A Christmas Competition

For those of you who wish it could be Christmas everyday, now is the time to think about your favourite festive things as Haworth Cat Rescue announces the launch of its first ever Christmas Card competition.

We are seeking 4 cards for our 2009 Christmas selection and entries can be submitted in all media from watercolours and pastels to line drawings and oils on canvass. Photographs are also acceptable.

Cat designs are very popular among many of our supporters but others prefer more traditional themes, so it’s really up to the artist to find their own inspiration. Some may favour a very contemporary design and others wish to evoke a trip down memory lane with Christmas scenes of yesteryear. We are very open and want to allow as much freedom of expression as possible.

This is the first time Haworth Cat Rescue has offered the public the opportunity to showcase their talents with a Christmas card competition. There is no age barrier for entry and 4 winning designs will selected for their charm and appeal by a panel of 3 judges. There is no charge for entry to our competition.

Participants who want their artwork returned are asked to send a prepaid self-addressed envelope. Every care will taken to avoid damage but the charity cannot guarantee this.

We are expecting a large number of designs to be sent via email and this is the best way to scan and keep your original.

Imprint in Keighley is producing the winning Christmas cards, which will go on sale in the Autumn. Photographs should be supplied as 300dpi in jpeg format, the size for the front of the card is 105mm x 150mm but the actual images should allow for an extra 3mm 'bleed' all around. Larger photographs can be reduced to make them fit.

As a special prize, Imprint is sponsoring the competition with an enlarged version of the selected designs as a keepsake for each winning artist.

The sending and receiving of cards brings so much pleasure and generates valuable income for us. Our cards will be advertised on our website and sold in local shops and online. We will acknowledge the artist on their card and our thanks for the contribution they have made towards the construction of a new environmentally friendly and educational cat rehoming Centre in the Aire Valley

The closing date for entries is May 1 2009.

I don't want to share my bed with you......

The early weeks of each year are normally good times for us as far as rehoming is concerned, with people looking to adopt a cat after the hustle and bustle of Christmas and before the holiday season starts.

This year is no exception, and we are delighted to see lots of little faces going off to live happily ever after. It's wonderful to see a cat come to our centre on Saturday and then wave goodbye to him or her on Sunday, even though we haven't really had chance to get to know his character.

Some cats, however, take a lot more shifting! Take Sasha for example. Sasha came to us about 2 years ago when her previous owner died unexpectedly whilst undergoing a routine operation. Sasha was understandably shy and stayed with us for a few weeks before we found her a new home.

The stress of her move to our centre, followed by the move to her new home became too much for Sasha, and she began to have possession issues over her bed. Basically she would attack anyone who approached her whilst she was in the bed, and given that she spent most of the day there, that gradually evolved into aggression whenever anyone approached her.

After almost a year in her new home, the people who had adopted her reluctantly brought her back.

Although we were able to cuddle her and stroke her as soon as she arrived, Sasha still acted aggressively when in her bed.

We allowed her to keep the same bed (a covered one) for a few weeks, and then we removed it to give her an open bed, but in the same position. Whenever we approached her we ignored her whilst she was in the bed, but made a fuss of her outside the bed.

Gradually, she began to accept our strokes and come to us for cuddles, and even got out of bed on purpose to approach us for strokes.

She will now allow us to stroke her in the bed without showing any signs of aggression unless she is awakened abruptly.

We hope a new understanding owner will come forward for Sasha quite quickly now. She will most certainly have possession issues in her new home surrounding her bed, but we are confident that an experienced new owner will be able to work with us and with her to reduce the fear and aggression.

Hands don't always hurt

One of the hardest and yet most rewarding things we do, is the taming up of feral kittens. It is a delight to see a nervous, bewildered kitten begin to realise that there is lots of love to be had if he or she chooses to accept it.

One such kitten is Russet who was found living in a garden. We called her Russet because when she came in she was so wild we couldn’t pick her up, so we didn’t know if she was a boy or a girl.

Gradually she began to realise that when we approached her it was to give her food, or to gently talk to her. She cowered at first, but then one day she dared to rub her head against someone’s hand, and she enjoyed the sensation. It felt great to have her head stroked!

Bit by bit she allowed her carers to handle her more, to pick her up, cuddle her and tickle her tummy. Her loud excited purr showed us how much she was enjoying the attention.

Russet will now allow herself to be handled by the people she knows, although she is still nervous when people walk past her whilst she’s on the floor. If she’s at eye level, or on a chair she demands attention.

We will be looking for a home for Russet soon, and we will be delighted to see her go – to a safe home where her nervousness will be understood and she will be allowed to grow in confidence and trust.

If you would like to support Haworth Cat Rescue, you can make a donation here.

Thank you

A Christmas Cracker

We don't normally use The Moggie Blog to advertise for homes for the cats at our centre, but we're making an exception for Tallulah.

This pretty girl came to us in March 2008 after she wandered exhausted into a hairdressing salon in Bradford. Despite extenisve enquiries we were unable to trace her owners.

Tallulah is "an older lady" with a sassy personality - if she were human she would be waving her walking stick at buses as she crossed the road in front of them!

She has been diagnosed with a hyper-thyroid, but is stabilised on medication which she takes surprisingly well.

Normally, when we get in older cats that we are unable to rehome, they end up being permanently looked after by one or other of our regular volunteers or supporters.

The trouble with Tallulah is that she doesn't like other cats, and of course the people most likely to offer her a home already have cats, and Tallulah turns into a real harridan when in the presence of other cats!

