Chaos!

Phone call yesterday evening from someone concerned that a neighbourhood cat seemed to be unable to stand. She very helpfully offered to transport him to a vet herself, rather than wait until an RSPCA driver could get there. Then, about an hour later, there was another call, this time from the vet's surgery, to say they had the cat and also a stray kitten who'd been handed in.

Sadly the adult cat didn't survive, but the kitten improved over night although she's very snuffly still and anaemic because she had so many fleas feeding on her blood.

Then began what you might think was a straightforward process of moving her for further treatment. Being so small, kittens can improve or go downhill very fast. Yesterday evening, the vets were doubtful whether she'd survive the night, but by mid-morning she was perky enough not to be really in need of inpatient care. Because of the snuffles, there was the added complication that vets don't really want a potential source of cross-infection to other ill patients unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

We don't usually end up calling round our foster homes while an animal is actually in a volunteer's car wondering where to go, but I'm afraid our new volunteer driver had some anxious moments wondering whether he was stuck permanently in transit with a sniffling kitten.

Thank you VERY much to our domestic bird fosterer for stepping in at about 5 minutes notice to provide a safe place with no animals likely to be susceptible to cat germs, and thank you to our wonderful volunteer driver for coping with something we don't normally land on new volunteers!

It does show how essential our volunteers are to making it possible to save animals, and also the importance of having as many individual foster homes as possible to minimise the risks of cross-infection.

If you might be interested in fostering animals for the branch, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

What a week!

We put out an appeal for help raising the final part of the £10,000 needed to safeguard the future of our animal clinic on Saturday. 

George the three-legged cat is looking for a  home

Thanks to the combined efforts of the Cambridge Evening News and Radio Cambridgeshire and the generosity of the public we've more than met our target, meaning we won't default on the agreed payment deadlines. Especial thanks to John Grieve and the staff of Cambridge Veterinary Group, who donated £3,000.

This doesn't mean our problems are over. We're now in a position to be certain we can pay the flat rate basic fee to keep the clinic open and that we will be able to carry on paying it in the next financial year.

We still have the awful dilemma of what we can do to help animals whose owners can't manage even the subsidised rates our clinic charges and animals who need emergency treatment outside normal hours but are not registered.

Fees for operations are paid direct to the University Vet School, who provide hospitalisation facilities for us. Charges are roughly a third of what the owner would have to pay at a private vet, but this may still represent an awful lot of money for someone who is on benefits of £70-odd pounds a week or already in debt.

Unless we can increase our fundraising really substantially, we dare not offer to provide extra help to cover the cost of operations because we can't justify putting the future of the clinic in doubt.

Our agreement with the Vet School means that registered animals can be seen outside normal working hours in an emergency, but animals who have never been to the clinic can't be seen and the only available treatment is at private vets. At the moment we will help in a real emergency that can't wait, but all we can do is to offer to cover the cost of a consultation — the owner must find the money to pay for first aid to stabilise the animal until they can go to the next clinic session. Again, we simply cannot do more than this, and we may have to say we can only cover part of the cost of a consult if fundraising dips again.

Many pet owners on low income seem terrifyingly unaware of how little help may be available if they can't afford to pay vet fees. Our clinic is the only one of its kind in the whole of Cambridgeshire, and the PDSA's arrangements with some private practices all require the owner to register before their pet becomes ill. Callers to our branch help line almost always say, "Can you tell me where to take him?" expecting that there will be free facilities in every town, and there just isn't. Getting this across to a frantic owner is incredibly stressful for the volunteers who run the helpline. Many vets will do their best to avoid putting down treatable animals, but at the end of the day they have to safeguard their businesses' viability or no-one's pets will get treatment.

I'm afraid no government is going to see pets' healthcare as something they are prepared to fund—if communities want their animal members to have treatment available they are going to have to organise and work to fundraise for it themselves.

This is why our shops are so vital, because the income they bring in is something we can increase by our own efforts. Please support them by using them when you shop for clothes; by donating saleable items and remembering to sign a gift aid form if you pay UK income tax.

We need more volunteers, to increase the rate at which we can process donated items and prepare them for sale, and to enable us to increase the shops' opening hours. If you might be able to help, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or drop in at one of the shops for a chat with the manager.

New kitchen for Christmas?

These ex-display kitchen units were very kindly donated to our shop at 61 Burleigh Street by a local showroom and are for sale at £200 for the set of white units and £150 for the white and maple set.

Buyer collects. Very good condition except that they're a bit dusty after being in the showroom. They can be seen at the shop, but as you can see from these pictures they don't look exactly as they would when installed because we've had to stack them up so we can still sell other things.

