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.

Another elderly stray

It's hard to know what to do for the best when we get calls to pick up elderly "stray" cats. Callers naturally tend to assume that a thin, "poor" looking cat has got that way because he or she doesn't have a home or isn't being cared for. That's not necessarily true, and a very frail-looking animal may well have a devoted home only a few doors away and simply be a very old cat. On the other hand, if the cat really has got lost, and is very elderly their chances of survival are obviously much worse than for a young, fit animal, so we would normally ask the caller to make enquries locally, but agree to collect if no owner is found.

Once we have the cat it's difficult for vets to make an effective assessment without any knowledge of previous history and we'll need to pay for blood tests as a minimum to check kidney function and whether or not the cat is hyperthyroid. Some conditions are treatable and the cat might be able to be placed in a home and live for years; others (such as the last stages of kidney failure) are hopeless and it's not fair to put put the cat in kennels and hope for the best.

If the vet's opinion is that the cat is suffering and ought to be put to sleep then as a welfare organisation we really cannot disregard their advice (bear in mind that this will not usually be "an RSPCA vet" but a normal private vet who is treating people's pets every day).

Just yesterday one of the Soham vets took in a very poorly looking stray for us and this morning they phoned to say he had a bleeding cancerous mass in his mouth and was in pain. In those circumstances it really isn't acceptable to delay in case an owner makes contact. The same day they took in another injured cat for us and he died overnight, so with hindsight it would have saved money to be used for other animals and been better for him if he'd been put to sleep at once. Sometimes these decisions have tragic consequences.

Old strays are another reason why we need more foster homes where we can give a higher standard of TLC than will ever be possible in a cattery environment. These are cats who are unlikely to be rehomed, but are still enjoying life and only ask for warmth, food, a litter tray and a comfortable bed.

If you might be willing to consider fostering animals for the branch, please email rehoming@rspca-cambridge.org.uk

Twitching kitten

This kitten was found wandering in the street and taken to a vet by a member of the public under an RSPCA log number. She's very pretty and friendly but seems to have some kind of nervous system problem as she's unsteady and has trouble getting into her litter tray in a hurry. As the pic shows, there's nothing wrong with her appetite and the vets think the best plan is to wait and see whether the unsteadiness gets worse or better.

She was full of worms and fleas, which we've treated, so crossed fingers that an improvement in her general health will help with the other problems.

The case of the cat dumped in a box

I'm still wondering whether this was a bizarre practical joke or what.

At about 12.30 am on Saturday morning I had a call from the duty nurse at the Vet School to say they'd been phoned by someone with an injured cat claiming to have been told to contact them by the RSPCA National Control Centre.

This was odd in itself, because the University out of hours emergency number isn't available to members of the public; normally someone who found an un-owned injured cat would be told to take the cat to the nearest available private vet and that the RSPCA would pick up the cost of emergency first aid. The owner of an animal already registered with our clinic would have the branch mobile contact number on their registration card and is supposed to phone that, not the NCC nor the Vet School.

Neither the nurse nor I were at our best and brightest after being woken at that time of night, but we agreed that I should phone the cat's finder and the NCC to try to find exactly what was going on and how badly injured the cat was. If the owner wasn't known, there wasn't any way to find out whether the cat herself was registered with the clinic, so she'd have to go to a private vet in any case if she was in too much of a bad way to wait until the regular session on Saturday morning.

After midnight the surcharge on vet's fees goes up to £140 round here, so I was not a happy bunny. I phoned the caller first and established that he'd found the cat tied up in a cardboard box beside the road. He'd decided to call the RSPCA because she was limping and not interested in food or drink and was calling all the time, but she didn't really sound to me as though she was in such a desperate state as to justify spending the cost of a minor operation to get her seen immediately rather than in 8 hours time. I tried to explain this to the caller, who clearly wasn't happy about it, but left him with a promise that I'd contact the NCC again on his behalf and definitely arrange for the cat to see a vet even if not right now this minute.

Meanwhile the cat really was kicking up a racket in the background - sounding in fact suspiciously as if she was "calling" as in "on heat" rather than because she was hurt. Assuming the story about finding her in a box wasn't a leg-pull, being in season could explain why she was dumped if someone couldn't or wouldn't pay to get her spayed.

Phoned NCC as I was beginning to be suspicious that the cat finder had actually called some other organisation who were aware that the Vet School provide the inpatient care for our clinic and that was how he'd come to get their number. They didn't have any record of a call from the finder's address that night and confirmed to me that they would definitely have passed a call about a cat being dumped in this way to an inspector (an offence has clearly been committed) even if they'd advised the caller that they wouldn't be able to arrange for someone to pick the cat up before daylight.

I then phoned the finder back to see if he could confine the cat until morning so that one of us could take her to the clinic, only to discover she'd jumped out of the box, escaped out the front door, jumped the garden fence and legged it into the darkness. I suspect the final upshot will be a phone call a couple of months down the line about a stray cat having kittens in someone's garden.

