Webshop newsletter

A gift from Play.com Play.com has put together some special promotions to help you out this Christmas season. Offers include £5 off when you spend £50. To claim your offer simply enter PLANW09 at the checkout. Every purchase made at Play.com will result in a donation to RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch. Don’t forget to use our online shop when shopping online, every purchase counts! Don't forget not only do these offers help you to save money; every purchase you make raises funds for RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch. Visit www.buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge for more great offers from over 150 top retailers.

RSPCA East Winch Wildlife Centre Prepares For Busy Seal Pup Season

All signs point to a busy Christmas for The RSPCA’s East Winch Wildlife Centre with the mixture of bad weather and the start of the pupping season.

The Centre, which this year celebrated 21 years of seal rescues, currently has 35 seals, including most recently, two from Ireland, two from the North East and one from Jersey.

Centre manager, Alison Charles said “We take in seals from all over the country because of the specialist facilities we have developed caring for seals over the years.

“It is the grey seal pupping season but the huge storms hitting the South Coast recently have led to large numbers of orphaned pups needing care as they are too young to survive on their own. Our job is to nurse sick, injured and weak animals back to health and prepare them for a

life in the wild as soon as they are able to fend for themselves.”

Each year, East Winch cares for approximately 150 seal pups. It costs £20 per week and it takes approximately four months to care for and rehabilitate each pup.

In order to ensure this vital work can continue, businesses locally are being given the opportunity to sponsor a seal and give it a name for a minimum donation of £10.

Some local shops have already taken the opportunity to support the initiative including ‘Knickerbox’. Staff have sponsored a grey seal pup that came into the centre from Jersey where she was found orphaned by the British Divers and Marine Life Rescue and named her after the shop. Knickerbox was transferred to the Guernsey Society for the Protection of Animals and then flown to Southampton. She first went to the RSPCA West Hatch Wildlife Centre in Somerset before she finally came to East Winch on Friday 13 November for specialist treatment.

Knickerbox weighs just 9.4kgs and still has her white baby coat.

Three other pups came to East Winch at the same time. ‘Animal’ came from Boscastle in Cornwall and has respiratory problems; ‘Jane Norman’ came all the way from the Scilly Isles and ‘Iceland’ came from St Ives and has a deep infected wound on his chin.

Anyone interested in sponsoring a seal can contact the centre on 0300 123 0709, email eastwinch@rspca.org.uk or write to RSPCA East Winch Wildlife Centre, East Winch, King's Lynn, Norfolk PE32 1NR.

Maisie

This is Maisie, the cat with the broken jaw who came in just over two weeks ago, still looking a bit sorry for herself. As you can see from the pics, the left-hand side of her face is still not quite right, but she should be able to have the metal wire out next week. I think she's almost blind on the bad side except that her pupil contracts in bright light, so she can probably see light and shade.

Winter Fair 2009 on Mill Road TOMORROW!

Ffiona and Naomi have been busily sticking cloakroom tickets on an enormous pile of tombola prizes. Please come along and spend your money!

Win a (large) cuddly dog toy

Mill Road Winter Fair takes place this Saturday - 5th December. We're running a grand "name the dog competition" — winner's prize is this cheerful-looking chap.

What a week!

Kicked off with Maisie, an unclaimed stray with a broken jaw. She was allegedly eating soft food following the operation to pin it, but spent the next six days resolutely refusing to swallow anything unless I syringed it into her mouth. She's now lapping feline AD (appetite diet), still a bit cautiously, and I think she simply doesn't like the feel of the metal that's holding her jaw in place until the bone mends. She's quite young and hopefully will be resilient enough to make a pretty full recovery although she probably won't get back normal vision in her left eye.

We then had a really frightening drama when Benny, a feral kitten one of our fosterers was taming, went completely off his back legs and couldn't stand. One possible diagnosis would have been toxoplasmosis, which is potentially transmissible to humans, and by Murphy's Law he was with one of our fosterers who has small children. Test results are now back and it's definitely not toxo, although the vets are not sure what the underlying trouble actually is and it seems to come and go.

