Poor little Samantha

Samantha was found as an injured stray having been hit by a car. She has a broken pelvis but with cage rest this should heal by itself. 

Unfortunately not long after she'd come in, her foster carer noticed she was becoming chubby round the tum. A scan revealed that she is pregnant with at least three kittens who are sufficiently well developed that it would be unethical to abort them - they're already showing signs of movement.

As it would probably be impossible for Samantha to give birth naturally because of her pelvic damage we've booked her in for a planned caesarian just before the expected time that she should be due to give birth.

Charity Shop Gift Aid Systems

The new "gift aid" tills went live in our charity shops today, and should not only mean increased funds from every donated item which has been "gift aided", but will also help with tracking sales of different types of item and with stock control.

Basically this is how it works:

1. When a donor arrives, we will ask them if they are a UK income tax payer. If they do, we ask them to complete a declaration giving their name and address and stating that they wish us to be able to reclaim tax on the funds from any of their donations which is sold.
2. We take a sheet of self-stick peelable bar-codes and stick one code on the form, one on a card which the donor keeps and put the rest in the bag of donations.
3. When the donations are sorted and tagged for pricing, a bar code is fixed to the price tag, and an item code is written on the tag.
4. When the item is sold, the till operator scans the bar code, types in the item code and then rings in the price in the usual way.
5. The till periodically uploads details of sales of gift-aided items and sends off a claim to HMRC.

The use of the item codes means we can print out a record of (for example) how many ladies tops we sell. This helps with planning the shop layout (obviously if ladies tops are a good seller but skirts are slow, it would pay to expand the space for tops and reduce the skirts, and so on). Where special or valuable items are donated it gives us a way to track them through the system and reduce mistakes like selling pieces from a valuable china set individually.

Sunday at 61 Burleigh Street

"Merrythought" toy mouse

30s style dress in primrose

Striking gown (photo doesn't do justice to the details)

Thank you to everyone who dropped off donations today - please keep them flowing in!

Ffiona and Wayne were working hard on more shelving for the books section. Stop by next weekend to see the new selections.

In addition to the mouse, we also have a Merrythought teddy bear in almost perfect new condition, and we're continually moving out more summer frocks, tops, skirts, shorts and trousers.

We need your support throughout the year; not just for RSPCA Week. Please come in and browse. We're now open 7 days a week. 10am - 5pm Monday-Saturday and 11 am to 4 pm on Sundays. Sunday opening may occasionally be a little late as I open up on that day and I may be held up dealing with other  branch activities.

Updates from yesterday's RSPCA_Frontline Tweetathon

Archive of RSPCA_Frontline "Tweetathon" for RSPCA Week

Inspector Tony Woodley, who blogs on Twitter as RSPCA_Frontline, copied a selection of actual incident calls to the National Control Centre today as part of RSPCA Week.

This archive illustrates the huge range of calls to the RSPCA.

Remember that many of them will subsequently mean follow-up actions by local branches, such as providing veterinary treatment or rehoming animals taken into RSPCA care.

The Purebred Paradox Conference

The RSPCA's scientific expert on the welfare of dogs has been live-tweeting from a conference in the US. She tweets as GetPuppySmart. I've saved the conference tweets and some related materials as a Storify record.

Easter Monday at 61 Burleigh Street

Radiator-hanging cat bed

Unusual cat scratching post

 Lots of goodies for cat-lovers at the moment, including this fake-fur bed (to hang off a radiator), the unusual wall-mounted cat scratch post shown below, and various smaller beds, bowls etc.

The cat scratching / climbing tree is nearly as tall as I am and made of rattan cane. It includes several shelves for climbing or resting and is new and never used. It's intended to be attached to a wall by screw fittings, but could be supported by tying to banisters etc. to avoid marking a wall.

Opening on Easter Monday was a bit of an experiment, but sales were nearly as good as on a normal Saturday, so I'm hoping to do more bank holidays in future. We could do with more volunteers able to help cover as the usual weekday people would like to spend the holidays with their families.

If you might be interested in training to help with occasional and/or weekend cover at the shop, please drop by and have a word with the manager, or email camshop@rspca-cambridge.org.uk Initial training would be given by Ffiona on a Saturday, as she doesn't work Sundays or bank holidays.

