"And that, unless something unexpected happens, is the last post of the month," Ian Williams approximately three hours ago.

Well, guess what?

Round about nine last night this cat came into the possession of Andrea, via Lisa the pet taxi person, after running into the Grangetown chippy and hiding, clearly terrified out of her wits, under the fridge. Andrea had nowhere to put it except the shop where there's already one cat in temporary residence. So later this morning I got a call from Susan and you can guess the rest.

As you can see, she's absolutely gorgeous and is used to being handled. Bit wary -hiss, hiss- of my cats so far but she's only been here a few minutes.

We've finally got round to buying a microchip scanner which is currently being charged on the shop's laptop. When that's finished in a few hours, Andrea will come round and scan the cat -and the other two I've got here, and my own just for fun. Hopefully we'll find her owner as she has to be local. 

There are times when I wish all the people who neglect their pets were all in one body so I could wrap my hands round their collective throat and scream, "If you aren't prepared to look after a cat for life then don't rude word get one, you stupid rude word arseholes!"

I've taken three lovely cats into my house in the last two weeks and, believe me, that's only the very tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to lost and abandoned cats in Sunderland. There are many many more trying to survive on their own which either never come to our attention or that we don't have the resources to help. We're a very small local animal rescue charity trying to do our best to help and knowing that it's never going to be enough. But at least helping a few is better than helping none.