We're just...

£3,546.85 below the target amount we need to raise to assure the future of our animal clinic now.

Thank-you to everyone who's worked so hard to get us this far.

Just one final push!

You can donate online by clicking the donate button at the side of this blog, or using your mobile, by texting PETS00 £10 to 70070 to donate £10 to RSPCA Cambridge.


Sadly this won't mean we can stop and rest as we need to carry on fundraising as hard as we can to keep up with the daily calls for our services.


Please keep working on the ten point plan and support the hard work of our shop staff and volunteers in Newmarket and Cambridge.


With your help, WE CAN DO IT!


We've entered our clinic in the NatWest Communityforce grant bid. You can support us by going to http://communityforce.natwest.com/project/299 and voting for us. You need to register on the site to prevent multiple voting and you have three votes, so please also vote for two of the other RSPCA branches which are asking for help.

Animal Welfare Statistics for September

During September our clinic treated a total of 233 dogs, 110 cats, 12 rabbits and 3 miscellaneous "small furries".

It's pleasing to notice that half of the rabbit visits were for vaccinations (compared with about a third of all visits for dogs and cats), so perhaps the message about the absolutely vital need to vaccinate pet rabbits against myxomatosis is getting through. The number of rabbits is still low considering their status as the third most popular pet after dogs and cats, so I fear many are still being treated as "expendable" creatures not worth the expense of veterinary care.

We rehomed two dogs and four cats: a slow month and probably still reflecting many people's feeling that this is not the right time to take on more commitments.

Blog Action Day 2011 - RSPCA Big Sunday Lunch

Fancy inviting some animal-loving friends to a veggie lunch on Sunday 30th October?

Why not sign up for the RSPCA Big Sunday Lunch and use the opportunity to raise funds for your local branch or animal centre?

Complete the form in the attached frame to register. You can choose to fundraise for the National RSPCA, your local RSPCA branch, or a local RSPCA animal home, whichever your feel most needs your support.

Note from the Big Sunday Lunch Facebook page:

We expect there will be many different types of Big Sunday Lunches being made for this event so we just wanted to address the whole issue around vegetarianism and choosing higher welfare meat.

The Big Sunday Lunch is for everyone including those who are vegetarian, vegan and those who eat meat. We are very aware that many people who eat meat are regularly ‘sleep shopping’, that is, just buying any type of meat from the supermarket without realising the welfare issues that affect farm animals such as cows, pigs and chickens. We're trying to reach out to people have little or no awareness about these issues so they can make more of an informed choice when buying meat.

A recent survey by the Food Standards Agency in 2009 suggests that the percentage of the UK population that is vegetarian is less than 10 per cent. People choose from their own free will whether to eat meat or not. We're trying to get through to that 90% of the population who do, to encourage them to be more aware of what they are buying and to give them the knowledge to choose higher welfare options. That way we have the highest chance of making a significant difference for animal welfare.

Many people are confused about the labelling on packs of meat and just don’t realise the welfare issues facing farm animals. That is why we would always advocate choosing higher welfare meat which is an assurance that the animal lived a better standard of life.

Injured cat - urgent

Has anyone in the Mill Road area of Cambridge lost a smallish mostly tabby un-neutered male cat? He's been taken to Companion Care Vets on Barnwell road after a traffic accident and found to have a microchip, but it's a foreign one (believed registered in the Netherlands) so they can't trace the owner.

If he might be your cat please phone Companion Care. Their number is 01223 243535

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.

Do you recognise this cat?

She was found in Longstanton and reported to us as a sick-looking stray. We think she may be hyperthyroid, and she was very matted until the vets groomed her, but otherwise she seems to be old rather than ill. She's a bit wobbly on her back legs, but seems bright and happy.

She was wearing a new-looking collar, but unfortunately with no identification attached and she's not chipped. Someone obviously cared enough to buy her the collar fairly recently.

Priorities again

Events over the past few weeks once again demonstrate how difficult it is to prioritise in a straightforward way.

Nathan, an apparently young, fit cat who was recovering well, suddenly deteriorated and developed uncontrollable fits which didn't respond to medication. 

Saffron, much older, but with someone willing to donate towards the cost of her care turned out not only to have nerve damage and early kidney disease which made it probable that she wouldn't survive an operation on her pelvic injuries, but also positive for FIV.

Conversely, some of the very old cats are now doing well on relatively cheap treatment by medication.

Looking at our situation in a more general way: someone looking at our expenditure with no extra information would almost certainly say we can run our rehoming program or our clinic but not both. 