Happy Easter tasks

Just signed off the branch management accounts for the end of the first quarter of 2011. NOT really my idea of a fun way to spend Easter, but it has to be done.

Some points are worth sharing:

First of all, and very encouraging. The Newmarket shop took  £3,615.22 in the two weeks it traded in February, and £6,428.11 in March. This doesn't yet translate into extra funds for the branch because shop rent is usually payable quarterly in advance, which means we had to use the March takings to pay the £6,900 rent for the next three months. The upside of this, of course, is that April and May's rent is now paid and, after allowing for rates, power, wages etc., the shop is making £2,000 per month profit over running costs and is on track to repay the setting up loan from the HQ while still making a decent contribution towards the branch's animal welfare work.

61 Burleigh Street's takings are well up on the first quarter of 2010, although the figures are skewed by the dreadful weather in January 2010 which stopped people coming out to shop:

           January       February     March

2011:£5,115.35

£5,273.31

£6,004.59

2010:£936.01

£4,020.85

£5,939.88

The bookshop is now making a modest profit, but we have to accept that Mill Road is simply not busy enough to attract enough passing trade to support having a paid manager.

HQ were very patient with us during 2010 and gave us a lot of leeway by letting us have vaccines and microchips "on account" to keep our clinic going. We've now been able to pay them in full.

Clarence is home!

Clarence was handed in to us as an injured stray, and we were delighted to get a call from his owner who had recognised his picture in our rehoming gallery.

Clarence was chipped in Switzerland before his family moved to the UK, which is why, although we could detect that he had a chip, we couldn't use it to trace his owner.

This is becoming quite a common occurrence as more people move between countries with their pets and I'm not sure what the solution is, other than, possibly, re-chipping animals after the move.

Logically you'd think that registering a chip for a pet passport to get permission to enter the country ought also to mean some kind of record that could be used to trace the owner of a found pet.

Volunteer Recruitment meeting

Just a reminder that the next volunteers meeting will be this Thursday starting at 7.30 pm at the Corner House Pub, Newmarket Road, Cambridge.

All welcome.

Learn how happy pet rabbits CAN be!

If you have a chance, do go to this wonderful opportunity to see how to have happy rabbits AND a beautiful garden.

Thank you Cambridge United!

Cambridge United kindly gave us the opportunity to do a bucket collection at their home match today. Final total was £188. Many thanks to everyone who either collected or donated.

We usually find that collections like this at events or outside specific stores are much more productive in relation to volunteers' time expended than ordinary street collections. For example the sum raised today was the result of 5 people collecting for 2 hours each. This is a great improvement on the kind of event that leaves me feeling: "Well I could just have donated a tenner myself and saved the effort."

So, PLEASE! If you have not yet put down your name to collect in RSPCA week, and you live in our branch area, email volunteering@rspca-cambridge.org.uk Even one hour after work in the evening will raise valuable funds to keep our services running.

Why we help some owners with their vet bills II

Reasonably-enough, many of our potential supporters don't see why they should give their hard-earned cash to pay other people's vet bills, and this is often hotly debated on the National Society's facebook page.

We've just had a case that perfectly illustrates why we struggle with the ethics of this:

One of our clinic users contacted our emergency phoneline because her pup had suddenly begun coughing up blood. She was a responsible owner who had paid for vaccinations and did have the money to cover the emergency consultation fee, but she didn't have enough money to pay for tests to establish exactly what was going on; even at our subsidised rates.

Worst case scenario would have been a blood-clotting disorder, which would be hopeless and untreatable. Best case would be some kind of infection, which could be relatively cheap to treat. 

BUT without knowing what kind of infection (and whether it actually was something infectious) treatment wouldn't have been possible. 

It would unfortunately have been perfectly reasonable for the vet to advise euthanasia on the grounds that there was a 50/50 chance that it was an untreatable condition and any money spent on tests would be wasted.

We agreed that we'd cover the cost of the tests (and then of treatment if the underlying cause was a simple infection), and today the results are back and show that the pup has lungworm. This is potentially fatal if the lungs are badly damaged, but there is a reasonable chance of successful treatment with relatively cheap wormers.

