Another injured stray

Royston Vet Centre have just phoned to let me know that an injured stray cat was taken in to them last night on an RSPCA National Control Centre log number. He's got a broken leg and jaw, but they think the injuries are at least several days old as he's coping well and eating ravenously in spite of the jaw injury.

They scanned him for a chip and found one, but it looks as though the owner may have moved and not updated the record as there's been no response to any of the landline, mobile or email contact registered in the PetLog database. For the moment we'll have to treat him as an ordinary unowned stray and organise continuing care and fracture repair via our clinic. The Royston vets have kindly volunteered to contact other local vets in their area in case he's been transferred to another practice or possibly rehomed to another owner.

If your pets are chipped, please remember that it's essential to update your details if you move or change your mobile or email providers. If you're going on holiday for a significant length of time and leaving the cat to be fed by neighbours make sure you remain contactable in an emergency.

Maisie

This is Maisie, the cat with the broken jaw who came in just over two weeks ago, still looking a bit sorry for herself. As you can see from the pics, the left-hand side of her face is still not quite right, but she should be able to have the metal wire out next week. I think she's almost blind on the bad side except that her pupil contracts in bright light, so she can probably see light and shade.

Lessons Learned

Firstly I should stress that the following are my own thoughts about the distressing case of Luna, reported to the RSPCA as an injured stray and subsequently put to sleep because there was no available holding accommodation for her. I am sure HQ will be holding their own review and seeing what changes should/can be made.

On policy:

1. The current policy that we will not normally remove healthy adult stray cats from their current location needs to be re-affirmed.
2. We need to clarify that cats who are reported to be sick or injured, but are found on capture to be perfectly well will be returned to their original location.
3. The 7 day holding period for sick or injured stray animals who are not homeable, but don't need immediate euthanasia on welfare grounds needs to be added to the branch Minimum Animal Welfare Standards and made mandatory.

On practical issues:

1. We need to recruit more foster carers as a cost-effective way of increasing holding spaces for animals.
2. We need to plan what can be done in a situation where no kennel or foster space is available or the animal is not suitable to go to a foster home. This will cost money. Usually the only solution at weekends would be to transfer the animal to the veterinary surgery which is providing 24 hour cover for the district. Reasonably enough they will charge a substantial amount if an animal has to take up an expensive emergency care place.

Education

1. Microchip identification is not perfect, but the more we can encourage, the better the chance that a cat picked up as an injured stray will be reunited speedily with her owners. It's particularly important to chip cats who have some disability or condition which makes them likely to be reported as sick or injured (for example a permanently stiff leg following an injury).
2. Educate the public that a cat in good body condition, with no obvious injuries or illness, who is "hanging around" is normally perfectly capable of returning home without help.
3. Educate vets that we're not simply "putting off the decision" if we ask for an obviously terminally ill stray to be held the full 7 days so long as it can be kept pain-free.
4. Educate branch members and volunteers that when they signed up to the RSPCA they effectively signed up to an open-ended responsibility for animals collected by ACOs.

The most practically problematic of these is likely to be number 2 of the first group. Legally we probably can't insist that a cat removed from a particular garden is returned there if the owner of the garden refuses permission. Returning as close as possible to the original site is probably the best that can be guaranteed, so once an animal has been collected it's probably safer held until claimed by an owner if it can't be returned to the exact site.

Number 4 of the last group is a real consideration. The RSPCA is an extremely complex organisation dealing with issues that would take several inch-thick manuals to describe properly. Normal people don't, won't and can't assimilate anything like this before they join up as helpers and this does mean that quite a lot of the time they're being asked to do something and really don't know why — or at least not why it's their responsibility when they're already doing as much as they're comfortable with and they're genuinely short of funds.

The money aspect is a genuine consideration. Money spent keeping an unhomeable cat for 7 days is money that's not available to help with another animal's veterinary treatment.

Further thought

I think we should ban the phrase, "he'll find his way home" when we're talking to the public about cats they want to report as strays, because it implies that the cat is lost and has to search for home. I don't have to find my way home from the shops — I know the route, and so does the average cat who's visiting a garden a few doors down.

Excellent news about Katie

Katie is a youngish cat who we took in a few weeks ago and took up for investigation at the University Vet School because the vet we use at the kennels found a very large lump in her abdomen when checking her fitness to be spayed. The most common reason for this in a cat would be lymphoma, which is an invasive cancer with very bad prospects.

However, the Vet School did an exploratory operation on her tum on Monday and the "lump" seems to have been a very large internal abscess, which they've removed surgically. They're doing culture of the pus to check which antibiotics are best to use, but say provided the wound doesn't break down (some danger of this because it was actually attached to her gut wall) she's got a good chance of full recovery. They waited until today to phone me in case she went downhill after the op.

