On encouraging people to get their pets neutered

This topic can become very heated, as some people feel the problem of homeless pets is so serious that we should simply refuse help with the cost of veterinary treatment to anyone who lets their animals breed. Others would like to see us offer universal free neutering; or campaign for legislation to enforce neutering; or refuse to work with any person or organisation involved with pet breeding. 

One possibility would be to follow the stance of the Dogs Trust scheme for dogs belonging to homeless people. This scheme does not pay for any costs associated with whelping or pregnancy and requires owners to get their pets neutered within a set length of time after registration for help with veterinary treatment. The trouble with this is that it's not an awful lot of help to the pet who's brought to us already in labour. In fact, like mandatory spay/neuter programs in other countries, it falls down because any sanctions for non-compliance are quite likely to hit the pet much harder than the owner. 

In practice, we do the best we can. We offer low-cost spay/neuter at our clinic and by voucher at private vets. We won't help with the cost of vaccinating litters of puppies which are clearly going to be sold on, as that's just increasing the potential profit per puppy and encouraging the owner to breed another litter. 

RSPCA Week 2009

Once again Tesco stores have kindly given us permission to collect outside their main stores during RSPCA week, which this year will run from 27th April to 3rd of May.

We need as many collectors as possible to get maximum benefit from this opportunity, and this year it will be particularly important because of the generally gloomy outlook for fund-raising.

In past years the public have been very generous—this is not one of those events where you go home thinking it would have been quicker and easier to stick a tenner in your own tin and go home to put your feet up. Even a few hours collecting typically raises a useful amount, and is all money we otherwise would not have had.

If you might be able to help, please email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

It would be helpful to know approximate numbers as soon as possible as we need to order tins, badges etc.

The map below shows approximate locations of the stores in our branch area.


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National Rabbit Week 24-30 January 2009

See the National Rabbit Week website for more information.

Staffy neutering campaign

David Grant, of Animal Hospital fame, is profiled in the Independent today.

In my opinion, the root cause of most of these cases seems to be the worrying trend towards owning these dogs as accessories, and as weapons. Because of the demand for certain types of dogs for such purposes – primarily on inner-city housing estates – there has been a huge increase in dog breeding for undeclared profit. As a result, we are seeing a lot of puppies who are diseased due to poor breeding. The number of dogs being dumped is at an all-time high, and Battersea Dogs' Home can no longer take in Staff-type dogs. The problem is seriously out of control.

Fortunately, in our more rural area, things haven't reached this pitch, but there's still a huge problem of irresponsible breeding of Staffordshire and other bull terrier dogs.

And, of course the puppy with parvo died

Just had the bill for last weekend's rottie puppy - euthanasia and cremation.

PLEASE, if you take on a puppy or a rabbit: get them vaccinated. You wouldn't think it was OK not to feed them, "because I can't afford it."

If you live within our branch area and are on state benefits (including working tax credit, but not child credit on its own), you can get your pet vaccinated at our animal clinic at the reduced rate of £18 (cat or dog) or £7 rabbit.

More rabbit woe

Two weeks into 2009 and Caroline has already taken in fifteen rabbits, homeless for a variety of reasons. 

Owner emigrating (5), moving into rented accommodation where no pets allowed (5), child lost interest (2), owner died of heroin overdose (3). 

Unfortunately it seems bunnies are not exempt from the effects of the current state of society.
On the bright side she has eleven booked to go out, so at least there is some movement on the rehoming front.

Caroline urgently needs more committed volunteers to help with caring for the rabbits. Even a few hours each week would be helpful—for example it would free her to do other things if she had some volunteers able to take over the job of shutting the rabbits in for the night occasionally.

If you might be interested, please email rabbit_residence@hotmail.com

Due to planning restrictions on the field where the rabbits are kept, volunteers need to be prepared to park some distance away and walk down the private road that leads there, and also to keep noise to a minimum.

Coming up in April

Region East will shortly be launching a campaign to encourage owners of "bull breed dogs" (i.e. mainly Staffordshire bull terriers, but also English bull terriers, American bulldogs etc.) to get their pets neutered.

Each branch in Region East will be supported by up to £1,000 matched funding from the Regional Fund. This will be in addition to the normal low-cost spay/neuter we offer for dogs belonging to owners on state benefits and will probably be free to owners registered with one of the local homeless charities. Owners on benefits, but not homeless will be expected to pay part of the cost, but less than we ask for other breeds.

The campaign will aim to educate owners about the large numbers of bull terriers we are asked to take in each year, and the need to reduce irresponsible breeding, but also to promote the image of well-trained, properly cared for staffies as wonderful companions in the right situation. 

Please spread the word by sharing the "staffy neutering" widget. Click "menu", then "share this widget" and copy the code to paste it into your own myspace page, blog etc.

Cat updates

Gizmo, our longest-staying cat, is booked to go to a home this weekend.

Joshua's various fracture repairs went well and he's due to go out to a foster home (with a view to permanent adoption if he gets on with the resident cats) today.

I picked up Sox yesterday evening and Janine's fostering him for a few days, and has a possible permanent home lined up.

Unfortunately Santa's collar wound has been giving some problems and the vets are planning to do another surgical repair once they get back the results of a bacterial culture of the infection. If these are OK, he'll have a graft from the fatty tissue near his gut to provide a basis for blood vessels to supply the (hopefully) now healthy skin flaps. This sounds pretty drastic, but generally does result in proper healing although it does leave the cat with a palpable lump in the area where the surgery was done, so a future owner needs to be warned that it's not a tumour.

Animal Welfare Statistics for 2008

Just finished the spreadsheet for 2008. During the year, RSPCA Cambridge rehomed a total of 190 animals, neutered 277 animals and provided 4,069 veterinary treatments (some animals had more than one treatment, so this represents less than 4,000 individual animals).

Rehoming email address

Apologies - there is a problem with the rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk address at the moment. If you email rspcacambridge@aol.com that will work. There's a problem with the redirect from our email domain to AOL, but using the direct address will work.

Interested in becoming an RSPCA trustee?

Would you like to use your skills and experience in becoming one of the RSPCA's charity trustees? The Council discusses plans for the RSPCA and makes the decisions that will affect how the RSPCA deals with animal issues in the future.

The RSPCA Council comprises up to 25 volunteers elected to serve as the charity trustees of the Society.

Fifteen national Council members are elected by the votes of the whole RSPCA membership and serve for three years, retiring on a rotational basis... [read more on the National RSPCA website]

RSPCA branches are also directed by trustee bodies: each branch elects a minimum of seven and a maximum of fourteen committee members at its Annual General Meeting each year. Branch trustees normally play a more "hands on" rôle than members of the RSPCA Council, because branches rely less on employed staff, so the committee members are responsible for carrying out the board's decisions as well as making them in the first place.