In this instance the owner probably won't be able to pay any of the cost back and will therefore decide to sign the pup over for rehoming. We have to insist on some kind of penalty if the owner can't pay anything because otherwise everyone would say they couldn't afford to pay and we would go bust and close.

But we don't want animals to pay with their lives because their owners can't find money at short notice.

A hundred pounds is an enormous amount of money to someone who is on income support, and frankly it doesn't help all that much to know that the cost would have been more like three hundred pounds at a private vet. 

If owners put off basic things like chipping, vaccination and neutering because they're short of cash it may cost us in the long run in terms of strays who can't be returned, animals with preventable diseases and unwanted litters who need to be rehomed.

Results of the volunteers' hard work at E61

We still need to improve the lighting, but it's amazing what an improvement filling in the cracks  and repainting can produce.

We're now putting out our summer stock and (as always!) more donations would be much appreciated.

If you would like to drop off donations by car, you can get to the back entrance of the charity shop via Paradise street which runs parallel to Burleigh st.

Please phone ahead (01223 312 802) to let us know you're coming, so we can let you in, or just park behind the shop and come round to the front entrance.

Animal Welfare Statistics for March

During March our clinic treated 229 dogs, 120 cats, 25 rabbits and one miscellaneous "small furry".


We neutered 12 dogs, 4 cats and 4 rabbits and rehomed 3 dogs and one rabbit.

Redecorations at our Burleigh St shop

Alan trying to get the rails back straight!

We closed two hours early on Sunday so that the paint would be dry enough to put the rails back up on Monday. I looked in mid-morning today to take these photos and it's already a great improvement with beautiful, evenly-painted walls instead of all the marks and holes where fittings had been hung and moved.

Open on Tuesday as normal.

As always, we need donations of saleable stock to keep our till ringing.

Emergency treatment

Our animal clinic's veterinary service provider will provide emergency treatment for registered animals outside normal hours. To become registered animals must have visited the Pool Way clinic during normal working hours (9-10.30 am Tue.,Wed.,Thur., Sat.), and to maintain their registration they must visit the clinic at least once every two years.

This is done to protect the animals' welfare and we must not abuse their helpfulness by using the emergency service for things that could wait until a normal clinic session, so the branch has a rota of volunteers who act as the first point of call for incoming requests for emergency treatment. During the day we can phone in to the hospital direct, but at night the procedure is for us to phone the duty nurse, who then calls in to the veterinary interns whose turn it is to be on duty on the ward. Unfortunately this does mean that late night/early morning calls cause the nurse to be woken up (the interns work shifts so are at least already awake).

Tonight was not one of the better ones; a caller whose dog was in labour first phoned in for advice, then about half an hour later to let us know that she had managed to organise a lift in to the hospital, and finally a third time to ask for the interns to be called again by phone as they didn't seem to be responding to the entrance door buzzer. The poor nurse must have been cursing us.

Charity shop this Sunday

We took £186 and Phil managed to get a lot of shelf-filling and tidying done in the book section, while Jefferson held the fort at the till.

Vinyl records are still popular sellers. If you have any old records that you no longer want, don't throw them away; we can turn them into cash to help animals in need.

More rather sorry souls

Oreo

Jaeger

Click on the captions to go to their JustGiving pages.

Thank you for your support.

Appeal for Luke's operation

Luke looking very sorry for himself

Luke was brought in to us as an injured stray and he was found to have a broken jaw. The branch arranged for an operation to wire the break so that Luke would be able to eat and he is now much happier than in the photo.

The cumulative cost of treatment for a succession of injured animals is scary. It's not so much that each individual operation needs a lot of money, but that there are so many of them.

This is a bit of an experiment: creating JustGiving pages for the next ten or so animals that we take in and seeing whether people are prepared to donate towards part of the cost of each animal's treatment.

If it's successful we need to have much less worry that at some point we are simply going to have to say: "No more," and agree that treatable injured animals will have to be put to sleep because we simply don't have enough money to pay for them to be helped.

To go to Luke's JustGiving page, click the photo.