A right Charlie ........

Staff at a local health centre reported a tatty looking stray living in the garden of an empty bungalow near where they worked.

When he came into our shelter, we discovered that Charlie had very matted fur on his stomach, and was thin and bony.

Our vets removed the worst of the tangles, and took a blood sample to test for hyperthyroidism, a condition which affects older cats.

Sure enough the test came back positive.

Hyperthyroidism is a condition which causes the thyroid gland to overact. The gland swells up and the results of this are an increased appetite, an inability to maintain weight and ultimately organ failure - more commonly heart and/or kidney.

Hyperthyroidism can be treated though, and cats who have this condition can live for many years. Tablets can manage the condition, and removal of part of the thyroid gland can remove the problem altogether - although it may recur later if the remaining part of the gland develops the same condition.

Charlie was found to have a very fast heart-rate, and is on medication to slow the heart-rate before we go ahead with the op, which we hope will give him many more years of happy life.

The bungalow where Charlie lived is now up for sale, and we are informed that an elderly lady lived there, so we must assume that she has either died or gone into residential accommodation. Poor Charlie, he must have been so disorientated when he was left alone.

The staff at the health centre were absolutely right to bring Charlie to our attention, given his condition, and the place where he was living, but it can in some cases be very difficult to make an accurate judgement of a cat who appears to be a starving stray. Some cats with this condition do look to be uncared for, but that is often not the case, and we have had many occasions over the years where "starving strays" have turned out to be very much loved cats who were well cared for and receiving appropriate medication.

If your elderly cat is starting to eat more, and yet still losing weight, it would be well worth having a blood test taken, and if the results show positive for hyperthyroidism, we recommend that you take steps to inform all your neighbours, in case they think that she is a stray, have her microchipped in case she is taken and handed into a rescue centre, and consider putting a safety release collar on her with a message to the effect that she has a medical condition.

As for Charlie, he continues to eat well (!) and we are monitoring his heart rate, so that once he is fit enough his operation can go ahead, and then hopefully we can rehome him.

Tilly is the remaining member of a group of nine cats who came to us towards the end of last year.

They were found living in a garden - a very long winding garden - and enquiries by the new owner of the house to which the garden belonged, revealed that the previous owner had had a long haired black and white cat who he had threatened to leave behind.

Sure enough, amongst the cats was a longhaired black and white cat.

The new owner of the house not only felt sorry for these cats, but had a cat phobia and knew that she could not cope with a colony at the bottom of her garden. Mustering her courage and a group of friends she borrowed a trap and managed over the period of about 5 days to catch all the cats and bring them to us. This was an incredibly brave thing for her to do, given her phobia.

All nine cats were terrified, dirty and hungry and would not let anyone near them at first.

Gradually we managed to work out who we had in this little group. There was the long haired black and white cat who turned out to be mother to all the others. The others comprised two litters, one litter of three cats aged about 5 months who were completely feral, and a second litter of five kittens aged about 6 weeks, who were very very nervous but able to be handled.

Mum, Mitsi, was also tame once she had calmed down and reassured herself that she and her family were safe. We gradually began to handle the cats to assess them, and once the kittens were old enough to leave their mum, we put them in short term foster homes to get them used to being inside and being handled. All five were neutered and rehomed just after Christmas.

Of the older litter, one tamed up and again he was neutered and rehomed, and Mitsi too was neutered and rehomed and is settling in well.

That left two of the older kittens, Shadow and Tilly. We were able to find an outdoor home for Shadow, but Tilly is still with us, still hoping for a home. She loves to play and she loves to chase insects. She is incredibly curious and she will sometimes let us stroke her. She loves having the end of her tail held - she walks up and stands facing away from us with her tail in the air, and we just have to hold the end of it. But she does bite, a curious not aggressive bite, but a bite nevertheless. We hope to find a good outdoor home for Tilly, maybe with another semi-feral cat we are caring for - a stables or a farm or a similar environment, where she can take her time to get used to people. We think it unlikely that she will settle in a house.

Whilst we celebrate the lives of Tilly (who is pictured above) and her siblings and half-siblings, we fail to understand the mentality of anyone who when moving house would leave their cats behind. And worse, leave their un-neutered female cat behind. It is a population explosion waiting to happen.

Sadly, we hear more and more cases of cats left behind when their owners move. Perhaps some responsibility could be shared by landlords - maybe allow your tenants to have pets, particularly if they pay an extra bond to cover damage. Or like Persimmon Homes, who had an article in this week's Wakefield local paper, offer suggestions to help people move house with their pets.

Perhaps if owners realised that it is illegal to abandon an animal, and that they could be prosecuted for doing so, fewer people would resort to this type of behaviour, and fewer cats would be left at the mercy of their surroundings in situations where they may not cope and may not, therefore, survive.