To stand for election to the committee of your local branch you need to be an adult member of the society of at least three months standing at the time of the AGM, and to have been nominated by two other adult branch members. It is important that committee members are "team players" and willing to learn. Most people will have their own particular areas of interest, such as pet rehoming, veterinary treatment or campaigns, but it is important that everyone is prepared to take a balanced view and accept that all aspects of branch activities are important in fostering animal welfare locally.

If you might be interested in standing for the Cambridge branch committee at our next AGM, please email secretary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk. If you're not already a member of the Society, you will need to apply to join, and you can do this online using the link at the side of this blog.

Another vomiting puppy

Yet another owner with no money and a 10 month old rottweiler puppy, "rescued" from someone else, and never vaccinated. Puppy has had vomiting and diarrhoea for three days, and the diarrhoea now has lots of blood in it.

I've agreed that we'll cover the cost of an initial consultation, but it doesn't look good.

Holiday planning

Amazon will pay us a small commission on all book purchases which start from this web page.

Evictions

I hope this morning's call from someone who is due to be evicted from her home and needs to find somewhere for her animals is not the first sign of an avalanche. We've already noticed that the rate of rehoming seems to be slowing as people think twice before taking on new commitments. If this is accompanied by significantly increased numbers of emergency requests to take in animals, then we are looking at real trouble.

We always need more volunteers willing to foster animals (mostly cats, but some dogs and smaller animals too). If you might be interested, please email rspcacambridge@aol.com. 

We will reimburse costs for pet food, litter etc. to fosterers. 

Rabbit Residence featured in Cambridge Evening News

Cambridge Evening News's video section has a piece on Rabbit Residence. Good write-up and very cute video of groups of bunnies hopping about in the snow.

If you might be interested in adopting a pair of rabbits from Caroline, please email her at rabbit_residence@hotmail.com

Progress report on new charity shop

Not an awful lot, I'm afraid. We are trying to purchase the remainder (5 years to run) of the lease of a shop on Burleigh street. This is turning out to be more complicated than we had thought, because this is an underlease (from Coral, the bookmakers), who in turn lease the shop from the Prudential Insurance, the freeholders. Because so many entities are involved, all of them need to agree before a final lease agreement can be signed—and we need to be satisfied that we aren't risking branch funds by making ourselves liable for unexpected costs.

Renting commercial property is rather different from renting a house or flat to live in because the landlord isn't normally the one who pays for any repairs—these are either done and paid for by the tenant directly or else the landlord does the repairs and charges the tenant. It's also different from buying a house leasehold, because a shop lease is basically just an agreement to pay rent for a certain number of years—the only "resale" value it has is the worth of any fittings put in by the previous tenant. So we have to take advice from a local surveyor about the value of the fittings and the probable cost of repairs during the term of the lease, and what we will need to spend at the end of the lease in order to return the unit to the condition it was in when Coral originally took it out. 

We also have to get confirmation from the ultimate landlord (the Pru) of the rent they will be charging. This is what we're waiting for at the moment, as we daren't take on the shop without knowing for certain what the rent is going to be over the next five years. 

We do know the current rent (we are not completely daft), but the sticking point is that this rent was due for review in February 2008. At that point shop rentable values were still fairly high in Cambridge, and it would be legitimate for the landlord to set the rent at an amount which would have been fair a year ago (i.e. more than the current value, and more than we could afford to pay in the current conditions). 

Another cat

Not very full details yet as Vet24 phoned immediately after the finders had brought the kitty to them. The cat is all (or almost all) white and about four or five years old. No collar or chip, and I don't think they'd definitely confirmed the sex, although they spoke about "him" which suggests they think this is a neutered male. He's apparently fairly bright, but has a probable pelvic fracture, so "the other Rosemary" is going to pick him up from them early tomorrow morning on her way in to do reception at the clinic.

Horses and ponies

A few RSPCA branches have facilities for caring for horses and other large domestic animals or have arrangements to board them in private livery stables, but in general the National Society takes responsibility for finding suitable accommodation for equines if they are taken in as a result of rescues or cruelty investigations. 

In the case of very large incidents, like the one at Amersham, other equine rescue organisations will usually chip in so that animals can be distributed among centres which have available space and suitable facilities. 

Rescues and cruelty investigations are always done by the Inspectorate in conjunction with vets and often with technical advice and help from experts such as the World Horse Welfare field officers. This means that it is important to contact the National Control Centre, rather than our branch, if you see horses which are neglected, injured or in danger, as this avoids delay.

The contact number for the Control Centre is 0300 1234 999. You may report incidents anonymously if necessary, but it is very important to give an accurate location for the animals, and preferably a contact phone number so that an inspector can call you back to get further details if needed. 

Be aware that if a case goes to prosecution it may be as long as a year before it comes before the courts—so the animals may be removed from a site, but you may not see any reports in the local media until very much later.

Held together with 'laccy bands and bits of string

Many of the people who come into contact with us for one reason or another get very frustrated because they feel we're not delivering the standard of service they expect. Conversely, many of the people we pay to provide some of those services aren't at all happy about the degree of pressure they're working under and the way the public often expect them field complaints about aspects of the RSPCA that aren't anything to do with them.

Clinic this morning was a case in point. One of our clients had bred some puppies from his bitch and one of them had diarrhoea. As the puppy was only three weeks old he was a bit reluctant to bring it to the surgery and he'd got it into his head that we ought to be able to diagnose and prescribe on the basis of a stool sample. He phoned in; argued with the volunteer receptionist about this and she took his number so that one of the vets could call him back. They were horrendously busy that morning and didn't get finished seeing patients until mid-day, at which point they still had several animals needing to be admitted to the hospital as in-patients and a string of other telephone call-backs to make.

By this time, Mr X. was pretty peeved that he'd not been called back yet, and decided to phone me on the out of hours number. All I could do was reiterate that the puppy really needed to be seen (otherwise there's no way to tell whether it's getting dehydrated) and that I would leave a message asking the vets if it was possible to call him a.s.a.p. Strictly speaking at this point I was asking them to bend the rules as the puppy a) could have been taken to the morning session and b) wasn't registered with the clinic (although its mum is) so isn't covered by our agreement with the Vet School to see registered patients outside normal hours in an emergency. Twenty minutes later he still hadn't got to the top of the urgent call-backs and phoned me ranting and raving that we didn't care about animals and why should he have to wait when his puppy was ill.

I am afraid that the answer is that you get what you pay for. Our annual turnover is around £200,000, which is a frighteningly large amount for a group of volunteers to raise. It relates to an annual demand for help for around 3,000-4,000 individual animals—less than £100 per animal. That means we have to do things on the cheap wherever possible. Our value to the University for student teaching means they charge us a lot less than a commercial rate for veterinary services, but it does mean consultations take longer (because the qualified vet needs to discuss the animals' conditions with the students). If we could pay the University enough for them to employ an extra vet at each session that would decrease waiting times, but that would mean raising at least another £40,000 every year. Similar considerations explain why our telephone availability is less than perfect (we're mostly volunteers taking calls in our spare time, not paid reception staff).

