skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A local cat rescue asked us if we'd take some kittens from a feral colony they were clearing. The adults were to be neutered and returned, but we all felt that it would be great to give any kittens the chance of a life in a loving home.
Two tiny bundles arrived, about seven weeks old, and surprisingly friendly. But the little things were in a very poor state - cat flu, diarrhoea, lice, worms and fleas. About the only thing they didn't have was ear mites, and luckily the adults tested negative for feline aids (FiV) and Feline Leukaemia (FeLV), which means that the kittens will likely be negative too.
Sylvia and Graham, as we named the kittens, went straight off to our vets where they were given antibiotics and cream for their eyes. The photos were taken two days after they'd come to us, and they look much better in the photos than they did on arrival, so you can imagine how ill they looked. Slowly but surely we hope to nurse them back to full health, and then neuter and rehome them.
But all this raises the sad question of why two kittens should have been allowed to get into this state. We believe that the colony of cats started from a single female who was dumped in an un-neutered state and just left to breed. Being a survivor she found a place to live where she could have kittens safely and where she could source food - either from hunting, or from scrounging. If she was friendly, it is even possible that she found herself a home eventually too, leaving her growing offspring behind to breed.
The colony is populated almost exclusively by tabby cats, a pretty good indication that there has been a fair bit of inbreeding going on, which of course can result in kittens with physical and mental disabilities, who would not survive long and who may suffer a great deal before their early death.
And even these two, who had survived for the first few difficult weeks of life, may have succumbed to cat flu, or been left blind or with impaired olfactory senses due to congested or scarred bronchial passages. Not to mention the lice, which would have driven them mad with itching (have you ever had nits? - that's how itchy it is!) and would probably have resulted in considerable fur loss, leaving them vulnerable to cold and heat - unable to insulate their bodies correctly.
All because an uncaring cat owner decided to dump an unwanted cat. If only she had been spayed, it would have saved countless cats being born to a wild, short and painful existence. Goodness only knows how many cats were born and died in this colony before cat rescues were alerted to their plight.
We celebrate the lives of Sylvia and Graham, and hope that they will have long happy lives secure in the love of their humans, but with so many unwanted cats, wouldn't it have been better in the long run to have had their ultimate great-grandmother spayed?
One of the hardest group of cats we have to deal with are elderly cats. These golden oldies come into our care, usually as much-loved pets who have often had to be relinquished due to the death or illness of their owner.
They are often in moderately good health and often have quiet loving personalities, just wanting a quiet lap and a warm fire in the autumn of their lives.
Minerva is a typical case, although we don't know her origins. She was handed into our vets as an unwanted stray, but due to her loving nature we guess that she has been someone's much loved cat.
Minerva likes nothing more than to cuddle herself into the crook of an arm and purr and knead to her heart's content.
But no one wants to adopt her, and in many ways we can understand this. She is an older cat so by definition she may not have many years left, and of course as she gradually drifts into old age she may need medical attention, resulting in high bills.
But on the plus side, she is less likely to wander, less likely to be hit by a car, and her (absolutely gorgeous) personality is already known, so there will be no surprises there.
It would be great to find Minerva a home for the remainder of her days, so that she can live out her life with the comfort and love she deserves.
Tuesday morning, mid way through feeding the cats we noticed that someone had carelessly left an empty cat basket in the middle of the drive.
What a shock we got when we moved it - it was much heavier than it should have been and looking inside we discovered a sleek black cat, who immediately began shouting her head off.
This was obviously a case of someone no longer wanting their cat, and rather than checking with us to see if a place was available, had just dumped her with us.
We had no cat pens available, only tiny kitten pens, and we had no choice but to put her in there. Although she is dry, comfortable and fed, she has very little room and no outside access.
We don't know her name, age or background, and will have to rehome her with very little information to give to her new owners.
Our younger volunteers have called her Sabrina, and she is a friendly affectionate cat, so we hope that before long we will find her a home and she can start to settle.
Good news!!! Ben and Kitty who we featured in our last blog have been rehomed together. Fingers crossed they will settle in soon.
We don't really intend to use our blog as a place to appeal for homes for the cats in our care, but we are making an exception this time.
Seven years old Ben (white and tabby) and his eight years old mum Kitty, have been with us for several weeks now, as we want to find them a home together. They enjoy each other's company, grooming each other and rubbing heads together and it would be a shame to separate them.
We often have difficulties rehoming cats in pairs, as of course it is dependent on someone coming and not only wanting a pair, but actually bonding with the pair(s) we have. Ben and Kitty don't do themselves any favours as they are a little bit timid when first meeting new people, but they are much better once they've got to know you.