What that basic income and expenditure sheet doesn't show is that, if we closed the clinic, the rehoming program would almost immediately be overwhelmed by people wanting to give up animals because they couldn't care for them. If we closed our rehoming program, we would be closing the part of our activities which the majority of our donors want to support. Quite reasonably, a lot of them wonder why they should subsidise other people to keep pets they can't afford.

Essentially the rehoming program and the provision of veterinary help are complimentary to one another. We need to be able to say to someone who either can't or won't pay anything for their animal's treatment that we will help the animal by providing treatment and rehoming but we won't provide free treatment with no contribution from the owner. We ALSO need to be able to say to owners who are meeting us half-way that we will help them to keep their animals. 

And to to do all that there is no substitute for the long slog of fundraising. Please support our ten point plan to keep our clinic open. 

Just five minutes completing a gift aid form if you donate items for sale means we will raise an extra 25p for every pound the items sell for.

Hopeful update on surviving pups

First test results have just come in and they do not have Parvo, Giardia: or Cryptosporidium, so they no longer have to be barrier nursed to protect other dogs from possible contagion, which is a relief and will help to keep the cost of treatment within reasonable limits. They're brighter and starting to be interested in playing, but still not eating well, so the next few days will be crucial.

If anyone would like to make a donation towards their treatment costs this can be done via your mobile.

Text the message PETS00 £10 to 70070 to donate £10 to RSPCA Cambridge. Your phone provider will add £10 to your bill and send £10 to our bank account. If you are a UK taxpayer and you complete the gift aid options we will receive an additional £2.50 at no cost to you.

Alternatively you can donate online using a credit card via

 http://www.justgiving.com/rspcacambridge/donate

Update on the abandoned puppies

They're still hanging on, although the smallest is very poorly with both vomiting and diarrhoea. The vets at the surgery where they were left have very kindly offered to contain costs at £400 for the whole litter so  that they can be given the best possible chance of survival. The fact that only the weakest puppy is vomiting gives a bit of hope that whatever infection they have is not parvovirus, which would be the worst scenario.

The pups look as though they are rottweiler crossed with something else, possibly German Shepherd. The person who left them did at least put them somewhere where they'd be likely to be found and given treatment, but this is yet another example of the potentially dire consequences of breeding animals without having the resources to deal with potential problems.

Bottom line: it is enormously more expensive to deal with any of the multiple things that can go wrong with pregnant or very young animals than it is to spay or neuter.

Update 7th October

Sadly the vets contacted us just after midnight this morning to say the smallest puppy had died.

Vinyls!

Many thanks to the donor of about four hundred vinyl records. We started the mammoth task of getting them out on the shop floor today.  We're now about half-way through and have already raised over £70 from the first sales.

Thank-you also to Nicola and Michael who shipped the first two loads over to our Burleigh Street shop and to Anton for going through them checking for the most collectible ones which are likely to be worth more than the rest. I never knew before that some vinyls were made from white plastic instead of the usual black (they look rather like white chocolate) and are collectible because they're unusual.

We hope (if Nicola and Michael can bear it) to transfer the second half next Saturday and put them out on the shop floor at Burleigh Street on the Sunday.

Latest poster of branch animals

Please download and display if you can to spread the message.

Quarter day blues

You may have heard dire warnings on the news today that this is the "Quarter day" when most shop rents fall due and small retailers may not be able to meet their payments.

This applies to us too, and I have to admit my heart was in my mouth this lunchtime when I paid in our takings and checked our bank balance. Our shops make a profit for us, but it's a constant juggling act to keep enough money in the bank to be sure of covering their essential outgoings. 

Fortunately my own employer has paid  me this week, so by putting in a donation which I'll gift aid when I have a few free moments we should have just squeaked through. 

Big Thank You to Hatton Park Community Primary School

I've just received a cheque for £317.59 which the children at Hatton Park Community Primary School raised last year for the RSPCA. This represents an awful lot of hard work by the children (and probably their teachers and mums and dads too!).

We are VERY grateful for all their effort.

Pics of Sarah

This is Sarah who was found on Cherry Hinton road. We think she probably doesn't have any owner (or at least not someone competent) as she was extremely poorly because of her uncontrolled hyperthyroid condition.

Once her thyroid levels have been stabilised by medication, she should put on some weight.

Cats, cats, cats

Patch had another checkup at the clinic this morning and she's doing really well, although it's worrying that she seems to be so allergic to fleas that even one bite means an itchy lump that she'll scratch.

She's still on hibiscrub baths twice weekly and is amazingly good about them—probably because they give immediate relief from itches.