Experimental new pages for our rehoming

As an experiment, I've set up a second blog to display photos of the animals we have up for rehoming. I think this layout is easier to view than the current photo gallery, and Blogger's tagging system makes it easy to search for animals with particular characteristics, such as being used to living with cats.

Note that we don't always get photos of animals immediately they come in, because it depends on Janine travelling down to the kennels to take pictures, so if you don't see what you're looking for it's always worth emailing rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk to ask.

Post-Christmas clearouts?

Our charity shops at 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket are back in action after the break and can make good use of any unwanted presents or other saleable items you may be clearing out. The old retro/vintage clothing shop at 184 Mill Road is now closed, but clothing and bric-à-brac donations are still very useful to us at 188.

We will be saving any really good items for our new shop in central Cambridge and selling lower-value items at our jumble sales at the Mill Road Baptist church. There is still a fairly good market for textile items for recycling, so even worn or damaged clothing, curtains etc. can help our fundraising efforts.

Plans for the new year include increased online sales of books. This will mean some re-organisation of the basement stockroom at 188 because the books we list on the internet must be shelved in order so that they can be located easily when purchase requests come in. This is very important because failure to fulfill orders which have been placed means a negative mark against us and might cause us to be delisted as a seller.

Hope this isn't an indication of things to come...

Aggravating message on Janine's answerphone wanting us to take in a nine year old labrador because the owners have now got a kitten and the dog is not getting on well with her. As it happens we're absolutely full up now and couldn't have taken the dog in any case, but it illustrates how the "Christmas Present Pet" problem has morphed over the years.

It's now incredibly rare to have requests to take in animals who were given as unexpected Christmas presents to families who didn't want them, and I think that educational message has got through. What we do see appears to be a kind of "holiday stress" effect whereby people want to give up animals because disruption of the normal routine makes keeping them more difficult; visiting grandchildren or children from a previous relationship are a common reason.

Hello 2009!

Hopefully not starting as it means to go on, with a 6.30 am call from the 24 hour vet to say they'd been phoned by one of the clients registered with our clinic, whose 16 year old dog was suddenly showing alarming symptoms of some kind of generalised allergic reaction.

The owners were evidently in such a panic that they'd forgotten how to make contact with us outside normal hours, by phoning the number given on their registration card. Instead they'd phoned the National Control Centre, who'd naturally said that our clinic is closed on Bank holidays. They'd then phoned the 24 hour vet and been horrified to find that the consultation charge alone for 6.30 on a holiday morning is £130.

Fortunately the receptionist at Vet24 was on the ball (one of the advantages of running on a shift system is that that staff are awake and in their right minds at peculiar times of day) and thought to contact me, so I was able to get them into our own out of hours cover via the University vet school, which is still reasonably expensive at that time of day, but nothing like £130.

I can't reiterate enough. If you are very strapped for cash it is more vital than ever that you make sure you understand how your own vet's out of hours cover works. If an animal is off-colour just before a holiday, don't hope for the best; get it checked out while the surgery is still running on normal charging rates. If you can't afford a private vet because you are on benefits, get your animal registered with the PDSA, Blue Cross or RSPCA before something happens.

And another rabbit!

She's medium sized and fawn coloured. Taken to Vet24 by someone who found her wandering just after Christmas.

More and more cats!

Pretty apricot tortie brought to Cambridge Veterinary Group on Cherry Hinton Road and a black and white tom cat at Arbury road vets. The tortie is fairly well except for a probable thyroid condition and the tom cat has a fractured pelvis which they think will just need cage rest. They're keeping both cats in for a few days to see how they go.

Update on Santa and Sox

Good progress report for Sox (the current blocked bladder kitty), who's doing well following his operation and has an excellent chance of being able to live a normal life from now on, except that he will always need to be kept on a diet of wet food with no dry kibble. Not so good for Santa (collar wound), as the injury has opened up again and will probably need to be closed with a skin graft.

Nice, peaceful Christmas day

Wonderful! No calls at all. After the Christmas Eve frenzy I was bracing myself for even more impossible to solve calls over Christmas day itself, but fortunately it seems that everyone managed to have their disasters beforehand.

The animal clinic will be open as normal on Tuesday, closed on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, then back to normal opening times.

The Christmas Eve blues

Kicked off to a cracking start (excuse bad pun) with a kitten with probable broken bones in one foot (plant pot fell on his toe). As there's no RSPCA clinic session now until Saturday I agreed with the private vet that it wasn't fair on the kitten simply to give pain relief and wait until then, so we covered x-ray and support bandaging as well. If the x-rays suggest that the foot actually needs surgery the owner will go to our clinic on the Saturday.

Followed in short order by a vomiting dog (probably just an upset tum as she is fairly current with her vaccinations).

Next, and more worrying, an ownerless cat from Swavesey area with diarrhoea. She's not seriously ill, and the 24 hour vet was reluctant to have her occupying a cage over the whole of the break as the space will probably be needed for emergencies. The kennels where we board is completely full until some of the private boarders go home, and this is academic in any case as no-one is available for transport as Janine's car won't start. After some frantic phoning, I asked the vet to call the finder and ask if she would be prepared to have her back until after Christmas now the diarrhoea's been treated. To everyone's relief she was very understanding and drove in to pick up the cat. Annoyingly this one actually has been chipped, but it seems to have been done in America and none of the chip databases have any record of her owner's current address. Best guess is that she originally came from one of the bases and was either rehomed in Swavesey or got there by accident after hiding in a vehicle of some kind.

Santa, the cat with the collar wound is doing well, but needs to stay in for the moment as his wound is still draining. Yet another cat with a blocked bladder has been signed over to us as his owner couldn't cope and he's had his operation too and is also looking good.

And a kitten!

She's about nine weeks old, and black with white feet. Found in Isleham and taken to Swayne & Partners vets. She's not injured or ill, and if she'd been older we'd have suggested that she be returned to the place she was found, as it's most unlikely that a healthy adult cat in good body condition is lost or in trouble unless there are other factors (such as being found shut in a vehicle) which suggest a problem. That's not appropriate for such a small kitten, so we're boarding her at the vets over Christmas and will move her to our kennels in the new year if her owner doesn't turn up in the meantime. 

I'm wondering whether she belongs to someone staying at the marina for Christmas and managed to get out.

Happy Holidays - Summer ones, that is

If you plan to spend part of your Christmas break looking through catalogues of exotic places, please bear in mind that your pets' holiday arrangements need to be booked well in advance too. My spare room has two extra Christmas "guests" whose owners didn't realise that all local boarding kennels would be completely booked up a fortnight before the start of the break.

