Don't ask me why, I just haven't been in the mood for blogging about cat rescue. I haven't done much on my Freethinking blog either. In both cases it isn't because I didn't have anything to write about, I just couldn't get my act together. Today I'm just going to concentrate on telling you about three or four things which happened since the last post.
A couple of weeks ago, in the aftermath of my strained shoulder muscle, I'd invited Mark, a new helper at the shop, to come with me to unload cat food at Carole's and take her cat waste to the council tip. We'd just unloaded the food when Carole got a call from pet taxi Lisa who was Low Fell PDSA in Gateshead. They'd had three kittens dumped on them and needed someone to take them. Carole will always take in kittens so Mark and I went off to pick them up.
The story from the lady at the PDSA was that they'd been found in a park by someone. Now I'm not saying that someone was lying, but I've heard so many stories from people saying that the cat/kitten had just been found and wasn't theirs honest gov, that... Well, I take it with a pinch of salt and I'm sure the PDSA lady did too.
Here are the kittens.
They were all friendly and of homeable age. Indeed one was homed the next day when a nice lady rang me asking if we had any kittens. The other were gone in a week.
Less than a week later I got another call from Carole telling me that Lisa had been contacted by a man who had a mother cat and young kittens in his garden which he couldn't take care of and the council was his next option. I was round in half an hour to find the mother and kittens snug in a cat carrier. His late mother's, he said. Whatever. The cat certainly wasn't remotely feral so she'd been someone's pet.
Two cute kittens and one overweight multiple-chinned cat rescuer.
Friday lunchtime I got a call from Carole who'd had a call from an elderly gentleman who'd found an injured cat in his garden and was concerned about it. I called him and was there in about ten minutes. It was in a private road facing the Chesters pub, an area I knew very well as I'd lived not far away for forty years.
The cat had managed to get its left front leg entangled with its collar with the result that the flesh had worn away leaving an open, infected, and foul smelling wound. I tried cutting the collar but quickly gave up after cutting through in one place as it was pulling away the skin. I got her to Williams & Cumming vets in less than five minutes. There, the vet Mr Molina cleaned and dressed the wound and kept the cat in overnight. Next morning I was told that it was doing quite well so I picked it up and took her to Carole's. I'm taking her back again tomorrow morning and leaving her while she's checked out and given any further treatment.
Carole's reckons she's potentially a big cat. She certainly is very boney and, despite being fed at the vets, wolfed down everything Carole gave her. In the meantime I've emailed a letter plus photo to the letters page at the Sunderland Echo in the hopes that her owner will call me and claim her.
We've actually had a good week on the re-homing front with a few kittens and three adult cats going. If that happened every week I wouldn't have to turn down so many people wanting their cat re-homed. Wonder what this week will bring.