Sadly one cat picked up after a traffic accident didn't make it through the night, and another very elderly stray had to be put to sleep after the vets found a huge bleeding tumour in his mouth. Another traffic accident had a happier result and the cat is being fostered by a volunteer who will probably adopt her. One of the very elderly cats was found dead in her pen first thing in the morning.

Finally our shop manager at 61 Burleigh st, went down with 'flu (probably partly reaction after all his hard work getting the shop up and running).

RSPCA elections

Nominations for the RSPCA national council election open in January, and the deadline to join the society if you might be interested in standing for our local branch committee next year is close, so I thought I'd write something about the governing structure of the RSPCA.

If you're interested in helping to decide RSPCA policy, the first step is to become a member; you will be eligible to vote in RSPCA elections three months after your application has been processed. Members are also eligible to stand for election to their local branch committees, and this is probably the best way to get involved initially. (At present, the online application form seems not to be feeling well, so you might have to phone the number given on the page instead).

Branch committees are composed of volunteers and are elected each year at the branch Annual General Meeting. All RSPCA members living in the branch area are invited to this meeting and those who turn up vote to elect the new committee. Unless something very controversial has happened it's quite difficult to get enough people to stand to form a committee so AGM elections are more in the nature of a vote of confidence than a contested election. However they do mean that the membership could get rid of a committee that was doing a poor job (although they would then have to do the work of the people they'd ousted so they might be sorry in the long run!)

As well as running their own local facilities, branch committees can send representatives to their Regional Board and Local Animal Welfare Group; which are committees responsible for activities spanning the areas of a group of branches. They also have a collective vote in the election of Regional Representatives to the RSPCA's ruling council. The combined effect of this is to ensure that the Council has strong input from the people who are doing animal welfare work at grass roots level. This is important because of the ever present danger that leaders who are not in touch with what is actually happening on the ground will "fight the last war" — for example assuming that a major welfare problem is lots of unwanted healthy animals, rather than sick and injured animals whose owners can't or won't afford the cost of veterinary treatment.

The remainder of the governing council of the RSPCA are elected by postal vote of the whole membership. This election is usually fairly hotly contested and the candidates are mostly people who have come up from the branches (perhaps after a period as branch representatives on a Regional Board), or individuals with a national reputation for campaigning or welfare work.

If you might be interested in joining the Cambridge branch committee, email chairman@rspca-cambridge.org.uk. Most prospective candidates arrange to sit in on a few meetings before they decide whether they want to stand or not (but be aware that some meetings to discuss financial decisions have to be "closed" meetings where only elected members can be present). We usually hold our AGM towards the end of June and all members will receive an invitation a few weeks beforehand.

If you want to become more involved, please bear with us! I'm afraid that, because we're perpetually running about, we often give new people the impression that they're being ignored. This isn't done on purpose, so please keep turning up and you will find that it eventually becomes clearer. One thing we're hoping to organise in the future is a regular meeting for volunteers, so that it will be easier for people to find out what's going on, rather than being isolated doing just the clinic, shop, home-visits etc.

Cat carriers and old towels

We can always use more cat carriers and old towels if you have any you no longer want.

Carriers need to be capable of being soaked in disinfectant, so not the wicker type ones, but plastic, metal or fabric are all useful.

They can be left at our shops (188 Mill Road, 61 Burleigh St or 156 High Street, Newmarket) or at the animal clinic (1 Pool Way, Whitehill Road, Cambridge). However the shops are probably easier as they're open all day.

RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch webshop newsletter

Money saving Christmas offers from www.buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge Save time and buy your Christmas presents online. Buy all of your gifts through our online shop and RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch will receive a percentage of what you spend. Every purchase made via www.buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge will result in a donation to RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch, don’t forget every purchase counts! Don't forget not only do these offers help you to save money; every purchase you make will raise funds for RSPCA Cambridge & District Branch. Visit www.buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge for more great offers from over 150 top retailers.