On the plus side, this has forced me to bite the bullet and relocate Nicholas to a pen in a busier part of the house and his neurotic reaction shows how necessary it was. After a day on hunger-strike, he's still complaining bitterly, but wolfing down his dinner and using his litter tray. He's still completely unaggressive, just very unhappy about enforced proximity to people. He must have been socialised at some point, because it's perfectly possible to pick him up (trembling like a leaf), and he makes eye contact when he cries asking to go back upstairs. After a bit of grumbling, "Why is that Cat making All That Noise," my own cats are ignoring him, which is a relief.

Spoke too soon!

Now, it's another stray at Swayne & Partners in Newmarket with a broken pelvis. He's a large, neutered black cat.

Update on white cat

Her owner has turned up, so that's one less to worry about over the Christmas break.

Andrew's Christmas window display at the bookshop

And another cat

This one sounds as if she may have an owner somewhere out there. She's adult, but fairly young, mostly white, with some black markings. She was taken to Stone Lane Vets in Meldreth last night after being hit by a car. They think she has head injuries, which will probably clear up with nursing care over the weekend, but she probably also has a fractured foreleg. Plan is for them to see how the head injury goes and x-ray the leg on Monday if she's fit enough then to give a general anaesthetic.

External fixators

The Vet Nurse has an interesting post showing "before and after" radiographs of a puppy's broken leg fitted with an external fixator to keep the two ends of the bone in alignment so that they will heal. I thought I'd link to it so anyone interested can see what's actually going on when I talk about animals we take in having an external fixator on a broken leg. 

Rabbit behaviour

Just been reading the coverage of the case in Hampshire involving a very large number of rabbits which was finalised in November. One very striking (and alarming) feature of the comments on the case is the number of people who believe that:

• Rabbits are solitary.
• Rabbits don't need exercise.
• Rabbits don't need to be vaccinated.
• Rabbits don't need to be neutered

So, I thought I'd post a few videos culled from YouTube and Google Video showing what rabbits can do if they're given the chance (the New Zealand white in the last clip could teach some dogs a thing or two about obedience training).

Switch on Radio Cambridgeshire tomorrow morning

Janine, our homing co-ordinator will be on Radio Cambridgeshire tomorrow morning (Thursday) being interviewed in their mobile van about the problem of long-stay dogs in general and Ghost in particular. 

Poor Ghost is our longest-staying dog. He nearly found a home earlier in the year, but unfortunately it fell through at the last moment. 

Ghost will be "interviewed" along with Janine (not sure if he barks on cue). It should be on-air around 7.30 am, but if you miss the live version, you should be able to get the interview via the BBC's listen-again option on the web (look for the breakfast show).

Here's hoping the poor little guy gets lucky this time.

Another cat with a collar wound

Call from Arbury road vets to say they've just taken in a stray cat with a badly infected collar wound that will need surgical repair to close it. He's another entire male, but fortunately has tested negative for FIV/FeLV. He'll need to be transferred to the clinic tomorrow morning.

Update on Nicholas

Had his x-ray yesterday and all looks fine. Still terrified of vets, though. Poor little chap sat there shaking so much they decided trying to check whether his heart murmur is real or not was pretty pointless. 

184 Mill Road Closing Down Sale

All items out on display are now £1. Call by to pick up some fantastic bargains (and to save me from spending this Christmas carting stuff between shops. Last Christmas we shifted all the books into the larger sales area at 188 and it nearly finished off the lot of us).

We hope to see you throughout 2009 at the bookshop, which continues at 188 Mill Road and later in the year at much improved and expanded premises nearer the centre of town. We're still in discussions with the agents about the lease agreement for the new shop, so keep watching this space.

184 was in the nature of a trial of the possibility of a specialist vintage clothing charity shop to maximise the revenue potential from clothes donations. We think it's demonstrated that the idea will work; but not on Mill road, which doesn't get a high enough volume of potential purchasers on weekdays. In a more central position we'll be able to showcase our stock to the student and University population and to tourists.

On Vaccinations

The Vetnurse blog has a long and excellent piece about nursing dogs with parvo-virus. It isn't worth risking a dog's life in order to save the cost of vaccination. 

Whether or not animal charities should be prepared to help with the cost of vaccinations for owners on very low income has sometimes been a contentious issue. 

On the negative side: vaccinations are a predictable expense, unlike, say, a broken leg. If vaccinations are offered at charity-run clinics and hospitals, they are potentially competing for business with private vets. This is not just unfair to those vets: it might be harming the pet owners who need to use the private vet (by decreasing the number of private veterinary surgeries so that it's more difficult to find a local vet). 

On the positive side: £30 is a lot of money for someone on benefits of £60 or £70 a week. It's always likely that they will put off getting their pet vaccinated and just hope they'll get away with it. Providing low-cost vaccinations encourages more people to get their pets vaccinated, and reduces the spread of infections. This benefits other pet owners whose animals may be at risk in spite of being vaccinated, because they're very old, or very young, or have inefficient immune systems. 

As a courtesy to local vets RSPCA clinics are expected to consult them before offering a low-cost vaccination service. We did that several years ago when we first started providing vaccinations at the Cambridge clinic and, to their great credit, every one of them backed us in spite of the risk that they might lose money by it. 

Two cats abandoned

The vet nurse at Soham Pet Doctors turned up to start the day shift and found two young cats in a cardboard box sitting on their doorstep. They're about 6 months old and seem to have been well-cared for (and, to give the owner credit, they had at least been left where they were guaranteed to be found and looked after). 

Cruelty Prosecutions

As the purely volunteer side of the RSPCA, we have comparatively little to do with prosecutions. If animals are signed over to the Society early on in the course of a case, then we may be asked to take them in for rehoming. If animals are confiscated by the court and transferred to the RSPCA at the end of a case, we may be involved. However, in general, we have no knowledge of ongoing investigations beyond what is available to the published media. This is as it should be, because investigation and prosecution is something which should only involve trained professional staff.

However, the campaign on the Petstreet site to stop the RSPCA carrying out prosecutions made me wonder about the way cruelty investigation and prosecution is organised in other countries. (I should point out that Petstreet don't want to stop cruelty to animals being treated as a crime; they simply want the process of prosecution to be restricted to the Crown Prosecution Service because they think the RSPCA is too willing to prosecute people.)