Stray cats again

Neville's a perfect example of why a rule that we should try to treat sick stray cats for at least seven days before giving up is worth having even if most of them aren't claimed by their owners. He was taken to the vets in Soham late Tuesday last week, at which point he was very thin, vomited any food he was offered, and was dehydrated. They examined him and thought he was probably a very old, hyperthyroid cat whose kidneys were failing. Over the Wednesday he got worse and stopped showing any interest in food. They tested him for kidney failure and for hyperthyroidism and FIV/FeLV, none of which came back positive, but it really didn't look as if he was going to "do".

We didn't have a volunteer driver available to transfer him to the RSPCA clinic on Thursday, so I asked them to put him on a drip to try to keep him going until Saturday - the next available clinic session.

Over the Thursday he perked up, started eating and keeping it down, and by Saturday (after poor Nicola had queued for nearly 3 hours with him), the University vet's opinion was that he'd almost certainly been trapped somewhere without food or water (which would cause the dehydration and vomiting because his gut couldn't cope with suddenly being fed again). The irritating thing about this was that he probably didn't need to be seen at the clinic at all & it would have been a lot simpler for Nicola to take him straight to the kennels - but there you are.

I've now got him at home, eating six meals a day until he's back to normal weight.

He's probably only three or four years old, and the moral of this story is that, if we'd been very pressed for funds, it wouldn't have been unreasonable for us to put down a very elderly, very sick stray, and even if we'd asked to wait the seven days, the vet might have decided to save our money by not recommending a drip.

When they're treating owned animals, vets are working with some knowledge of an animal's previous history; at least a vague idea of actual age and anything unusual that led up to the illness. The strays we take in have to be treated "blind" with nothing but the visible signs.

If you live in Soham and lost a black cat with a white star on his chest several weeks ago, Neville may be your cat.

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.

Stray cats II

RSPCA HQ have now put up a statement about the Mirror article, and the story behind what happened seems to be much as I suspected. Evidently the cat was originally reported as a sick animal whose owner wasn't known. I've been on the receiving end of calls like this, and there can be an awful lot of pressure to remove an animal, and insistence that it is in terrible pain. Once you've caught the cat, if the owner of the land where it was found is adamant that it mustn't be put back you are in a bind.

99 times out of 100 there's no problem and the cat is placed in kennels or a foster home and either rehomed or claimed by the owner. If the cat is unhomeable, most of the time it's at least possible to hold him/her for a reasonable length of time to give the owner a chance to come forward.

Until comparatively recently vets would normally be asked to hold the cat for at least 7 days if no kennel space was available. Now, most veterinary surgeries outsource their out of hours emergency cover to specialist 24hr centres and all their own staff go home overnight and at weekends. Some of them will stretch a point and get a nurse to come in briefly to feed and water weekend boarders, but most are unhappy about leaving animals unattended. That means they can't be used as a form of emergency space for holding animals. Kennels all have limits on their numbers set out as part of their licence conditions, so they can't "just squeeze in one more".

That leaves foster homes — and most of us would do our best to fit in one more cat in an emergency.

Do that too often, and you become part of the problem, not part of the solution. There's a numbers limit beyond which animals can't be kept in reasonably sanitary conditions, with parasites treated and veterinary appointments kept.

Stray cats again

Today's Mirror has a story which seems absolutely horrifying on the face of it. The National RSPCA's spokesman has simply stated that the Society is trying to find exactly what did happen, and they are clearly as gob-smacked as I am, because virtually everything that happened breaks normal policy on dealing with complaints about "stray" cats.

For the record, what would normally happen is as follows:

Caller phones in (sometimes direct to a branch or animal home, sometimes to the National Control Centre).

Caller: There's a stray cat in my garden and I want you to come out and pick it up.

RSPCA: Is the cat injured? Does it seem to be ill.

Then,

either:

Caller: Yes - I saw the poor thing hit by a car - one of its legs is hanging off.

(What's wrong obviously varies depending on circumstances)

RSPCA: Can you take the cat to a vet and we'll pay for treatment? That would be quickest. If you haven't got transport we can send someone out, but that may take a while.....

OR

Caller: No, but it's been hanging around for days and it needs rehoming.

RSPCA: Most cats like that do have a home and go back there when they're hungry. Don't encourage him by feeding him and he'll probably go home. If you're still worried, try putting on a paper collar asking the owner to phone you - or put up notices asking if anyone local's lost a cat.

Normally we're very resistant indeed to agreeing to pick up healthy, uninjured cats just because someone says they're stray - to the point where callers often get quite annoyed about it. It wouldn't normally be treated as a priority (because the animal isn't in distress) so it would be very surprising for an inspector to be diverted to collect the cat in the short length of time described in the article.

Of course micro-chipping would make this kind of event much less likely (although still not impossible if a cat is very difficult to handle in order to scan for a chip).

In any situation it's always possible that some individual may make a completely unreasonable and wrong decision or be over-persuaded by a caller who is totally convinced they're in the right. Possibly the explanation is that this cat was injured and the real argument is over whether the injuries were treatable or not.