Ben is bigger than his mum, and his nickname is "The Walrus" - due to his habit of laying on his back with his front paws tucked under and his back paws and tail stretched out. You may hear some of our more mature volunteers singing "co-co-ca-chew" as they walk past. Kitty is less extrovert, but can be a very loving cat once she has gained trust.
If you think you could offer Ben & Kitty a home, and you live in the Bradford/Halifax area or nearby, please email us.
At the request of readers of our blog, a quick update on some of the cats we've featured recently. Miranda and one of her kittens, Islay, have both got new homes, but we are still waiting for someone to fall in love with Johnnie.
Zelda has gone to her new home. Her kittens have been quite ill but are on the way to recovery and two of them have gone to live with the nurse at the practise where they were treated. The other three will be rehomed shortly.
Faye, who had the collar injury is doing well. Her wound has healed and she is currently in one of our foster homes with her two little kittens, Oliver and Alfie, who are now about 6 weeks old. Faye is very jealous of any attention given to the kittens, and wants all the strokes for herself. She is also cross with the kittens as they are starting to play away from her and she wants to carry on feeding them. It is a shame in some ways that there are too many cats, as she is such a good mum that it would be great to let her have future litters, but it is not to be. Faye and her boys will come back to us when the kits are about 10 weeks old and all three will be neutered and put up for adoption then.
Charlie and Tilly are both settling well into new homes and very much loved by their owners.
We hope to post on our blog again soon, please keep reading.
We were absolutely thrilled to read on the BBC website about the cat who was reunited with her original owners after being missing for ten years. This happened thanks to a microchip. We hope that the person who had been caring for her for the ten years she was missing was able to contact her original owners and that some of the ten years can be filled in for her.
We had a similar story this weekend. Not ten years, but eight months. A family reported a little stray cat which they had been feeding for about a month. When a place became available at our centre, we offered it and the family brought the cat in.
As is our procedure, we scanned her straightaway and we were delighted to find a microhip. We expected her to be registered to a home in the area where she'd been found, but to our surprise her registered address was about 10-12 miles away.
We phoned her owners, who were astounded at the news - they had given her up for lost. They were able to come and claim her almost immediately, and they told us that she had been missing for over eight months.
We can only assume that she had got into a vehicle - it is unlikely that she would have wandered so far, although of course we'll never know for sure. Raffles -as she was called - was as pleased to see her people as they were to see her. Hopefully, she'll stay put now, but if she does go walkies again, at least her microchip will increase her chances of being returned to her owners.
We were asked to help with a cat who had had a kitten in the outbuilding of a disused pub in a town about 25 miles from our centre. The cat, although not feral, would not let the people feeding her approach, and so we decided that trapping was the best way forward. Time was of the essence as we were concerned that the kitten would become wild, or may not survive.
So we set off, equipped with two traps, two tins of tuna, two powerful torches and a van full of baskets, towels, gauntlets and various other bits and pieces.
Our first sight of the location was rather daunting, the cat and kitten were enclosed in a pub yard behind a six foot wall, with all the doors and gates boarded up. 
Fortunately, the lovely ladies working in the shop next door (who had been feeding her and who had alerted us to their plight) lent us a ladder, so we were able to scale the wall with relative ease.
Over the wall we were met with the sight of a rubbish strewn yard, and a little white cat screaming for her supper.
We set the trap and retreated to the shadows, and the little minx went in, ate the bits of tuna at the edge and then came and demanded some more from us. We explained to her that it would be best if she went into the trap, and after a few more attempts we were delighted to hear the "thunk" as the trap snapped shut.
We then took the opportunity to investigate the place where the kitten was living and we were horrified to see a small outbuilding packed with bin bags, boxes and worst of all empty bottles, a large number of which were broken. In the light of our torch we caught sight of the kitten hiding under a pile of bags about half way down the shed. The kitten was bigger than we'd thought. Good news on one part - she would have a better chance of survival if we couldn't catch her; bad news on the other part - she would be harder to catch.
We began to carefully remove the bags, boxes and bottles, piling them to one side of the shed, and we cleared a space in the area where we'd seen her. To our surprise, nestled against a bin bag was a second kitten - completely black. No wonder no one had seen this one!
We tried our hardest to grab the babies, but both were able to flee our hands. We set our second (tiny) trap, next to the trap with mum-cat, but after an hour there was no result and we had to reluctantly conclude that it was unlikely that we'd catch them that night.
So we left the traps set in the shed, covered them with boxes (you can see them in photos under the green boxes) and left plenty of food for the babies. The staff at the next door shop agreed to check the traps the next morning, so off we went with mum-cat in the back of our van, hoping against hope that the kits would be in the traps the next morning.
They weren't!