In Scotland, the SSPCA actually have statutory powers but this doesn't include the ability to take out prosecutions. The SSPCA's submission to Holyrood during the enquiry into the provisions needed for operation of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland Act) said:

"It is essential that the Scottish SPCA have use of these powers under Sections 29-32 in order to carry out the functions outlined above to relieve animals from suffering on a daily basis. Due to Scotland’s system of public prosecutions, unlike its counterpart in England and Wales the Scottish SPCA does not and cannot carry out private prosecutions. Like all prosecutions in Scotland, all prosecutions under the 1912 Act are pursued by the Procurator Fiscal, to whom the Scottish SPCA reports cases and not the Scottish SPCA itself. This will remain the case under the new Bill.
Without recognition under the new Bill, Scottish SPCA Inspectors would not have the same authority to report cases to the Procurators Fiscal as they do now. If the express powers under Sections 29-32 were to be given to local authorities and to the police, and not to the Scottish SPCA, a defence solicitor may well challenge Scottish SPCA evidence based on the manner in which the evidence was collected. This would be undesirable and damaging for animal welfare, for the prosecution of malefactors, and for the standing of the Scottish SPCA."

There appears to be some discontent among other animal welfare groups in Scotland who believe that the SSPCA is too cautious about using its powers.

The USPCA has no statutory powers and no citizen's right to prosecute. 

The legal situation in Australia appears to be virtually identical to that in England and Wales, with RSPCA Australia taking out private prosecutions, using the common-law right of ordinary citizens. Interestingly, there seems to have been a vociferous attempt to strip RSPCA Australia of its right to prosecute in the belief that this would lead to a higher, rather than lower, number of prosecutions of animal owners.

The New Zealand SPCAs have more statutory powers than any of the UK SPCAs (including the RSPCA):

"There are approximately 90 SPCA inspectors in New Zealand

Inspectors duties vary greatly depending on their locality but the priority for all inspectors is to enforce the Animal Welfare Act 1999

An inspector is issued a warrant by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry after successfully completing a series of assignments and examinations.

A warranted inspector has powers under the Animal Welfare Act 1999 to enter at any time - by force if necessary - into any vehicle, aircraft, or vessel, or on any land or premises, for the purpose of inspecting any animal, where he is satisfied on reasonable grounds that an offence against [the Animal Welfare Act 1999] is being, or has been, committed in respect of any animal.

Inspectors can remove (seize) an animal and take it to a safe location while enquiries are made."

The New Zealand SPCAs take out private prosecutions in the same way as the RSPCAs in England and Australia.

The situation in the US is more complicated, because all the states have slightly differing animal cruelty laws. However the SPCAs and Humane societies do not take out private prosecutions (the citizen's right of private prosecution seems to have fallen into disuse). The normal course appears to be for the SPCA to call the local police and request them to investigate if they suspect animal protection laws have been broken. This appears to result in a relatively high acquittal rate. Part of the problem appears to be lack of resources; cruelty investigations may be shelved because other crime is considered more urgent, and they may be "hived off" to Animal Control, which is itself very over-stretched (rather as though cruelty complaints in this country all had to go via the dog warden). 

The CPS itself states:

"The right of individuals to bring private prosecutions (with certain exceptions) was included under the Prosecution of Offences Act, which set up The CPS. The CPS has the right to take over the prosecution and continued it; OR to take over the prosecution and discontinue it; OR to allow it to continue. The CPS recognises that the right to bring a private prosecution should remain and that The CPS should not take over a private prosecution unless there is a good reason to do so."

What's the lesson from all this? I would be unhappy if we ended up with the chaotic system we see in the US. Ironically the least complained-about system is the one where the SPCA has the greatest powers — possibly because the fact that SPCA inspectors are also sworn as law enforcement agents increases confidence that those powers will be used responsibly. Possibly the legal status also reduces criticism from groups who think the SPCA don't do enough to change the way animals are treated, because it's clearer that a quasi-statutory body can't go beyond what is acceptable to the majority of people (by advocating universal adoption of vegetarianism, for instance).

Update

It seems that the position of RSPCA Australia is less similar to ours than I thought. 

"TICKY FULLERTON: One message councillors did receive came as a warning. The State Government relies heavily on the live trade economy. The RSPCA's $250,000 annual funding from government could be under threat.

YVONNE PALLIER: The chief executive was very clear to the council. He said that if we proceed... If we proceed with this prosecution, we will lose our government funding.

TICKY FULLERTON: He actually said that at a meeting?

YVONNE PALLIER: He said that. Mm-hm.

ERIC BALL: Uh, that's got to be put in perspective. What he said was that the council needs to recognise, needs to recognise, that if we succeeded in stopping the live export trade, you may well then alienate any funding from any State Government.

TICKY FULLERTON: If you succeeded in stopping the live export trade in Western Australia, wouldn't that be worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars?

ERIC BALL: Oh, yes, and he wasn't suggesting that we...we should be influenced by that. But he did say we need to recognise that not only will it cost us funds to prosecute, but it may also stop the future flow of funds. And that may be...may be important in our sustainability.

TICKY FULLERTON: Just last Friday, Eric Ball told Four Corners that the case was not closed. He has further reports to present to this week's council meeting. But there's another factor that could influence the decision - a fear that government could strip the RSPCA of its prosecution powers.

MARK PEARSON, ANIMAL LIBERATION: I asked Dr Hugh Wirth quite clearly, "Why is it that the RSPCA aren't proactively investigating, and when necessary, prosecuting intensive farming corporations for cruelty to animals?" And he said to me very clearly, "Well, look, Mr Pearson, if I were to do that - if the RSPCA were to do that - proactively as you say, we would lose our powers. The government would take away our powers as a prosecution authority."

DR HUGH WIRTH, RSPCA NATIONAL PRESIDENT: Well, it is true that the governments in Australia have in the last 15 years, uh, tightened up on who can prosecute and have tightened up on who can be an RSPCA inspector. And remember that Labor governments are throughout Australia now. Labor party policy is to remove all private organisations from enforcing criminal law."

That was in 2004, and seems to have been something of a nine-days wonder as I couldn't find any later references. 

The whole thing is a bit odd, because the people complaining RSPCA Australia was too subservient to government influence seem not to appreciate that this is not a very good argument in favour of making cruelty prosecution entirely dependent on the state. 

If you read the full transcript, you'll see there were also some complaints from the other side of the spectrum that RSPCA Australia was "emotional" and the five freedoms are anthropomorphic. 

It would be an interesting project for a law student to do a real in-depth comparison of all the different systems. 

Freedom Food

More on Freedom Food stocking density negotiations in Farmers Weekly Interactive.

Currently, Freedom Food egg flocks have a maximum external stocking density of 1000/ha. However, last month, Lion eggs announced that it was doubling its external stocking limit to 2000 birds/ha from 1 January 2009 and called on Freedom Food to follow suit. This is still below the 2500 birds/ha upper limit allowed under the EU marketing regulations.

It's worth reading it all to get a feel for the way Freedom Food standards are developed. 

November Figures

Just totted up the stats. for November. Altogether the branch provided low-cost treatments for 207 dogs, 111 cats, 14 rabbits and 7 miscellaneous animals. We neutered 10 dogs, 9 cats and 18 rabbits, and microchipped 4 dogs and 9 cats, and we rehomed 3 dogs, 9 cats and 3 guinea-pigs. 7 dogs, 4 cats and 2 rats had to be put to sleep on veterinary advice.

