skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is a tangled tale, so take your time! We were asked by our vets in Hebden Bridge to take in Minerva (you can read about her in an earlier blog). She had been handed in as an unwanted pet to their Huddersfield branch, and transported by them to Hebden Bridge to make it easier for us to collect her.
Meanwhile, in Bradford one of our supporters spotted a small cat on the central reservation of a busy road, which she braved rush hour traffic to rescue. Our supporter's sister (one of our volunteers) was chatting about this to someone at her keep fit class, and this person mentioned that her sister had lost a cat, near Hebden Bridge. It was quickly established (due to age and colour) that the Bradford cat wasn't the lost one in Hebden Bridge, but our volunteer remembered the one we'd taken from the vets there, and mistakenly assumed that Minerva hailed from the Hebden Bridge area.
Despite our assurances that it couldn't be their cat, the owners of the lost cat came to visit, and ruled Minerva out. But they didn't leave us their contact details to be used in the event that their cat was passed to us.
A couple of weeks or so pass. Then one of our volunteers who lives in Todmorden noticed a thin cat in the garden. She fed it and the cat moved in (into her teenage son's bedroom - brave cat!). This volunteer is also a volunteer for the local (Todmorden) Cat Protection, and also has a part time job at our vets, but at the Todmorden branch, not Hebden Bridge. She checked the CP lost and found list and the one held at the vets, but there were no matches.
Then she emailed us to ask us to check our lost and found list and to make a note of the cat's description etc. The volunteer who dealt with the email checked the l&f list and found no matches, but by chance remembered the couple from Hebden Bridge who had visited Minerva. However, there were no contact details. She remembered the original volunteer who had chatted at her keep fit class with the owner's sister, and managed to obtain her phone number.
Phoning the sister, our volunteer discovered that the missing cat actually lived in Todmorden, from where the cat had gone missing. It was looking more likely. We obtained the cat's owner's email address and dropped them a line, asking them to phone the vets to get the local CP contact number. When they phoned the vets, who should be on reception, but our volunteer who actually had the cat!
And yes, it was their cat, Pepper, who had been missing for just over a month. Our volunteer's house was in almost a straight line down the hill from where Pepper had gone missing.
A happy ending. But just think of all the coincidences
1. if our supporter hadn't found the cat in Bradford, the conversation with Pepper's owner's sister would never have taken place.
2. if we had collected Minerva from any other branch of the vets, there would have been no connection with Hebden Bridge and Pepper's owners would have had no reason to contact us.
3. the volunteer who dealt with the email remembered Pepper's owners visiting Minerva (it could have been one of several volunteers who dealt with the email).
4. Pepper had the sense to turn up not only at the home of a CP volunteer, but at the home of the one volunteer who helps us as well.
We are so pleased that Pepper's owners have been traced. We understand that her owners are going to get her micro-chipped, which in future may remove the need for coincidences.
It's funny how we seem to get "phases" of types of cats. The current phase seems to be feral mother cats with kittens who can be tamed up.
The first lot were Jessica & Millicent and their eight babies - although there were such a mixture of ages that we wondered if there were more than two mother cats involved! Jessica & Millicent were living in a factory and had to be caught using a trap. Luckily, the kittens weren't too bad and we were able to tame them up. The youngest three, George, Dennis and Fred are due to go to new homes this weekend, and we hope to find an outdoors home for Jessica & Millicent before too long. They will provide a great deterent for invading rodents!
Next we took in Tootsie - she was living in someone's garden, and when they realised that she was pregnant, they asked us to help. Again, she had to be trapped. A couple of weeks after she came to our centre she gave birth to four kittens, now three and a half weeks old.
Finally, we were told about Marnie, again a pregnant stray living in someone's garden. We sent a trap out but she had the kittens before we could catch her. Luckily we were able to trap her the next day and bring her and her five kittens to safety. The kittens are about 5 days old now.
In many ways catching the cats is the easy part. The difficulties start once they are with us. Of course the kittens need to stay with their mums for some time so that they can benefit from her milk and so that they can be cleaned and groomed and begin to learn catty-manners. But they also need to learn to trust humans and to be comfortable being stroked and picked up. With a tame cat it is easy to pick out the kittens to handle them, however, it is a different matter with the kittens of feral cats. The kittens need to be checked daily, to ensure that there is no infection in their eyes, and as they get older they need to be played with and cuddled to get them used to being handled by humans.
