatty tissue near his gut to provide a basis for blood vessels to supply the (hopefully) now healthy skin flaps. This sounds pretty drastic, but generally does result in proper healing although it does leave the cat with a palpable lump in the area where the surgery was done, so a future owner needs to be warned that it's not a tumour.

Another cat

Not very full details yet as Vet24 phoned immediately after the finders had brought the kitty to them. The cat is all (or almost all) white and about four or five years old. No collar or chip, and I don't think they'd definitely confirmed the sex, although they spoke about "him" which suggests they think this is a neutered male. He's apparently fairly bright, but has a probable pelvic fracture, so "the other Rosemary" is going to pick him up from them early tomorrow morning on her way in to do reception at the clinic.

More and more cats!

Pretty apricot tortie brought to Cambridge Veterinary Group on Cherry Hinton Road and a black and white tom cat at Arbury road vets. The tortie is fairly well except for a probable thyroid condition and the tom cat has a fractured pelvis which they think will just need cage rest. They're keeping both cats in for a few days to see how they go.

The Christmas Eve blues

Kicked off to a cracking start (excuse bad pun) with a kitten with probable broken bones in one foot (plant pot fell on his toe). As there's no RSPCA clinic session now until Saturday I agreed with the private vet that it wasn't fair on the kitten simply to give pain relief and wait until then, so we covered x-ray and support bandaging as well. If the x-rays suggest that the foot actually needs surgery the owner will go to our clinic on the Saturday.

Followed in short order by a vomiting dog (probably just an upset tum as she is fairly current with her vaccinations).

Next, and more worrying, an ownerless cat from Swavesey area with diarrhoea. She's not seriously ill, and the 24 hour vet was reluctant to have her occupying a cage over the whole of the break as the space will probably be needed for emergencies. The kennels where we board is completely full until some of the private boarders go home, and this is academic in any case as no-one is available for transport as Janine's car won't start. After some frantic phoning, I asked the vet to call the finder and ask if she would be prepared to have her back until after Christmas now the diarrhoea's been treated. To everyone's relief she was very understanding and drove in to pick up the cat. Annoyingly this one actually has been chipped, but it seems to have been done in America and none of the chip databases have any record of her owner's current address. Best guess is that she originally came from one of the bases and was either rehomed in Swavesey or got there by accident after hiding in a vehicle of some kind.

Santa, the cat with the collar wound is doing well, but needs to stay in for the moment as his wound is still draining. Yet another cat with a blocked bladder has been signed over to us as his owner couldn't cope and he's had his operation too and is also looking good.

And a kitten!

She's about nine weeks old, and black with white feet. Found in Isleham and taken to Swayne & Partners vets. She's not injured or ill, and if she'd been older we'd have suggested that she be returned to the place she was found, as it's most unlikely that a healthy adult cat in good body condition is lost or in trouble unless there are other factors (such as being found shut in a vehicle) which suggest a problem. That's not appropriate for such a small kitten, so we're boarding her at the vets over Christmas and will move her to our kennels in the new year if her owner doesn't turn up in the meantime. 

I'm wondering whether she belongs to someone staying at the marina for Christmas and managed to get out.

Happy Holidays - Summer ones, that is

If you plan to spend part of your Christmas break looking through catalogues of exotic places, please bear in mind that your pets' holiday arrangements need to be booked well in advance too. My spare room has two extra Christmas "guests" whose owners didn't realise that all local boarding kennels would be completely booked up a fortnight before the start of the break.

On the plus side, this has forced me to bite the bullet and relocate Nicholas to a pen in a busier part of the house and his neurotic reaction shows how necessary it was. After a day on hunger-strike, he's still complaining bitterly, but wolfing down his dinner and using his litter tray. He's still completely unaggressive, just very unhappy about enforced proximity to people. He must have been socialised at some point, because it's perfectly possible to pick him up (trembling like a leaf), and he makes eye contact when he cries asking to go back upstairs. After a bit of grumbling, "Why is that Cat making All That Noise," my own cats are ignoring him, which is a relief.

Spoke too soon!

Now, it's another stray at Swayne & Partners in Newmarket with a broken pelvis. He's a large, neutered black cat.

Update on white cat

Her owner has turned up, so that's one less to worry about over the Christmas break.

And another cat

This one sounds as if she may have an owner somewhere out there. She's adult, but fairly young, mostly white, with some black markings. She was taken to Stone Lane Vets in Meldreth last night after being hit by a car. They think she has head injuries, which will probably clear up with nursing care over the weekend, but she probably also has a fractured foreleg. Plan is for them to see how the head injury goes and x-ray the leg on Monday if she's fit enough then to give a general anaesthetic.