Chasing our tails

Just a quick update entry today, with promises that we will post another entry later in the week.

Zelda's kittens are all doing well, all seven are still going strong. The kitten pictured was 12 days old at the time the photo was taken (they're 15 days old today).

All seven have their eyes open and are starting to look around. They are still very wobbly on their feet, but can navigate from one side of their box to the other.

We have been lucky enough not to have to feed them supplementary meals yet, Zelda is a fantastic mum and is coping marvellously, although she is eating copious amounts of food - three large tins a day plus supplementary dried food!!!

Our main job at the moment is to make sure all the kittens seem fed, and to make sure that their eyes don't get sticky. The kittens vary in size, there are two very small ones and two much larger ones, but all seven are growing well and none are looking thin.

More about the kittens on a later blog.

We're also delighted to say that we have rehomed Snatch, the diabetic cat who featured in our blog a few weeks ago, and we have also rehomed Max, our lad who came in as a stray.

There was an excellent article about us in our local paper - you can read it here. We hope to have a good response to this, both from new volunteers and people wanting to adopt cats.

An afternoon of hard labour

We were asked to take in a stray cat last week, who is either an ex-farm cat or has been dumped. The lovely tabby girl was quite clearly pregnant, but we didn't think she would be ready to deliver for a week or so.


Imagine our surprise on Sunday afternoon when one of our volunteers went to stroke her and found a tiny newborn kitten in her bed.


Over the next hour, Zelda had two more kittens, with our delighted work-experience student quietly watching her - what a great story she will have to recount in class this week.


Zelda settled down quietly and we assumed that three would be all, but to our surprise an hour or so later she suddenly delivered another. This little one was born breech, was quite weak and had to be helped to start breathing, but once he had been cleaned up, he was fine.


Again we assumed that Zelda had finished, but no, out popped number five, much smaller than all the rest and not breathing at all. We carefully cleaned his face and gently rubbed his chest and he took that all important first breath, at which Zelda, purring for England, began to groom him. To our surprise, less then ten minutes later a sixth kitten was delivered, this one shouting loudly and waving his legs in the air. That one's going to be a real character!


Zelda, as is the norm, diverted her cleaning habits to number six, which left tiny number five rather cold and abandoned. We dried him off as best we could then put him under the pile of siblings.


Zelda, with a huge smile on her face, settled down for an afternoon of licking and purring and we went to cook her well-deserved plate of fish.


Back in her pen, we did a careful head-count and were amazed to find seven! She'd sneaked another one out when we weren't looking.


Mum and babies are all doing well. The kittens may need supplementary feeds as female cats only have six nipples but for the moment all seem to be suckling and thriving. If they do need extra feeds, we'll give it to the bigger ones.

Keep reading our blog, we'll post some updates and pictures as the kittens grow. Kittens are cute, we all love their little faces and the excitement of new babies is wonderful, but there are far too many unwanted cats, so we will get Zelda and the seven babies neutered before they go to new homes!

Snatch and jab

First of all the good news. Max, who featured in a recent post (A Short Tale) has found a new home. We hope he settles.

Today we are going to meet Snatch, an eight years old tortie-chintz lady. Snatch came into our care from a loving home in January. She had a companion Stella who was very thin. Snatch on the other hand was very fat! We soon put two and two together and made a hefty four.

We realised quite quickly that the girls didn't get on that well, so we put them in separate pens and concentrated on trying to build Stella up and tone Snatch down. Stella responded well, and was soon rehomed, but Snatch gave us cause for concern as she seemed constantly hungry and drank pots of water into the bargain. Once again a trip to our vets was needed.

Several blood tests later the diagnosis we'd suspected was confirmed. Snatch has diabetes.

This isn't as bad as may be imagined. She simply requires a controlled diet and a daily injection of insulin. Of course it took several weeks for us to work out the appropriate dose of insulin, but now, several weeks after diagnosis, she is stable and her weight has settled at a reasonable level.

It has led to interesting speculation about her name - she couldn't have been diabetic all her life, she wouldn't have survived, but she must have been a greedy cat from being quite little to have been given such a name. Or was it for something else? We'll never know.

Snatch is now ready for a new home. She will need to have a controlled diet and therefore may be better having a home with no other pets (so that she can't steal their food!). Her new owners will have to give her a daily injection of insulin and ensure that she eats properly around the time of her injection, but other than that she is a lovely friendly cat who deserves a chance. Maybe soon we'll be blogging to say that she is settled and happy in her new home !

Posh n Knotts

We don't often take in pedigree cats, but last week we had a call from someone who needed us to take in three persian cats, Oliver, Alfie and Eliza. They came in a week ago and all three were badly matted.

Persian cats are seriously maintenance heavy - they need grooming thoroughly every day, and by that we don't just mean a quick swipe with a flea comb. They need to be brushed, combed and de-tangled all over their bodies - underarms, bottoms, chins as well as the obvious places such as backs, tummies, tails and heads.