We decided to go back that evening and if the traps weren't sprung we'd remove them and ask the staff next door to feed the kits to get them into a routine. As they were feral, we assumed that they would not be used to people, so it was important to get them to start trusting.
Meanwhile, mum-cat - now named Miranda - was settling in well, quite friendly but very vocal. She spent most of the day shouting ("Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in-fer-me!").
That evening the traps were still open, the food still inside, and the staff reported that none of the food they'd put down had been eaten. We were pretty confident that the kits couldn't get out of the yard, and so we made up some comfortable boxes in the shed and put a couple of plates of food down.
As we were about to leave we decided to have a last look around the yard, not really expecting to find the kittens, but to see if there were any hidey holes we'd not spotted.
To our volunteer's amazement, she suddenly noticed two little black triangular things sticking up behind a stone against a sheet of wood (look on the photo of the yard where the two pieces of wood make a cross - it was the other side of the piece of wood behind the weeds behind the cross). Wondering what they were, and thinking that they looked like a pair of ears, our volunteer cautiously approached, and to her amazement found that they were a pair of ears!!! Belonging to the little black kitten - who seemed to be very fond of attempting to camouflage himself against black things.
Very quietly and carefully our volunteer was able to scruff the kitten and tell the others that she had a kitten. Once they'd stopped thinking she was joking, a basket was quickly brought, and the little black kit was safely ensconced.
Our efforts to find the second kitten now increased, and at the suggestion of the lady from the shop, our other volunteer found the kitten about a yard from where the first one had been found. Again we were able to scruff her and get her into a basket.
Mission accomplished!! If smiles could have got us home, we would have been over those moors and back at our centre in seconds. Huge thanks must go to the ladies who fed the cats, and who alerted us to their plight. Without their contribution this would have been another family left to fend for itself and to breed unhindered.
Back at our centre, we had a look at the kittens. The white one didn't seem too afraid, so gingerly we picked it up and she (she is a girl) allowed us to handle her. Emboldened by this success we tried to pick the little black one up, and again we succeeded. This one was a boy.
Miranda was over the moon to see her babies again and chirruped at them like a demented budgie. The kittens meanwhile were more interested in chasing a moth which was desperately trying to get into the window of their pen - another indication that these aren't feral cats.
It is rare for kittens to be so friendly if they don't get human handling from an early age, so we guess that the little family must have been dumped there. The ladies feeding them had only been aware of them for about a fortnight, so we think they hadn't been there very long.
Another occasion where if the mother cat had been neutered, the owners wouldn't have been presented with unwanted kittens. At least the future is bright for Miranda, and her kittens, Islay and Johnnie, who will all be neutered before we find them new homes.
Hello, I'm Blackie. This is my second visit to Haworth Cat Rescue, and I thought that bloggers would like to hear my story.
I used to live with my owner. We were very happy together and then one day, sadly, he died. I was devastated, and didn't know what would happen to me. Luckily, his family were very kind and understanding, and knowing how much he had loved me, they wanted to ensure that I had a good future. So they asked Haworth Cat Rescue to help, and eventually brought me to the rehoming centre. I was a bit grumpy at first and didn't let anyone stroke me for a couple of days, but after a while I realised that they aren't too bad here, and I relented.
But it's a weird place - no armchairs, no fires to warm my tummy, no television!! I'm glad places like Haworth Cat Rescue exist, but if I could make one teensy weensy wish, it would be that my previous owner had arranged for someone to take me in the event of his death. That way, there would be no need for me to be stressed and uncertain in the rescue centre. All he would have had to do would have been to ask amongst his friends and relatives to find someone suitable to take me should anything happen to him, and then put a large prominent note in his house and another with his papers. Maybe readers of this blog will do this in his memory - if you have a pet, a cat or a dog, or even a goldfish, ask your friends until you find a suitable home. If you have more than one pet, arrange homes for each one. Don't leave it to your relations - they will be sad enough without having to worry about your pets - and if you have unkind relations, they may even dump your pets rather than try and find them a good home.
So, back to my story. After ten days or so, Haworth Cat Rescue found me a lovely home with a young couple. Again, I was a bit stressed and grumped a lot at first, but my new owners worked with Haworth Cat Rescue and gradually I settled.
I did notice that one of my new owners cried every time he saw me. At first I thought it was just pure emotion - the joy of having me come to live with him - but then I heard him on the phone to the doctor, and realised that in fact he was allergic to me. He tried for a month but became more and more poorly, and so, with the greatest of sadness, had no option but to bring me back. It wasn't his fault - he had had cats before and hadn't had such a bad reaction, but sadly these things happen.
So, here I am again, still a bit grumpy, but I expect I'll calm down in a day or so. Maybe soon a new owner will come and choose me, and I'll go off again - hopefully for good this time.
Bye for now, love Blackie xxxxx