Tallulah is generally speaking happy to be around people but may swipe if she is annoyed. She is incredibly nosey and likes to know what is going on. She eats well, and of course is litter trained. Haworth Cat Rescue will pay for any age-related medical conditions for Tallulah, including of course the medication for her hyper-thyroid.

We would love to hear from any experienced cat owner who has no other cats (or dogs!) and who feels that they could offer Tallulah a loving home for the autumn of her life.

Please don't let Tallulah spend Christmas behind bars - please contact us if you would like to meet Tallulah - haworth.catrescue@btinternet.com

Nervous Nellies? No, not us

Running a rehoming centre such as ours, we get all sorts of personalities of cats. Some are rampant extroverts. Others are naturally reserved or shy. Yet more have had some trauma and their personalities have become withdrawn as a result - these are often the most rewarding cats for us - as once they start to feel more settled, their confidence increases and their personalities start to show.

Take our lovely Betty Fluff. We know nothing of her background. She turned up in the grounds of a sheltered housing complex where pets were not allowed. She was in a bad way with tangles and knots in her lovely fur, and she was starving hungry,

She was taken to a local vets who de-matted her and kindly cleaned her teeth. And then she came to our centre.

On arrival she was very depressed, hissed if anyone went near her and would never eat in the presence of people. Gradually, as she realised that she was safe, she began to relax. She is now able to respond well to strokes and grooming. She will eat and wash herself whilst people are in her pen, and whilst she is still not comfortable being picked up, we think this is just a matter of time. We are really looking forward to the day we rehome her - and we'll ask her new owners to send us photos. We bet the first one will be of her curled up and happy on the bed or in front of the fire.
Another cat who came into our care recently was Lulu. She had been placed in a commercial cattery by Social Services, after her previous owner died or went into residential care. She had been virtually ignored there for about six months - she'd been fed and cleaned out, but very little interaction. She became totally depressed, spent all day hidden under her blanket and did not respond to anyone.

She came to the attention of one of our supporters who spent some time with her and saw her start to respond. With the permission of the cattery and the SS she came to our centre where she reverted to her former shy self. We gave her a few days to settle then gradually encouraged her to come out from under her blanket, and she began to respond to our attention.

To our delight, she was spotted on our website and a lovely new owner came and offered her a home at the weekend. He knows she will be very unsettled at first, but he is prepared to give her the time and patience she requires. We are sure that before too long we will be getting reports about how well she is settled.

The moral of this story is that even the shyest, most afraid cats have a good hope of becoming settled and ready to be petted and handled. If you come across such a shy cat, ask yourself why, and see if there is something that can be done to improve his or her confidence and life.

Drowning in the rain

We had torrential rain here on Saturday. During the course of the day, a lady in our town looked out of her window and noticed a bucket in the middle of the garden next door.

Some time later the bucket caught her eye again, but this time she noticed some movement in it. Thinking that perhaps a bird or mouse had fallen in, she went to have a look and rescue it.

Instead of wildlife, imagine her horror when she found 8 tiny kittens in there. The bucket was rapidly filling with water, and two of the kittens had already drowned.

She was able to remove the remaining six, but one had become too cold and despite all attempts to save her, she too died shortly afterwards.

The five surviving kittens, who are about 5 weeks old, are friendly and used to being handled, so there is very little likelihood that the kittens were the offspring of a feral cat and put in the bucket by their mum. It seems to us that they were deliberately put in the bucket in the hope that they would drown.

This is such an act of unspeakable cruelty that it has left us almost speechless.

Double Trouble

Despite the current economic crisis, the credit crunch and the downturn in the economy, there are an increasing number of people who think that they can make a fast buck by getting a pedigree cat and breeding from her.

Nothing could be further from the truth. To a breeder, the money earned from this will rarely cover the costs incurred.

Let's look at some of the expenses:

• the cost of the cat - this could be anything from a few hundred pounds to a few thousand, depending on the breed
• medical costs - most owners of stud cats will not allow their cats to mate with other cats who do not have a clean bill of health, verified by a vet.
• stud fees - again these will depend on the breed and on the pedigree ancestry
• light, heat and food for the cats and her kittens
• vaccinations for the kittens
• advertising costs
• registration costs with the GCCF (to get their pedigree paperwork)
• emergency vet bills - few litters get to a rehomeable age without having needed veterinary care, and they should be medically checked too
• costs of keeping the queen in between litters - she should not be allowed to breed every year, and she should be kept indoors, or in an enclosed run, so that she doesn't pick up any viruses etc from other cats or worse, become pregnant by a passing tomcat!

And what if she only has two kittens in her litter? Or maybe only one, or she miscarries, or doesn't conceive? The income you might get for this situation is very low, or nil!

And of course, as people tighten their belts in the current crisis, there are going to be fewer willing to pay large sums of money for a pet that might cost them a lot of money.

Bianca and Carly, pictured above, are the result of someone getting a siamese cat to breed from. Instead of taking the necessary precautions to ensure that she could not get out, they allowed her free range and of course when she came into season she mated with a stray tom.

To add to the list of errors, her owner then left her and the kits in a quiet bedroom, well fed no doubt, but not handled, so that the kittens became wary of being handled and are now very timid.

When unable to sell them for £50 each, they were passed to us for rehoming. Sadly he has not heeded our advice to have her spayed and will no doubt let her breed again, although we very much doubt that he will find anyone willing to allow their stud cat to mate with her.

Carly and Bianca have both been rehomed. Luckly, Bianca wasn't too scared and once she'd gone Carly realised that she actually quite liked being stroked and gained confidence quickly, but this amateurish and irresponsible approach to breeding is one of the reasons that there are so many unwanted cats - even pedigrees and part-pedigrees - out there.