Volunteer drivers needed for our shops

We're looking for someone (or several someones) with a car who would be prepared to put in about an hour a week moving stock between 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh street. We need to do this because it's often more convenient for supporters to drop off their donations at Mill road and we then sort them there and transfer just the saleable clothes and ornaments.

We're also looking for volunteer drivers who would be prepared to help with house-clearances. This often produces some very good quality stock for the shops (among a lot that can only be sold for recycling) and is very popular because people wanting houses cleared are happy to see the contents going to support a charity rather than being thrown in a skip.

House clearances are done on an occasional basis and usually involve one or more drivers and some helpers working for about half a day.

We reimburse petrol costs.

If you might be interested in this, please email camshop@rspcabookshop.co.uk or phone 01223 212 644

Volunteer Drivers

We always need more volunteer drivers, so if you have the use of a car and are interested in "hands-on" work with animals, please do get in touch by emailing:
rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or
rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

We need drivers because the injured strays which we take in are generally given initial first aid at private vets and then need to be transferred to our clinic for further treatment or to our kennels for rehoming. Some animals may need to come back to the clinic for check-ups (such as follow-up x-rays).

Because we can't predict when strays will be brought in it's not possible to set up a regular rota for driving, so volunteers go on a list of people who don't mind being phoned to ask if they can help with a particular trip.

Trips to the clinic with injured animals usually involve quite a lot of waiting about at the clinic because we can't jump the queue to be seen unless an animal is desperately ill or injured.

Times when we're most likely to need drivers are:

Monday mornings to transport animals from the kennels to the Vet School for re-checks and scheduled operations.
Monday afternoons to return animals to the kennels from the Vet School
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday mornings to move animals from private vets to our clinic

Injured stray dog

Not completely sure whether this was the result of miscommunication, lack of money or just general snafu. The 24 hour vet phoned last night to say someone had brought in an injured stray: probably from one of the local Traveller sites and probably hit by a car. The dog warden service normally only works 9-5, so I wasn't surprised to be asked if we'd help with funds for initial treatment. I asked the vets to contact the local dog warden service first thing in the hope that they'd be able to help with further costs, or at least provide transport to our clinic.

They did try, but were told South Cambs no longer has a dog warden service, which is very bad news if true. Their website still gives contact numbers, so this may just be temporary, or it may be that they simply don't have any funding to deal with injured dogs. By then all the volunteer drivers who might have helped with transport were otherwise occupied, so I asked the vet to use the pet taxi service to send the dog to the clinic to give him at least a chance rather than simply having him put down there and then.

Another kitty

He's a 10-12 week old ginger kitten, and was picked up after being hit by a car. Finder didn't know the area, so couldn't give a good description of the location, but took quite a lot of trouble to get him to the 24 hour vet for emergency first aid. He's now fairly bright and interested in food, but they think he's probably got a cracked pelvis. They're hopeful that there isn't any spinal injury as he seems to have conscious control of urination.

Nicola is going to pick him up from Vet24 tomorrow morning and get him to the clinic for transfer to the Vet School Hospital. 

More cats

Sid is another entire male, very thin, but fortunately FIV/FeLV negative. We're awaiting results of a test for hyperthyroidism, but with any luck it may turn out that he's just underweight because he's been spending summer roaming in search of females instead of eating properly. Nicola*, our main volunteer driver, collected him from the Whittlesford vets and moved him to the kennels yesterday.

Sadly, another tom-cat handed in at the Arbury Road vets wasn't so lucky. He had awful abscesses and the blood test showed that he was FIV positive (which explains why they had got so bad, as FIV - Feline Immunodeficiency Virus - eventually destroys the cat's immune system and means that infections won't be thrown off as they normally would in a healthy cat). As the abscesses were so bad the vets advised that we should agree to having him put to sleep. 

*Congratulations to Nicola on her first ever motorway journey since passing her test!

What a complicated fortnight

Eight week old kitten (uninjured, but too small for our normal "if it's uninjured and healthy, leave it alone" rule) taken into Vet24 over the weekend. In the meantime, Fountain, one of the two kittens being fostered with a view to adoption, developed a runny nose and we organised transport so he could go to a vet on Monday. By then he was fine, but of course the transport volunteer couldn't alter all her other arrangements to collect the Vet24 kitten. 