Easy peasy you might think! Just distract mum, grab them and then check them and play with them for a few minutes before returning them. Unfortunately it is not as easy as that! The mother cats don't realise what is happening the first few times but gradually as they begin to understand that their babies will be removed (they conveniently forget that they will come back later!) they become more aggressive and will spit, swipe and even stand over the kittens to hide them. This calls for gauntlets, thick clothes and a certain degree of nerve.
Even that isn't too bad until the kittens start to wander around their pen. Once they get to that stage our volunteer not only has to cope with a seriously irritated mum-cat, but has to dodge around the pen to try and catch the kittens and manage not to stand on the ones not yet caught!
We normally keep kittens with their mums until they are ten weeks old, putting them in a foster home for the duration of their stay with us so that they become used to living in a home and being handled. Then we have them neutered prior to finding new homes. With feral kittens we tend to separate them at about eight weeks and put them in a foster home for a month to get them used to living in a house with people, as of course we can't put them in a foster home earlier due to the feral nature of their mums.
As to the mum-cats, they are neutered and if possible returned to the site from where they came (Marnie will be going back to the garden where she came from, as the finders have agreed to feed her and provide shelter for her). Those we cannot return remain with us until we have found outdoor homes for them - in stables, farms, allotments or even safe factories or commerical units.
If you become aware of a feral cat living in your garden, please act responsibly like the finders of Tootsie and Marnie, and alert your local rescue. If you can have the cat back once it has been neutered, that would be great, and of course if you act responsibly the stray population in your garden will remain at one, whereas if you ignore the cat, you may soon find you are having to ignore far far more than one!
Isn't it funny how two cats, of similar age and from similar backgrounds can have such different personalities? Take Nillie (short for Vanilla), the white cat pictured. She had lived with a single person who sadly died, and because no one in the family could take her, she came into our care. She is desperately nervous of most people and not only does she hide, but she spits as well. She is completely traumatised by most things and if given the chance will hide all day under her blanket.
She has so far bonded with one of our younger volunteers, who is just about the only person who can approach her. (Suggestions to our volunteer that she put herself up for adoption with Nillie fell on deaf ears!) But it is a start. Nillie will probably be with us for a long time, whilst we gently work through her fears and show her that there is nothing to be afraid of. Once we do rehome her, she is likely to revert and become nervous and possibly aggressive for some time, so we need to find a new owner who will be prepared to give Nillie the time to settle and develop.
Then on the other hand, we have Frisky, the ginger lad pictured. Like Nillie, his owner recently died, and no one in the family could take him. He is roughly the same age (he's three, Nillie is 2½), and yet he is completely laid back, likes to lie on his back in your arms, waving his paws and purring, and he is intensely curious about all that is going on around him. We anticipate that we will be able to rehome Frisky as soon as he has been neutered (he's booked in for tomorrow).
Some of it is down to personality of course, but a lot of cat behaviour can be traced to how they are treated as kittens and/or young cats. A cat who is handled and stroked often will become confident around people. S/he will learn to trust and will cope with changes etc - although of course there may be a little bit of uncertainty at first. A cat who isn't handled much, who is allowed to hide and doesn't become used to strokes and fussing will be more nervous and will find any change to be a complete trauma.
If you have a young cat, please handle him or her as much as possible, so that if there have to be any changes - even a holiday stay at a cattery - it will be less traumatic for all concerned.
A quick update on some of the cats featured recently. We have found homes for both Minerva and Sabrina, and the cat-flu kittens, Graham & Sylvia are much much better. Thank you to all those who enquired.
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.
Meanwhile, in Bradford one of our supporters spotted a small cat on the central reservation of a busy road, which she braved rush hour traffic to rescue. Our supporter's sister (one of our volunteers) was chatting about this to someone at her keep fit class, and this person mentioned that her sister had lost a cat, near Hebden Bridge. It was quickly established (due to age and colour) that the Bradford cat wasn't the lost one in Hebden Bridge, but our volunteer remembered the one we'd taken from the vets there, and mistakenly assumed that Minerva hailed from the Hebden Bridge area.