In an ideal world she'd be kept in a home with no other animals where it would be relatively easy to make sure absolutely all biting parasites are eliminated. Being an entirely indoor cat would also help as she wouldn't come into contact with hedgehogs or other roaming cats. As things are, I'm upping the frequency of flea treatment for my own cats, and being rigorous about treating the pen she's living in, while being careful to air and dry anything treated with household flea sprays containing permethrin which is toxic to cats if they're directly exposed to it.

However the added complication is that she seems to be mildly incontinent and does sometimes wet her bed at night, which would make it more difficult to keep her entirely indoors. I'm hoping that it may be possible to work on the incontinence problem once her skin trouble is completely under control as the steroid treatment she's on for the allergies will also tend to increase thirst and consequently create a full bladder which then leaks when she's deeply asleep. She's less than a year old and a happy little soul in spite of her problems.

Sarah, the tabby found on Cherry Hinton road with very severe hyperthyroidism seems to have fallen on her paws as the helpful couple who noticed how ill she was and brought her in have offered to foster her for the moment. Younger hyperthyroid cats sometimes make an absolutely dramatic improvement once their condition is under control with medication, so let's hope this will be the case for Sarah.

Hayley, the other hyperthyroid cat, is probably quite a bit older and she seems to be anaemic as well which possibly means she has other underlying issues. She seems well and happy in herself (much brighter than Sarah was when she came in), so the vet's advice is to treat the thyroid problem; worm and de-flea her in case the anaemia is simply parasite related, and see how she goes.

The vets have advised amputation as the best option for the cat with a severe leg injury as they feel the chances of saving the leg are minimal so it wouldn't be fair to put him through surgical repair and possibly have to amputate at a later date anyway.

No news yet on the cat with head injuries sustained in a traffic accident.

If you might be interested in fostering cats (and sometimes other animals) who are recuperating after treatment, please emain rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk for more information.

Ironic

Someone using the pseudonym Richard Martin has been systematically putting in freedom of information requests to police authorities asking for details about data sharing between the police and the RSPCA inspectorate using the whatdotheyknow  website. You can see the progress of some of these if you search the site and responses are starting to filter back now.

The reply from South Yorkshire police is rather interesting (they're explaining why it would take too long to examine every record of communication between the RSPCA and the police in order to report whether information was being given to the RSPCA by the police or vice versa):

"Since 1st Jan 2005 there are 7354 incidents where the phrase 'RSPCA'
appears in the incident somewhere.

In order to ascertain if the incident relates to requests for information
would require checking the incidents.

There are over 380 incidents where the source name or the source location
includes the phrase 'RSPCA' indicating the call has come from RSPCA rather
than SYP requesting RSPCA.

To view the 380 would take over 30 hours based on 5 minutes per incident."

On this basis it appears that South Yorkshire police made about 20 requests to the RSPCA for every one request from the RSPCA to South Yorkshire. It probably doesn't represent a huge proportion of their total workload, but it does suggest that the RSPCA saves quite a bit of public money by dealing with problems that the police would have to pick up if we didn't exist.

Why use volunteers?

This might seem entirely obvious — we use volunteers to make more money available to help animals — but it's currently a hot topic in general volunteering circles, with some people saying that it's better to cut services than to replace staff with volunteers, and others rather more sensibly arguing that half a loaf is better than no bread and it's preferable to keep a few staff supported by volunteer helpers than making everyone redundant.

From the standpoint of an animal charity I have to admit I find the repeated assertions that volunteers should never, never be seen as "free labour" a bit strange. Volunteers are donating their time and it makes no sense to insist on devising complicated explanations of why this isn't the really important bit of volunteering.

If you're a stray cat with a broken leg, you need a qualified, paid vet to fix it, but you need volunteers to raise the cash that pays the vet.

If you happen to be a merchant banker, it probably would be more useful to us if you bunged us the odd half-million rather than helping out in your leisure time, but, for most of us, volunteering is a way to give the charity a cash equivalent we couldn't afford to donate as actual money from our wages.

Our shops illustrate how this works: we need some paid staff to ensure we can open regularly at the times customers expect, but if all the work involved in running a shop had to be done by paid staff the profit available to use for animals would be minimal, if not non-existant — probably around the 5% received by charities who don't have shops, but get a percentage from commercial "charity bag" collections.

Fundamentally, money is a way of storing the value of work. Whether you do the work directly or donate it as cash, cat food or saleable items, we need your help.

Please visit our shops at 61 Burleigh Street, Cambridge, 10a Market Street, Newmarket, or 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and give us your support.