Injured staffie

He was found in Milton Country Park by a member of the public and taken to Village Vets for first aid. They think he's definitely got a broken jaw and possibly a fractured leg, so we're covering the cost of first aid with them and one of our volunteer drivers is going to transfer him to the clinic tomorrow morning.

No details yet about his general appearance, other than that he's very friendly. If he might be yours, please contact Village Vets (before tomorrow) or email rosemary@rspca-cambridge.org.uk (after then).

Animal welfare statistics for February

During February 2009, we treated 309 owned (199 dogs, 97 cats, 5 rabbits and 8 miscellaneous small animals) and 34 unowned animals (3 dogs and 31 cats) and rehomed six cats and one dog. We neutered 20 dogs 15 cats and 19 rabbits.

Update on Santa

Hallelujah!

The wound flap has closed up except for a very small area at the lowest point (where all the pus and gunk was draining). He still needs to have it monitored and dressings changed daily, but a student has offered to take him home for a trial period. Hopefully by the end of next week he may be ready to go to his permanent adoptive home. As some of the healing is by "granulation," which is the formation of scar tissue, he may be left with some permanent lack of flexibility, but they're now confident that he'll live.

This just serves to demonstrate what terrible damage a rigid, unbreakable collar can do to a cat. This was a flea collar, and it probably didn't have any beneficial effect in killing fleas, but it very nearly killed poor Santa. As it didn't carry any identity tag it didn't even serve any useful function in linking him to his previous owner.

Comparison

Some figures from the Home Office performance report on Cambridgeshire police make an interesting comparison:

* Police Officers: 1,379
* Police Staff: 892
* Community Support Officers: 197
* Other Staff: 25
* Special Constables: 210

Budget 2007/08: £116.0 million

Cambridgeshire alone has an annual income that roughly matches the resources the RSPCA has to fund all its national services (Inspectorate, animal homes, campaigns, scientific etc.). Next time you hear that someone phoned the RSPCA and "no-one was available to come out that day," please remember those figures. It isn't that "no-one cares".

Cat updates

Gizmo, our longest-staying cat, is booked to go to a home this weekend.

Joshua's various fracture repairs went well and he's due to go out to a foster home (with a view to permanent adoption if he gets on with the resident cats) today.

I picked up Sox yesterday evening and Janine's fostering him for a few days, and has a possible permanent home lined up.

Unfortunately Santa's collar wound has been giving some problems and the vets are planning to do another surgical repair once they get back the results of a bacterial culture of the infection. If these are OK, he'll have a graft from the fatty tissue near his gut to provide a basis for blood vessels to supply the (hopefully) now healthy skin flaps. This sounds pretty drastic, but generally does result in proper healing although it does leave the cat with a palpable lump in the area where the surgery was done, so a future owner needs to be warned that it's not a tumour.

Another cat

Not very full details yet as Vet24 phoned immediately after the finders had brought the kitty to them. The cat is all (or almost all) white and about four or five years old. No collar or chip, and I don't think they'd definitely confirmed the sex, although they spoke about "him" which suggests they think this is a neutered male. He's apparently fairly bright, but has a probable pelvic fracture, so "the other Rosemary" is going to pick him up from them early tomorrow morning on her way in to do reception at the clinic.

And another rabbit!

She's medium sized and fawn coloured. Taken to Vet24 by someone who found her wandering just after Christmas.

More and more cats!

Pretty apricot tortie brought to Cambridge Veterinary Group on Cherry Hinton Road and a black and white tom cat at Arbury road vets. The tortie is fairly well except for a probable thyroid condition and the tom cat has a fractured pelvis which they think will just need cage rest. They're keeping both cats in for a few days to see how they go.

Update on Santa and Sox

Good progress report for Sox (the current blocked bladder kitty), who's doing well following his operation and has an excellent chance of being able to live a normal life from now on, except that he will always need to be kept on a diet of wet food with no dry kibble. Not so good for Santa (collar wound), as the injury has opened up again and will probably need to be closed with a skin graft.

The Christmas Eve blues

Kicked off to a cracking start (excuse bad pun) with a kitten with probable broken bones in one foot (plant pot fell on his toe). As there's no RSPCA clinic session now until Saturday I agreed with the private vet that it wasn't fair on the kitten simply to give pain relief and wait until then, so we covered x-ray and support bandaging as well. If the x-rays suggest that the foot actually needs surgery the owner will go to our clinic on the Saturday.