On money, myths, donations and dogs

The St Bernards saga has provoked the usual "how dare the RSPCA ask for donations" chorus over at Petstreet (which is actually an interesting site except for the way it's been taken over by people with axes to grind). I must confess that I only visit occasionally out of respect for my blood pressure. 

However, as it's Monday, I'll try to address a few of the perennial myths and misrepresentations.

National RSPCA funds. A figure of £200 million is always bandied about as if this was sitting in a bank account somewhere. In fact, just under half of this is the value of buildings used for RSPCA animal welfare activities (shelters, hospitals etc.). The rest is approximately the amount of money which would be needed to keep the RSPCA going for a year if something catastrophic caused income to dry up entirely. In reality, the society wouldn't just run for a year, then disband; the reserves would be used to buy time to close down everything except absolutely core activities, so that a reduced organisation could continue indefinitely.

Donating pet food instead of money. The reasoning behind this seems to be that by giving food, donors can ensure that their generosity doesn't simply go towards lining someone's pockets. The problem with this is that food is only relatively small proportion of the cost of caring for animals. If a large number of animals need to be taken in, they'd normally be spread about among a combination of animal homes owned and run by the National Society or its branches; ordinary private boarding kennels and volunteer fosterers. 

Donated food is very useful for our own animal homes and our fosterers (who would otherwise buy in food). It can be a bit of an imposition for private boarding kennels (because it means we're asking them to take an assortment of food, calculate its value, and knock the amount off their invoice to us). From their point of view, we're asking them to do extra work when it would be much simpler just to use their normal supplier. 

When you consider that we're probably also asking them to accept animals at odd hours; take animals to and from the vet, and deal with adopters asking to view animals you can see that it may not be sensible for us to ask them to use donated food as a way of saving money.

If you'd like to donate pet food, cat food is generally more useful than dog food (because cats are more likely to be fostered than dogs), and RSPCA-owned shelters are more likely to be able to make good use of food than branches who don't have their own animal centre.

You can find your closest RSPCA-owned animal centre via the main website. (Enter your own post code and pull down the menu to "Rehoming"). Most branches without animal centres rehome via private boarding kennels, and most animal centres use private kennels as "overflow" capacity.

Christmas Closing Dates

The Animal clinic will be closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Normal emergency cover arrangements will apply.

Charity shops will close at 3 pm on Christmas Eve, and re-open the day following New Year's Day. 184 Mill Road which will then be permanently closed (but volunteers will be busy sorting its remaining stock for storage until our new shop opens in February).

Winterfair results

The tombola raised £117.20 and was sold out in only two hours. Many thanks to Nicola, Sharon, Michael and everyone else who helped or bought tickets. It was perishing cold, so the helpers probably wouldn't have wanted to put in very much longer, but next year we'll try to collect enough items to keep going for at least three hours.

At the other end of Mill Road, Sue was doing a brisk trade with her veggie hot dogs, but no final total yet.

This was the last day 184 will be trading as a specialist clothing boutique and for the rest of the runup to Xmas it will be operating as a "pound stop" selling off the items that aren't good enough to keep in store until the new premises near the Grafton Centre are up and running.

Please look in for lots of excellent bargains.

The secondhand bookshop at 188 will continue and is the place to visit if you're in need of holiday reading to tide you over the Christmas break. Xmas cards are now in, and we also stock cotton "long-life" carrier bags as part of the drive to make Mill Road a plastic carrier free area.

Pet Insurance woes again

It does make me cross. An owner who did the responsible thing and got her dog insured found that her policy was almost worthless because the insurers refused to pay out until they'd received a copy of the paid invoice from the vet, and the company employing her usual vet were insisting on payment up front. 

For many people this wouldn't be a big deal: they'd simply pay with their credit card and pay off the card when the insurer reimbursed them. This owner was on benefits (and kudos to her for putting aside the money to pay her insurance each month in the circumstances). Hopefully she will get at least something back on the policy, as she's eligible to use our clinic and will be able to claim reimbursement of the cost of having the dog's operation done there. That doesn't make it fair that she's had nearly a week of misery thinking the dog might die if she couldn't find a way to get the operation done.

Moral: read the small print before taking out pet insurance, and ask your vet to check their practice's policy on settling bills via insurance claims. 

More stocking fillers

The delightful series of animal books by Doreen Tovey have just been reprinted in paperback. 1% commission payable to the branch if you buy them from Amazon by following the links above. Best not read while drinking your tea as spluttering may occur as the hapless Toveys battle with recalcitrant Siamese cats and other animals.

Charity Shops Mini-Survey

One of our main sources of regular income is the work of our three branch charity shops. 

As with many aspects of animal welfare, there are different (and bitterly-opposed) schools of thought about the best way shops should be organised in order to maximise income. In an attempt to get some feel for what potential shoppers actually do prefer I offer the survey below. Any and all responses much appreciated.

Updates

Samuel, the little terrier, now has a home.

Nicholas continues to eat for England. Still looking very pathetic (partly because his rear end was shaved for the surgery, so he looks like a mini-baboon), but he's progressed to loud wails of discontent whenever he thinks meals are due and he doesn't appear to have any pain at all now when he walks. I'm a bit concerned that he's still so shy; he's not at all aggressive or "spitty", but he hides in his igloo and peers out waiting until I've left the room before he will eat. I was hoping that he could go down to the kennels if his X-ray gives the all-clear next week, but he's not going to "sell" himself if he hides away. 

It might be better to move him to a pen in a more populous area of the house to encourage him to come out of his shell, but that's going to be a problem if Otto and Luigi (or any of the females come to that) decide to take exception to the presence of an entire male. I would really rather not share a home with cats who have decided they're cross enough to start spraying. Thistledown used to pee into electric sockets, which is dangerous; expensively wrecks the house electrics, and creates an aroma which does not give the right impression.

No news yet on the culture results for Darcy.

Update on the St Bernards (from the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph)

I should again stress that I don't have any inside information. However, this update has just appeared in my newsfeed for RSPCA items, and is from the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. 

Stocking Fillers

Superior crime novels by Nevada Barr, with the intriguing twist that they are each set in a different North American National Park, with the natural world playing the part of a major character in the plot. Each cover picture above links in to Amazon and we will get a small commission for each book purchased via the link.

Please don't phone about the St Bernards yet

I don't have access to any information beyond the published news stories and we are not one of the kennels which have been asked to take some of the dogs. Anyone interested in adopting one of them if they are transferred to the ownership of the RSPCA is probably best advised to keep checking the national website www.rspca.org.uk for further announcements. 

Please don't phone any of the emergency contact numbers as this will stop callers who need urgent help with sick or injured animals getting through.