These three had obviously been used to being groomed as they were extremely compliant once we'd wielded the combs, lifting their backs and showing no objection to being rolled over so that we could tackle their tummies.

But it soon became obvious that combing them wouldn't do the trick - they needed serious professional help!

So off they went to our wonderful vets who spent over an hour dematting each cat.






















On return, Alfie and Eliza looked a bit like poodles!!! and were much smaller without their fur than we'd imagined.
Oliver didn't look too bad, but in fact he'd been the worst of the three. However as his fur was much longer than the other two the top layers were able to cover the worst of the bald patches.

We had to be careful to ensure that new homes for our three posh visitors would be suitable - that their new owners had plenty of time to care for them, and we were lucky enough to find three such families who were prepared to take on the responsibility.

We don't blame anyone for the state that these three had got into, their original owner had obviously cared for them very much - that was obvious from the way they behaved when we groomed them. But after his death, his family with young children of their own just didn't have the time to devote to three hairy fairies.

Persians really are beautiful cats, but do consider very carefully if you want one. Can you devote an hour each day per cat to groom and care for them?


Do you remember Lacey, that cat who isn't a cat? Well, she has settled well into her new home, and her new human says: Thought I'd drop you a quick email to say Lacey is doing really well. I brought her home on sunday...she explored the place then sat on my knee & very quickly found her purr!! I really didn't expect her to settle in so quickly & take to me as she has! She's now starting to play also & has been well behaved.....so far! - starting to show her cheeky side! She's also eating well.....she looks (and acts) very much like a....CAT! Haven't felt the need to try her on raw meat as she seems to enjoy the CAT food just fine!

A Short Tale

Hi there, I’m Max. At least I am now. I used to be someone else, but I can’t tell you who. My story is typical of many – I was a very much loved family cat, handled, played with and well fed. My humans had me neutered and looked after me and we were all very happy together.

Then one day, something happened. I can’t tell you what. Maybe I got chased by a dog and got lost, or maybe I got into a vehicle and was driven away from my territory. Maybe I followed children or was picked up by someone out of pure devilment. I just can’t tell you what happened.

Anyway, I wandered around for a while, looking for my folks and then I started to feel hungry. I scavenged food out of bins, and tried my hand at chasing mice etc, but I started to get pretty hungry. It’s not easy catching mice when you’re used to just having a tin or packet opened twice a day!

Somewhere along the line, my tail got damaged. It was pretty painful and it got infected too. I can’t tell you how that happened either.

One day I wandered into a lovely garden. A friendly couple lived in the house and they wondered where I’d come from. Of course I couldn’t tell them! They asked around and when no one knew me, they started to feed me. They put signs up in local shops and an ad in our local paper, but still no one came forward for me. So they contacted Haworth Cat Rescue who, when a place became available, took me in.

HCR took me to the vet and the vet said that my tail had probably been partly amputated by a vet some time ago, and that I’d then injured what was left of it. It’s about half as long as it should be. They gave me some nice antibiotics which healed it up and stopped it hurting. Haworth Cat Rescue also put out lots of ads to try and find my owners, and we had lots of people come to look at me. But no one I knew. The people who came to visit me to see if I was their cat are also very sad, as their little friends are still missing.

So now, after weeks of advertising, Haworth Cat Rescue has no choice but to find me a new home. I know I will be happy there, and Haworth Cat Rescue will find me a great home, but how different it could have been.

If only my original humans had had me microchipped - a small implant, about the size of a grain of rice inserted into the back of my neck. It doesn’t hurt a bit, and once the chip is in place I can’t feel it. The chip has a number on which is registered on a central database with my humans’ name, address & phone number, and the number can be read on a special scanner by most rescue centres and vets. So if I’d have had a chip, Haworth Cat Rescue could have reunited me with my folks very quickly.

One lovely very sad lady came to see me, but of course I wasn’t hers. Haworth Cat Rescue asked if her cat had been microchipped, and she said “No, but he’s never gone missing before”. None of us needed to point out to her that it was too late to have it done once he had gone missing.

As for me, I’ve seen one of my neighbours at HCR, Lacey, go off to her new home today, and I’m hoping that my new owners will be along to choose me any day now. One thing is certain, if I get lost again, the microchip that Haworth Cat Rescue have given me will hopefully help me on my way home again.

Haworth Cat Rescue says: Microchipping is quick and easy and costs only a one off payment. It is a really good way of reuniting lost cats with their owners and we recommend that all cats are chipped. Some vets and rescue organisations will charge less if the chipping is done when the cat receives other treatment, such as neutering. Please get your cat microchipped now, whilst he is still with you. After all, it will be too late if he goes missing, and he won't be able to tell anyone where he lives. It is up to you to give him every chance of coming home if he ever gets lost.