Purchases made through www.buy.at/RSPCA.Cambridge are made according to the information and terms provided by the company making the sale to you. Further details on using the buy.at shop are provided on the site.

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

Another elderly stray

It's hard to know what to do for the best when we get calls to pick up elderly "stray" cats. Callers naturally tend to assume that a thin, "poor" looking cat has got that way because he or she doesn't have a home or isn't being cared for. That's not necessarily true, and a very frail-looking animal may well have a devoted home only a few doors away and simply be a very old cat. On the other hand, if the cat really has got lost, and is very elderly their chances of survival are obviously much worse than for a young, fit animal, so we would normally ask the caller to make enquries locally, but agree to collect if no owner is found.

Once we have the cat it's difficult for vets to make an effective assessment without any knowledge of previous history and we'll need to pay for blood tests as a minimum to check kidney function and whether or not the cat is hyperthyroid. Some conditions are treatable and the cat might be able to be placed in a home and live for years; others (such as the last stages of kidney failure) are hopeless and it's not fair to put put the cat in kennels and hope for the best.

If the vet's opinion is that the cat is suffering and ought to be put to sleep then as a welfare organisation we really cannot disregard their advice (bear in mind that this will not usually be "an RSPCA vet" but a normal private vet who is treating people's pets every day).

Just yesterday one of the Soham vets took in a very poorly looking stray for us and this morning they phoned to say he had a bleeding cancerous mass in his mouth and was in pain. In those circumstances it really isn't acceptable to delay in case an owner makes contact. The same day they took in another injured cat for us and he died overnight, so with hindsight it would have saved money to be used for other animals and been better for him if he'd been put to sleep at once. Sometimes these decisions have tragic consequences.

Old strays are another reason why we need more foster homes where we can give a higher standard of TLC than will ever be possible in a cattery environment. These are cats who are unlikely to be rehomed, but are still enjoying life and only ask for warmth, food, a litter tray and a comfortable bed.

If you might be willing to consider fostering animals for the branch, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Stocking Fillers

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Whitehaven news report of Cumbria rescue

Pictures of the RSPCA water rescue team working in Cumbria in the Whitehaven News illustrate just how physical the work of the inspectors and animal welfare officers is.

Some people might think all of the rescue effort should be concentrated on helping human beings, but by providing trained people who know enough not to become casualties themselves they're making it less likely that pet owners will try to return to retrieve their animals and need to be rescued by the emergency services.

Not just books!

Our charity shop at 188 Mill Road also has pictures (antique and new), posters and music (CDs and vinyl).

More and more requests for help

The number of requests we're getting for emergency help with veterinary treatment is increasing in a worrying fashion. I've had five calls this weekend, each of them meaning £100 just to get the animal seen by an emergency vet for pain relief. This time last year two or three calls would have been a bad weekend, and it doesn't seem to be slackening off.

A bigger proportion of them now seem to be people who are registered with a private practice and have never needed help in the past, but haven't budgeted for the increased cost of out of hours treatment now that nearly all vets use a dedicated ER cover vet rather than just expecting their staff to get up and deal with emergencies. I've no doubt that it makes out of hours treatment safer if the vet's not single-handed and dizzy with fatigue. However— it's making pet insurance more and more essential and also more essential that owners investigate the small print and make sure their insurer will pay the vet direct if they aren't going to be in a position to pay by credit card and claim the cost back.

From our point of view it's making the cost of veterinary help a more and more concerning part of our outgoings and it's ever more urgent that we increase the income from our shops.

Christmas cards available now!

Delightful animal cards now available to buy at 188 Mill Road and 61 Burleigh Street in Cambridge.

All profits from the sale go to support out local animal welfare work.