There is absolutely no question of any of the dogs being put to sleep unless a vet advises that they are too ill to be treated, nor of other dogs being put to sleep to make space to house them.

Updates

Samuel, the little terrier cross with the broken pelvis, has had his operation and the vets say he's looking good and should be able to come out tomorrow or the day after. Janine has a possible home lined up and she's going to ask them if they'd be willing to have him for his month's cage rest as that would be much nicer for him than going into boarding kennels.

Nicholas, the cat with the broken pelvis, is still very timid, but eating like a horse and looking quite comfortable in his cat igloo.

The elderly cat at Swaynes vets is having further tests to try to find why he's so thin.

Darcy, the cat with pyothorax, still has some fluid in his chest, so they're going to drain it again and culture the pus for sensitivity in case the bacteria causing the infection are resistant to standard antibiotics. 

Yet another stray via Stone Lane Vets — a tabby and white neutered male about four years old. For a change he's got no apparent injuries or illness, but the finder is fairly certain that he's been left behind when his owners moved away.

Exciting breakthrough for US rabbits

Petco, one of the major US petstore chains, has announced that plans to phase out sales of pet rabbits in favour of in-store adoptions from rescue organisations. As in this country, rabbits are the third most popular pet in the States, and a huge headache for welfare organisations because so many become unwanted when buyers find out how expensive and difficult it can be to care for them properly. 

Unlike cats and dogs, low-cost spay/neuter provision for pet owners doesn't help very much because the majority of unwanted rabbits are not the result of unwanted litters born to pets, but the result of purchases of animals deliberately bred for the pet trade. If this comes off, it should be an important step in bringing the productivity of the rabbit population in line with the availability of good homes.  I believe it has the potential to be a win/win situation because rabbits are cheap, but the kit you need to keep them properly is expensive, to say nothing of vaccination, parasite treatment, etc. etc. Hopefully, PETCO will end up with a smaller number of genuine rabbit enthusiasts who spend more per individual rabbit owned.

Tip No-Kill Nation blog

Puppy Spam?

Has anyone else been getting emails that are ostensibly from someone who needs to rehome a litter of bulldog puppies because of family problems? We've had several, with slightly different variations on the story, and are wondering whether they're some kind of scam. Bulldogs are a comparatively rare breed and it would be very surprising to have several owners who'd bred one litter having family disasters in quick succession. Actually it would be surprising if a genuine breeder of pedigree bulldogs wasn't already in contact with other breed enthusiasts —the owner of the puppies' father, for starters — who would be able and willing to take on the job of placing the pups. 

Possible motivations might be:

• They're spam adverts targeted at anyone with an animal-related web page from someone who's breeding bulldogs commercially but wants to give the impression that these are puppies reared in a domestic home. 

• They're some kind of advance-fee fraud - hoping to get a payment before puppies are delivered.

• They're not actually anything to do with dogs, and they're simply trying to provoke a response to verify that they've harvested a live email address.

Updates

Nicola transported bladder trouble cat 1 to the kennels last Friday and I'm hoping that the fact that they've not been in contact about him means he's not had any more problems.

Bladder trouble cat 2 (with the fractured pelvis) started peeing on Monday & I've now got him in my spare room in cat pen (back to the Vet School for a recheck X-ray in 2 weeks). They think the not-peeing was just because it hurt and that he's got no long-term medical problems. He's a very nice looking male (all black), was entire but the Vet School castrated him when they fixed his pelvis. Other than warning any new owner that he's got metal screws inside, which will show up on any future x-ray, he should do well. 

He ate his supper last night and used his litter tray, but still looks rather horrified when anyone comes in the room, poor little chap. Fear of vets seems to be a hazard for cats with pelvic fractures as they get quite a lot of very painful handling during the initial period of examination. My own Elsie has the embarrassing distinction of being banned by the vet unless she's really, really ill because she turns into an insane fear-biter at the surgery. At her last visit she had to be recaptured as she tried to exit through the window-glass by putting her carrier over her and sliding a board across the top, rather like someone catching a wasp with a drinking glass and a piece of card.

The vets phoned this morning to say that Darcy, the pyothorax cat, had a good night and looks quite bright. They'll do another x-ray of his chest on Monday.

The stray terrier has a broken pelvis, which they'll probably operate on today, but they are hopeful that his head injuries aren't serious as he seems brighter in himself. He'll need several weeks cage rest before he can go to the kennels for rehoming and we hope one of our fosterers will be able to take him.

If you might be interested in fostering animals for the branch, please email rspcacambridge@aol.com

Raining cats

We gave some financial help to treat a cat suffering from pyothorax at a private vet earlier in the week, but it became obvious to the vet that the cat's owners weren't going to be capable of dealing with the situation and she persuaded them that it would be in his best interest to be signed over to us for treatment and rehoming. As the cat was so poorly the private vet was keen to get him transferred to the Vet School hospital to give him the best possible chance, but this can be a convoluted process because of the terms of our agreement with them.

Basically this means incoming RSPCA animals must initially be presented at our clinic (because its teaching utility is the reason why the School give us such favourable charges). By Murphy's law it turned out that today was more or less the only one when none of our volunteer drivers was available. Finished up booking a morning's leave and taking a taxi from my home to the private vet; onward to the clinic; touch base there and on to the hospital. 

This annoying scenario in fact may have been for the best, as it meant I was on the spot when another set of cat owners appeared several hours after the deadline to admit RSPCA cases and with no money or proof of benefits. They'd come from Littleport and must have driven past about ten vets on their way to Cambridge. After some frantic phone-calls, I managed to get them an appointment with one of the vets in Ely later in the afternoon. The two cats definitely needed to be seen before our own next session as one of them had a crushing injury to his tail (owner's initial description of it "hanging off" was fortunately exaggeration) and his sister has a probable broken leg. 

Collected Nicholas (the cat with the pelvic fracture) in exchange for Darcy and his nasty infection.  Nicholas has been using his litter tray quite happily, so should be OK in a pen in my spare room for his two weeks enforced cage rest.

Phew!

And another

Elderly ginger and white tom cat (they think neutered - they hadn't checked until I asked). He doesn't seem to be injured, just a bit doddery on his pins, so he may just have wandered out of his own garden and got chilled. 

Update on cat at Pet Doctors

He's doing well, and the person who originally found him is going to adopt him.

Update on cat with dislocated hip

At least some good news for a change! Dislocated hip cat turns out to have an owner and is fully insured, so no further cause for concern about his treatment. It looks as though he's going to make a full recovery. Excellent. 

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.

Chris Nice on TV

Four days left to watch Chris Nice (our local inspector) dicing with death as he tries to rescue a trapped starling (via BBC i-player). 