Followed in short order by a vomiting dog (probably just an upset tum as she is fairly current with her vaccinations).

Next, and more worrying, an ownerless cat from Swavesey area with diarrhoea. She's not seriously ill, and the 24 hour vet was reluctant to have her occupying a cage over the whole of the break as the space will probably be needed for emergencies. The kennels where we board is completely full until some of the private boarders go home, and this is academic in any case as no-one is available for transport as Janine's car won't start. After some frantic phoning, I asked the vet to call the finder and ask if she would be prepared to have her back until after Christmas now the diarrhoea's been treated. To everyone's relief she was very understanding and drove in to pick up the cat. Annoyingly this one actually has been chipped, but it seems to have been done in America and none of the chip databases have any record of her owner's current address. Best guess is that she originally came from one of the bases and was either rehomed in Swavesey or got there by accident after hiding in a vehicle of some kind.

Santa, the cat with the collar wound is doing well, but needs to stay in for the moment as his wound is still draining. Yet another cat with a blocked bladder has been signed over to us as his owner couldn't cope and he's had his operation too and is also looking good.

Happy Holidays - Summer ones, that is

If you plan to spend part of your Christmas break looking through catalogues of exotic places, please bear in mind that your pets' holiday arrangements need to be booked well in advance too. My spare room has two extra Christmas "guests" whose owners didn't realise that all local boarding kennels would be completely booked up a fortnight before the start of the break.

On the plus side, this has forced me to bite the bullet and relocate Nicholas to a pen in a busier part of the house and his neurotic reaction shows how necessary it was. After a day on hunger-strike, he's still complaining bitterly, but wolfing down his dinner and using his litter tray. He's still completely unaggressive, just very unhappy about enforced proximity to people. He must have been socialised at some point, because it's perfectly possible to pick him up (trembling like a leaf), and he makes eye contact when he cries asking to go back upstairs. After a bit of grumbling, "Why is that Cat making All That Noise," my own cats are ignoring him, which is a relief.

Update on white cat

Her owner has turned up, so that's one less to worry about over the Christmas break.

And another cat

This one sounds as if she may have an owner somewhere out there. She's adult, but fairly young, mostly white, with some black markings. She was taken to Stone Lane Vets in Meldreth last night after being hit by a car. They think she has head injuries, which will probably clear up with nursing care over the weekend, but she probably also has a fractured foreleg. Plan is for them to see how the head injury goes and x-ray the leg on Monday if she's fit enough then to give a general anaesthetic.

Another cat with a collar wound

Call from Arbury road vets to say they've just taken in a stray cat with a badly infected collar wound that will need surgical repair to close it. He's another entire male, but fortunately has tested negative for FIV/FeLV. He'll need to be transferred to the clinic tomorrow morning.

Updates

Samuel, the little terrier, now has a home.

Nicholas continues to eat for England. Still looking very pathetic (partly because his rear end was shaved for the surgery, so he looks like a mini-baboon), but he's progressed to loud wails of discontent whenever he thinks meals are due and he doesn't appear to have any pain at all now when he walks. I'm a bit concerned that he's still so shy; he's not at all aggressive or "spitty", but he hides in his igloo and peers out waiting until I've left the room before he will eat. I was hoping that he could go down to the kennels if his X-ray gives the all-clear next week, but he's not going to "sell" himself if he hides away. 

It might be better to move him to a pen in a more populous area of the house to encourage him to come out of his shell, but that's going to be a problem if Otto and Luigi (or any of the females come to that) decide to take exception to the presence of an entire male. I would really rather not share a home with cats who have decided they're cross enough to start spraying. Thistledown used to pee into electric sockets, which is dangerous; expensively wrecks the house electrics, and creates an aroma which does not give the right impression.

No news yet on the culture results for Darcy.

Updates

Samuel, the little terrier cross with the broken pelvis, has had his operation and the vets say he's looking good and should be able to come out tomorrow or the day after. Janine has a possible home lined up and she's going to ask them if they'd be willing to have him for his month's cage rest as that would be much nicer for him than going into boarding kennels.

Nicholas, the cat with the broken pelvis, is still very timid, but eating like a horse and looking quite comfortable in his cat igloo.

The elderly cat at Swaynes vets is having further tests to try to find why he's so thin.

Darcy, the cat with pyothorax, still has some fluid in his chest, so they're going to drain it again and culture the pus for sensitivity in case the bacteria causing the infection are resistant to standard antibiotics. 

Yet another stray via Stone Lane Vets — a tabby and white neutered male about four years old. For a change he's got no apparent injuries or illness, but the finder is fairly certain that he's been left behind when his owners moved away.