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.

Volunteers needed at our 2nd hand bookshop

Many thanks to the hard-working volunteers who've made it possible to open our bookshop at 188 Mill road for two extra days per week—so we can now keep on fundraising on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We still need at least four more people so we can open on Monday and Tuesday, and ideally enough to try opening on Sundays as an experiment.

Mill road is never likely to become busy enough to generate enough income to employ paid staff and still make a profit to fund our animal welfare work (which, after all, is the reason for having a shop at all; there wouldn't be any point if it would actually raise more money if we closed it and I got a second job stacking shelves in Asda and donated the proceeds). However, because rents are low in comparison with more central areas, we can generate really useful funds on a "low input, low output" basis.

Books and CDs need proportionately less manual effort to prepare for sale than the more general charity shop stock, and it's relatively easy to run the shop using amateur enthusiasts. If you love books and reading, there's always something interesting to find among the day's donations.

Don't be daunted by the thought of having to learn to use the till; we arrange training either in the bookshop itself, or up at our main Burleigh Street shop, and there are also back-room tasks that need doing if you really feel it's not your thing.

If you might be interested in volunteering, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

Would you be more interested in flexible volunteering?

We realise most people are incredibly busy nowadays, and committing to turn up regularly may be a serious difficulty. 

Obviously our regular volunteers do have to skip sessions sometimes too when they need to fit in vets' appointments, holidays and so on (we're not slave drivers!)

If you think you can probably only manage to volunteer occasionally, there are still lots of useful things you can get involved with.

Shops

We need the regular volunteers to make it possible to stay open at the advertised times, but there are plenty of back-room tasks which can be started or stopped depending on the number of helpers available.

Behind the person at the till there is a busy team who sort, clean, price and shelve. If they can stack up plenty of items all priced and ready on days when many volunteers are available, one helper can keep up with the shelf-filling when we're short-staffed.

Extra helpers on a Sunday, when sales are comparatively slow, can really benefit the following weekdays by making it possible for Monday to open fully stocked and looking good.

RSPCA Week

We normally average over £20 per volunteer per hour for this collection, which comes round at the end of April each year. If you don't have time to do anything else in the year, just two hours volunteering would mean £40 we wouldn't otherwise have.

One-off stalls and events

Individual jumble, car-boot or table-top sales can raise useful amounts, although they need a fair bit of organisation and some way of transporting sales items.

Annual Dog Show

We need a team of people for the basic organisation, but there are plenty of useful things that can be done on the day itself if you don't have time to come to any pre-planning meetings.

If you might be interested, email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Veterinary treatment again

We have to get our fundraising up to a level where we can give more help to owners who honestly can't afford the cost of treatment. Unless we can get on top of this, our rehoming effort is almost pointless, while animals who do have homes are dying because there's no way we can provide enough help to save their lives.

Every day our phone line gets desperate, crying owners that we can't help because they are way outside our area or who need far more help with the cost than we can possibly give.

We can't insist these animals are signed over to us, because that would still leave us with huge treatment costs we can't afford to cover. Some of the owners who come asking for help could raise the money if they really tried, but most of them simply don't have it and have no way to borrow because their income's so low they're not good credit risks. The same people are least likely to be able to afford pet insurance, or to have organised pre-registration with the PDSA or with our own clinic.

We can do our best to educate people about the importance of finding out what they need to do to be prepared for emergencies, but there will always be those who don't realise until too late. Unfortunately, the people with least money are likely to be those who are least able to cope with the complications of registering for charity help before their animal is desperately ill and needs immediate help.

Our shops are the best way we have to raise our income. They're already generating funds that cover all their fixed costs, plus the profit which we can use for our welfare work. This means that every extra hour spent volunteering in one of the shops generates money that can all be used to help more animals, because there are no additional running costs (other than the odd cup of tea).

Poole china set

Many thanks to the donor of this attractive set of Poole china.

£400 for the whole, or we could split it up. There's also a set of blue Midwinter china.

Saturday at the bookshop

Bulging stock room

Followed by nice, full shelves in the shop

Many thanks for the wonderful donations of books this week, including lots of out of print Penguins, which are very popular.

Stephanie and I are now bent double after hours sifting through sacks of books, but the RSPCA bookshop's shelves are promisingly full.

The shop is now opening Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but we still need to recruit more volunteers so we can cover the full six days, and possibly Sunday too.

If you might be interested in volunteering, please email camshop@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Calls about reptiles

Common Lizard (Zootoca vivipara)
  © Copyright Lairich Rig and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

We're getting a slightly surprising number of calls from people who are concerned about finding lizards in their garden (or straying inside buildings), so I thought I'd try to find a photo showing what species these are likely to be. The only other British lizards are the Smooth snake (a legless lizard) and the much rarer Sand Lizard. 

They are entirely harmless to people (in fact beneficial because they feed on insects and slugs) and, at a maximum size of about 8 inches, have much more reason to be afraid of us than we of them.

All species of British lizard are protected by law, and it is an offence to kill or injure them. If one end s up indoors (perhaps attracted by warmth), the best way to remove it is probably to capture it by putting something like a jam jar over it, then sliding a piece of card or paper under the rim of the jar until the lizard is confined. Alternatively you could use a dustpan and soft brush to gently sweep the lizard up and then release it outside. 