Not a good weekend

Got up on Saturday morning and checked on fostered cats as usual only to find that Grace was having some kind of seizure. Phoned the emergency contact for the Vet School and took her straight down. They gave her diazepam to stop the fitting, put her on a warmed saline drip and took a blood sample to try to find out what had caused it. I was expecting them to find that she was uraemic, which basically means that kidney failure has caused a rise in toxins which should be eliminated in the urine, but no, her blood results weren't normal, but they weren't bad enough to explain the fitting either.

Because of her age I agreed there wasn't any point in doing an MRI scan as that costs £1,000 and she would have been very unlikely to survive a brain operation if it showed she had a brain tumour in any case. The most likely cause of the fitting was probably a small bleed or clot within the brain, for which supportive care in the hope that the body will heal itself is the only real treatment. 

Sadly they phoned later in the afternoon to say that she'd died. 

Earlier in the morning Pet Doctors phoned to tell me that the rabbit they treated on Friday had died during the night: sad, but not a huge surprise because rabbits are so delicate compared with cats and dogs, and because their digestive systems tend to shut down if any trauma stops them eating for any length of time.

Sad as Grace's death is, at least she had a couple of months' comfort in a (relatively!*) normal domestic setting with warmth and food that she enjoyed. It does reinforce my conviction that, if we are going to take in very old animals at all, we need to move heaven and earth to transfer them to foster or permanent homes rather than putting them into kennels.

*Tim Wass once described my squalid domestic arrangements as, Not somewhere he'd fancy having a cup of tea, but with dedicated care for the animals. Hmm.

Update on the bunny

They've done an X-ray and now think he may simply have a dislocated hip, so they're going to have a go at putting it back under sedation. 

and a rabbit!

Not looking too great, I'm afraid. He was picked up near Ely and taken to Pet Drs vets, but he doesn't seem to have the use of his back legs. He's a grey lionhead and has obviously escaped from someone's garden. They're giving supportive treatment in the hope that it's the effect of bruising that will heal with time as there doesn't seem to be any actual fractures to explain his inability to stand.

More cats again, and updates

Another traffic accident via Cathedral vets in Ely (dislocated hip, which they will probably pin there to avoid the need to transfer to the Vet School, then to the kennels) and another entire tom with septic fight wounds admitted at Pet Drs in Soham — fortunately testing FIV/FeLV negative.

The cat admitted to the Vet School hospital last week has had his pelvis plated and can walk fairly normally, but he still can't urinate without help. They think this is a temporary problem which will go away as the pelvic bruising heals up. He's not terribly happy in the hospital because it's very noisy and strange, so ideally we'd get him out to a foster home where he could get more peace and quiet, but it's difficult because it needs to be someone who's willing to be trained to express his bladder manually until he gets back normal muscle control.

Spirit, the blocked bladder kitty has been castrated and is FIV/FeLV negative and seems to be passing urine with no problems, so Nicola's planning to move him to the kennels tomorrow.

Freedom Food

Gave a short talk on the work of the local branch to Anglia Ruskin Student Animal Welfare Society and the validity of the Freedom Food scheme came up in the Q&A session afterwards. Looking back on this, I don't think I got across the significance of FF as a source of advice on best practice for farmers who genuinely want to improve animal welfare on their farms. The students mainly seemed to view it as a mechanism for checking up on farmers and catching them out (and universally wanted to press for more frequent inspections).

The audit aspect of any welfare acreditation scheme obviously is important (otherwise no-one knows whether farmers are complying with the standards and deserve premium prices), but I don't think the average person stops to consider the importance of the science and knowledge that goes into the development of standards in the first instance.

One of the most valuable (and comparatively little-known) features of Freedom Food is the iterative process by which standards are devised; studied in actual commercial use and then revised on the basis of the findings from those studies.

There's some information about this on the Bristol University Veterinary science website, and also the EU Welfare Quality site. The Guardian has an article relating just to the Freedom food standards for broiler chickens which illustrates why annual inspections might not be sufficient to catch individual acts of cruelty or indiference by workers, but would verify the farm's systems and processes.

Further thoughts

I suppose what I'm getting at partly is that some things (e.g. employee behaviour) do need spot checks, but a lot of the things that go towards improved welfare on farms aren't really likely to be whisked away once the assessor's back is turned. Buildings, for example don't need more than annual checks; and some aspects of good practice can be assessed by requiring record-keeping. Records might be forged, but if health records include veterinary visits, vaccination etc. deviation from the required standards would require collusion from an assortment of professional people with a reputation to lose.

More thoughts

Freedom Food is the only welfare-specific assurance/quality label scheme in Europe, and it was started before the similar schemes in the US. 

Bristol University has some example assessor recording forms and flow charts which illustrate what is being checked; it's not simply a matter of an inspector turning up and looking for examples of cruelty.

I think there are important parallels with Nathan Winograd's thoughts on how attitudes to humans can make animal advocates less effective at helping animals. If we assume that most other people are nasty, uncaring individuals who can never be trusted we end up alienating potential allies, wasting resources and ultimately failing to achieve progress. If we assume that other people are basically trustworthy and want to avoid cruelty, we may sometimes be deceived, but overall we'll make better gains even if we sometimes have to accept that not everyone shares our views about what constitutes good animal welfare.

Small Hedgehogs

The wildlife hospital at East Winch is having another large influx of young hedgehogs below the critical weight for safe hibernation. Hedgehogs need to be at least 500 grams (just over a pound) and preferably 600 (a pound and a quarter) to get through hibernation and late autumn litters often fail to make it before the weather gets too cold for them to feed successfully.

Young hedgehogs are one of the few wild animals who can be given effective help by non-experts: provided they are capable of eating solid food, it is feasible to give them a chance of survival by providing them with room-temperature warmth and a supply of cat or dog food (non-fish-based) and water. Milk is best avoided because it can cause diarrhoea.

Any hedgehog seen moving around during daylight hours is almost certainly in trouble, as they are quite strictly nocturnal.

Update on the blocked bladder saga

Still doing well and the vets think he should be fit enough to be moved to the kennels on Thursday. To my amazement he's actually an entire (they think part of his problems may have been the result of being kept permanently indoors - boggle!), so I've asked them to neuter and vaccinate him before we move him as the kennels aren't keen on having un-neutered tom cats because of the smell.

Myxomatosis

We're still seeing cases of myxomatosis in pet rabbits, probably because of the unusually warm and humid weather. Unless the rabbit has been vaccinated this is almost always fatal. For best protection, rabbits need to be given booster vaccination every six months.  They may still get the disease, but will usually only suffer a mild infection, which should be thrown off with careful nursing.

Myxomatosis is spread by biting insects, including midges and mosquitos, so pets don't need to be in direct contact with wild rabbits to get the disease. Cambridge is a high-risk area, because of the large numbers of wild rabbits living on common land along the river and the streams which feed into it and on the chalk grassland areas of Cherry Hinton and the Gog Magog hills.