Volunteers' Meeting

We will be holding volunteers' meetings every 2nd Thursday of the month at Ross Street Community Centre in Cambridge (just off Mill Road), between 7.30 and 9.30 pm. Anyone interested in the branch is very welcome to drop by, and we hope that one of the two local inspectors will be able to attend some of the meetings and answer questions about their work and the relationship between the branch and the inspectors.

The meetings are intended as a social event for all our volunteers where they can exchange experiences of helping with branch activities, and also as a focus for recruiting more helpers, and a chance for volunteers to meet members of the branch committee and ask any questions they may have.

RSPCA week April 26-May 2nd is our next big fundraising event and we need as many collectors as possible—even a few hours can raise as much as £20. We are also planning a sponsored dog walk in Histon, and more helpers, donors and shoppers are always needed at the three charity shops.

If we are to start giving emergency help via private vets again we need to raise an extra £30,000 each year.

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How to find Ross St Community Centre

There is limited parking at the centre (disabled bay, plus a few other spaces), but there is a car park within easy walking distance on Gwydir Street.

And another cat

Owner thinks the cat has a chicken bone stuck in his throat. He's never been to any vet before, although, as he's on benefits this is another cat who could have been registered with our clinic and so eligible for out of hours emergency treatment from our veterinary service provider.

Cat's Protection are going to try to get the cat seen by a vet — which is likely to cost them over £100 at this time of night and their funds won't hold out indefinitely either if something similar happens every evening. The added problem is that the owner has no transport and no friends with transport, so getting to a vet is going to be difficult.

And a cat

Feel terribly sorry for the owner, but again it's just such a shame the cats weren't registered at our clinic. The cat's probably been hit by a car and at this time of night just the consultation fee for the 24 hour vet would be over £100 with treatment costs on top of that. I've advised her to phone them in any case in the hope that they may be willing to give some treatment and try for help from the PDSA in the morning.

The out of hours cover offered by our clinic's veterinary services provider would cost less than a third of this. At our current income there is just no way we can fund the £36,5oo p.a. which would be needed to pay for one out of hours consult at private vets every day of the year on top of running our clinic and pet rehoming.

If you live in our branch area and are on benefits (including carer's allowance, working tax credit, attendance allowance) and know you would struggle to pay a private vet PLEASE be proactive about getting your pets registered at our clinic. Provided your pet attends the clinic at least once a year (booster vaccinations should be given yearly in any case), they will be eligible for the clinic's out of hours service. This is not free, but it is much more affordable than the alternatives.

How to import your Thunderbird emails into Thunderbird v3 from another hard disk or location.

Tutorial on how to get your Mozilla Thunderbird e-mails imported from another drive.

Over the years I have often upgraded my system and changed hard disks etc and wanted to keep all of my emails from the previous system, now with Outlook Express this was something I was used to doing.
But then I came to try this using Mozilla Thunderbird and thought I would share my findings on how to do this.

Here is the scenario:
I have had a problem with the main hard disk on my Windows XP machine, namely the dreaded "NTLDR is missing" message at bootup and despite best attempts to get the drive up and running it was not possible fix it. Unfortunately this drive had all my emails on it in Thunderbird v2, so how am I going to retreive them from the old hard disk? I don't have them backed up anywhere! I will explain how to do it here:

I removed the  no longer bootable hard disk, I installed a new blank hard disk and installed Windows XP and put all the software back on (lots of fun!)

I downloaded Thunderbird v3.0.1 :
Mozilla Thunderbird
I installed it, I ran it but at the first screens that showed I clicked cancel and on all other setup screens that followed, then closed Thunderbird.
The reason for running it but not configuring it is so that it creates a folder and profile ready for use.

Now I used Windows Explorer (with it set to "Show hidden and system files") and navigated to the following location :

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\

As you can see there are about 23 files and 7 folders in this folder. This is where you need to place your original files, I will show you that bit next.

So now we need to get them from your original drive. I will assume now that you have either put the original hard disk into your system set as a slave drive OR you have placed the hard disk in a hard disk caddy and plugged it into your USB port.
Either way you will now need to access your original files. So in this example here I have connected my original hard disk to my pc via a caddy so this is showing as Drive E:
Now again using Windows Explorer you need to navigate to the same location but on your original drive so in my example here that would be :

E:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\

You should see the same structure of files such as a Profiles folder, Profiles.ini and a registry.dat file.
You now need to copy everything in the Thunderbird directory so press Control A to select the three items then press Control C to copy them to the clipboard.
Now navigate to the Thunderbird folder that is on your Drive C (your new hard disk) and press Control V
It will now say Profiles folder already exists do you want to overwrite it, click YES.
It will now copy all of your emails, address book etc (Note: Depending on how many emails you have and how big the attachements are there may be many hundreds of megabytes of data to copy so may take a few moments).
Once its has finished you can run Thunderbird, you will now see all of your emails that you thought you would never see again along with your address book too!

n.b: If your previous version was 2 then you will need to go into accounts and security tab and remove the tick from the area asking for additional user/password for authentification. If you do not do this then it will fail to send emails.

Of course if your original hard disk is actually faulty (rather than just not booting windows) then you wont be able to read the files from it.

I hope this tutorial helps those people in the same situation as me.
Please leave some nice comments if you found this information worked for you.

A Gecko...

Again, the vets were very good and agreed they would at least take a look even though the owner claimed to have no money at all to pay them.

I don't think the no money claim bodes well for the poor little beastie as even small reptiles are high maintenance because of their absolute requirement for suitable heating and light, unlike, say, a hamster which can at least survive at room temperature so long as it has food and bedding.

And another dog

This vet was very helpful and is at least prepared to see the dog and possibly give first aid knowing that they're very probably not going to get any payment back from the owner. However they're not going to be able to commit to doing anything seriously expensive.

Dog is now collapsed after being ill for several days and isn't registered with any vet. If ONLY the owner had pulled out all the stops to get him to our clinic this morning. If the private vet's first aid can keep him alive until Thursday we can do our best for him then, but it doesn't sound good.

And another...

Feel worse about this one, as the dog's clearly in a bad way: vomiting and very dull, and it's another 6 hours until our clinic opens. However, it does illustrate why we have to press owners to take more responsibility so our funds can be used to best effect. The dog's registered at a local private vet and was previously on long term medication, but hasn't been seen there for some time. This was presumably because the owners were short of money and just let it lapse and hoped for the best.

They're on benefits, so they could have transferred their registration to our clinic before things got desperate. At this time of day (night) it would cost £150 just for the consult at the 24 hour vet, which just wouldn't be a sensible use of our limited funds.