Lizards have waterproof skin which is dry and scaly to the touch. Other lizard-like creatures you may find locally are various newts. These are amphibia (related to frogs and toads) and their skin is moist. They definitely ought not to be indoors as they will dehydrate and die, but may get in by accident, or possibly be brought in by cats.

Newt
  © Copyright Penny Mayes and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

As exotic reptiles become more common as pets, there's the added potential complication of escapees. If you find a lizard that's significantly more than 8 inches long, it may be a lost pet. 

Animal Welfare Figures for July and August

I've got a bit behind with these.

The stats for July are:

Animal treatments: Cats 108, Dogs 238, Rabbits 6, and 4 miscellaneous "small furries"

We rehomed 2 dogs, 11 cats and 2 miscellaneous.

For August:
Treatments: Cats 141, Dogs 295, Rabbits 7 and 3 miscellaneous.

We rehomed 3 dogs, 8 cats, 1 Rabbit and 3 miscellaneous.

Total treatments for the year to date: Cats 813, Dogs 1,970, Rabbits 71 and 28 miscellaneous.

Knackered...

On reception at the clinic all yesterday morning, with Patch, one of the cats I'm fostering fitted in at the end of the session. The abscess under her eye has healed up nicely, but unfortunately her skin condition is, if anything, worse than ever. She's now on steroids to try to clear up the inflammation and irritation and medicated baths to keep the skin clean and wash off allergens.

This morning I had an anxious call from on of our local "cat ladies", about a probable stray she's been feeding (shown in the picture). We're fairly certain that she's hyperthyroid and that someone has gone to the trouble of getting it diagnosed, because her throat has been shaved at the point where blood would be taken for the test. The major problem is that she doesn't seem to be going home at all, which is very bad news if she ought to be on medication for the condition. The vets were able to feel an enlarged thyroid, and she's got all the symptoms: extreme weight loss while eating ravenously, racing heart, thirst and excessive drinking.

Cycled over at 8 and collected her as the "least worst" option since if we take her in we do at least know for sure what's happening, while if we leave her where she is we've got no way of knowing whether or not she's returning home or getting any treatment at all. Hyperthyroidism is a common problem in elderly cats and is usually treatable with medication, but the longer a cat goes without treatment the greater the strain on her heart and kidneys.

To the charity shop at 11, but not a lot of customers due to the awful weather. This was compensated by lots of incoming donations of items to sell, including two enormous ones including loads of very good crockery, which should go well when the students return. The clothes donations included a bag of towels, which are very welcome with so many foster cats needing washable bedding.

We need to recruit more volunteers to help in the shops. If you are interested, please email camshop@rspca-cambridge.org.uk or newmarket@rspca-cambridge.org.uk (depending on your location).

Gift aid starting to pan out

After some initial teething trouble, I think we've now basically got the hang of running the gift aid system in our charity shops, and the first actual funds should appear in our bank account 6-8 weeks from now.

If you donate any items for sale and you are a UK income tax payer, please do complete a gift aid form, as it means an extra 28 pence for every pound raised when your donation is sold at no extra cost to you.

The process works on a bar code system. We take a sheet of bar code labels, all labels on a sheet having the same unique number. One label is stuck on your form and the others go on the price tags we put on your donations. When a donated item is sold, we scan the price tag at the till and the amount and donor number are recorded. During the night the till "phones home" and uploads details of everything scanned that day.

Once a reasonable sum has been recorded against your donor number, we print out and send you a letter telling you how much has been raised, and checking that you still wish to donate it to the branch. 24 days later (to give you a chance to demand your money!) we can put in a claim to HMRC for an amount equivalent to the tax you paid on that amount of income.

The need for the letters seems quite wasteful, but unfortunately they are a legal requirement if we want to operate the system, and there is a facility to avoid printing any which would cost more to post than the amount we would gain if we put in a claim.

It all sounds very complicated, but the degree of automation means it's actually harder to explain, than to do. Once the system has been running for a reasonable length of time, it should generate a steady amount of additional income as the gift aid forms come in and our claims go out to HMRC.

Injured cat

I've just been contacted by the 24hour emergency vet to let me know one of the Animal Welfare Officers has brought a cat in for first aid there. She'll have pain relief and emergency care overnight then one of our volunteer drivers will transfer her to our own clinic for further treatment in the morning. They say they're pretty sure she has at least one broken leg, but I should have more details, including a description, by tomorrow evening.

If a cat goes missing it's important to phone round vets—including the emergency out of hours vet, who may be some distance away—as injured animals are normally taken to the closest available private vet for first aid. Depending on how busy they are and whether the cat is found during the middle of the night, there may be some delay before the local branch is notified.

After a fracture repair operation cats will normally need to be confined for several weeks to avoid putting further strain on the repaired section of bone, which could cause the ends to move out of alignment. They also need to come back to the clinic for periodic re-checks. We are always in need of foster homes where they can be kept during this recovery period as it's a waste of funds and a drain on the kennel staff time to put them into our cattery, and it's also much more pleasant for the cats to be in home-like surroundings where they can have more attention to help pass the time.

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

UPDATE:
Sadly she deteriorated in the next few days, and the vets took the decision to put her to sleep as they did not think she would survive an operation to amputate the leg with the worst injuries.