Re-arranged transport to get her to the kennels today — by which time the vets had managed to find someone who wanted to adopt her anyway. Excellent news, apart from messing the poor transport person about again, as we really don't like holding young animals in kennels because of the effect on their socialisation. 

Madison and Emily should be moved to the kennels next Monday (unless something else happens) as they're now fighting fit and ready to be shown to adopters. Lomas is booked in for his X-ray at the Vet School the same day and we are all praying that he'll be able to have his fixator removed so that we don't have any more panics.

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.

Dog crates

Does anyone out there have a small to medium sized dog crate (metal or plastic type) that they no longer need and would be willing to donate to the RSPCA?

It needs to be small enough to fit in the back of a car, and would be used by our volunteers when they need to transport dogs.

Any offers, please email me

Cats and more cats

Our poor driver had a wasted journey this morning. A member of the public had found a stray cat which was "walking funny" and believed to have been hit by a car. As it was after 9 at night, he was asked to take the cat to Vet24 for first aid, with a view to transfer to the clinic in the morning. Unfortunately the cat had other ideas, and on arrival at the vet, he shot up a tree and vanished into the night, before actually reaching the surgery. However, as the vet said, he most likely didn't have any fractures if he could move that fast.

Second stray of the day was a badly matted, un-neutered cat. This is the time of year when tom cats wander in search of females and they often come to grief. This little chap is just a bit battered and should do fine. He turns out to be negative for both Feline Leukaemia (FeLV) and Feline Immunodeficiency virus (FIV): a huge relief. 

Which brings us to the dreaded topic of the Seven Days. Lots of people will tell you that the RSPCA  puts stray animals to sleep automatically after 7 days. This is NOT TRUE, but like many myths, there is a small amount of fact at base. Healthy animals and animals who can be treated so that they can have a reasonable quality of life stay with us until they find a home (the only exception is animals who are actually dangerous). We normally wait until at least 7 days are up before offering them for rehoming, to give their original owner the chance to reclaim them. 

Some animals are clearly so badly hurt and suffering that there is no choice other than euthanasia almost at once. The major difficulty is animals who are less severe cases, but are clearly not going to get better or have a reasonable chance of getting a home. Some of those (end stage kidney disease is an instance) might live happily for a few weeks or months more if they could be reunited with their original home, but it really isn't fair to keep them in cattery conditions. Feline Leukaemia is a nasty and ultimately fatal disease, but a caring owner might nurse a leukaemic cat successfully for some time. In these sorts of cases we'll normally keep the animal for seven days in case the owner turns up, but effectively we'll already have made the decision that euthanasia is realistically the only possible option.

Another traffic accident

A four-year old cat with probable dislocated hip. Owners say they have no money at all, so they're signing him over to us for rehoming. He's currently at Isle vets on the far side of Ely, which will mean an early morning start for our long-suffering transport volunteer, if she's going to pick him up and get him to our clinic by the 10.30 deadline for admissions tomorrow.

Volunteers

Call from one of the vets in Peterborough, who has a client who can't afford the full cost of treatment and would like to come to our clinic on Thursday. He hasn't got a car and the journey by public transport would involve a three-quarter hour train journey to Cambridge followed by a bus ride. They're enquiring whether there's any way we could help with transport, but I can't really ask any of the Cambridge volunteers to drive to Peterborough, back to Cambridge and then to Peterborough and back again.

RSPCA Peterborough branch urgently needs more volunteers. If they had a volunteer driver available then at least only two legs of the journey would be needed.

Pelvic fracture

Call from Vet24 yesterday to let me know one of our inspectors had brought in an injured cat for initial first aid treatment. They'd assessed the cat and think he's got a fractured pelvis and possible leg injuries. Bladder and bowel working OK, so no likely spinal injury, thank goodness.

Today is a clinic day, so one of our volunteer drivers can pick him up this morning and drop him off for further treatment.