Which is hopefully a more interesting title than What I did last week involving cats and other charity-related stuff which is basically what this post is.
Monday.
Apres-swim, I did a food run. Normally that would be all that's worth saying about it but this was a little different. After the first stop at Asda to buy 20 6-packs of Kit-e-Kat and Butcher's and to empty the donated food bin (half full as usual), I headed to Morrison's at Doxford Park to see how much had been deposited in the first full week of the new bin there. Not expecting much, I went in with a small trolley and left with it completely full. I only just managed to get all the contents of the full bin in it. Very impressed indeed. Then it was over to Morrison's at Castletown on the other side of the river to check its first week of donated pet food.
It was empty. Not a single sachet or tin.
Late afternoon and I took Baby, the Lanchester-found cat (see previous posts), along with Carol who's adopted it, to Roker Park Vets. Baby has an ongoing nasal problem which is currently being treated with steroids. She's a lovely friendly small black cat who is even nicer than my Little Bob. The vet was reasonably pleased with her progress and reduced the dosage. I suspect she'll probably be on some form of drugs for the rest of her life.
6.00pm and we had a committee meeting. I won't go into details but for one thing. In order to centralise animal enquiries, it was decided that any phone calls about animals to the shop or enquiries there would be referred to me on my mobile phone. I'd design a form and fill in the details of each call. Then, at an appropriate time, if it involved dogs or other animals, I'd pass on the details to either Andrea or Phil. I'd deal with any relating to cats.
Tuesday.
I designed a form and used it four times that day. Here it is.
ANIMAL KRACKERS: ENQUIRY FORM.
DATE:
NAME:
ADDRESS:
PHONE:
ANIMAL: AGE: SEX:
DOG: BREED/SIZE: VACCINATED: YES/ NO
NATURE OF ENQUIRY:
ACTION TAKEN:
DATE OF ACTION:
Good, eh?
Misty, the little ten-week old grey tabby kitten, is coming along nicely. Nervous at first, she still doesn't like being picked up but she is now coming to me and climbing on to my lap. (Later in the week she'd being to curl up and sleep there as well as trying to make friends with the other cats.) I was worried about her not eating much though she seemed lively and her bowel movements were normal for a kitten of her size.
Wednesday.
Not much to report. I collected 15 bags of clothes and bric a brac for the shop from Houghton about four miles away. It's a nice run, mostly along country lanes and roads which is amazing considering I never went outside the boundaries of the City of Sunderland. After that I had coffee in the city centre with ex-colleagues but always friends Denise & Sylvia, showed them my latest photos and told them my recent stories -they're cat fans.
Thursday.
I had to go to Seaham first thing to collect a stray cat which is being fed by a few people to take to Seaton Lane vets (about a mile away from where the cat lived, and run by Roker Park Vets staff). Unfortunately the cat wasn't very co-operative and escaped my clutches. I'm trying again tomorrow morning with a larger and top-loading cat carrier.
It wasn't a wasted journey as I'd booked in Misty to be checked out by the vet. He thought she seemed healthy enough and I should just keep monitoring her.
Friday.
Another early morning trip to Seaham, this one at the far end of the town to not one of the better areas, to pick up the two mothers and father of the two litters dropped on Carol the previous Saturday night. Can't remember if I've mentioned them before, so here's a photo of the kittens.
The nearer Seaton Lane surgery couldn't handle three operations in a morning, so I took them along to Roker Park.
In the afternoon, after picking them up and dropping them off, I called in at another house at Seaham. The day before I'd had a call asking if we could take a stray cat which this family had been feeding for four weeks but which the daughter had developed an allergy to. I said I'd call round to check on the cat but couldn't promise anything. When I got there, in a part of Seaham as different again to where I'd just been, I found the cat sleeping on a wicker couch in the conservatory. She obviously knew where she was well off.
As you can see, she's very pretty. She was also very friendly and, after I checked her teeth, quite young I thought, maybe around two. There were no signs of her ever being pregnant so she's probably been neutered. I rang Carol who had just rehomed a cat earlier that day and had a space which is why the cat is in a cage.
Got a phone call from a nice-sounding young woman who saw Misty's photo on the Animal Krackers adoption website. She's going to come and have a look at her on Sunday.
Saturday.
Took our cat Toffy to Roker Park to have her stitches out. No problems.
Sunday.
The young woman whom I'll call L arrived to have a look at Misty. Misty had, only half an hour early, weed and crapped in the litter tray. The poo was perfectly normal for a small kitten. Anyway, mid-twenties L seemed really nice with good experience of cats and so we decided she could take her home there and then. The longer we left it and the harder it would be to give her up. Susan, who's currently worried about her health, didn't think it right that we should take a kitten on when, at 63, we might not be around till the end of its life. She still periodically berates me for keeping Daisy and Little Bob, though she loves them as much as I do. I took L and Misty back to L's flat at Moorside and, not without a tug at the heart strings, left them to get to know each other.
I woke from my nap just after four and checked my emails, though there's rarely anything on a Sunday afternoon. However, fifteen minutes earlier I'd been sent an email from someone at Moorside who had a friend who had five newly born but abandoned kittens in his garden. I rang Carol. I went to Moorside. I took the kittens to Carol's.
You may remember the recent story about the cat who had five kittens and three died. The two survivors are now four weeks old. Carol put the new kittens in with them and the mother immediately started caring for them. She can't feed them -Carol does that with a bottle- but she does look after them in every other way.
Monday.
And back to where we started with a food run. This time there wasn't very much at Doxford Park and only a small amount (but more than nothing) at Castletown. At Carol's, the five kittens were doing okay, though she felt that one was vulnerable. I'll keep you informed.
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