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HELP LINE
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Julia
Moore who worked with the Croyden branch of Cats Protection
wrote this article. She has
kindly given us permission to publish it on our site,
as it is as relevant to us as it is to every branch.
It touchingly describes a
typical scenario
The
Silent meow
 Not
very far away from you – in fact, just around the corner, a little
black cat sits crouched beneath a bush; taking what shelter he can from
the rain. You’ve probably
seen him if you’ve happened to walk that way.
You may have seen him sitting on a window sill, maybe even
stopped to stroke him and say hello when he’s been sitting on a wall
in the sunshine. He never
wanders very far, for there’s a house in this road that he used to
call home. Several months
ago, when the weather was much more agreeable to a young cat and there
were lots of things to chase and play with and the sun was warm on his
back, the little black cat yawned and stretched and sauntered home for
his tea, only to find there was nobody there.
The house was very quiet and still.
The little black cat sniffed the air – no food smells of any
kind. He waited patiently by the back door. Only as darkness fell did he begin to cry, hoping somebody
would hear his pleas and let him in, willing the light to come on and
his owner to appear, tin of cat food in hand.
Unknown to the little black cat, his owners had gone for good.
Moved away, leaving him behind.
Nights turned into days, days to weeks, and still the little cat
lived in hope that soon someone would come home and let him in.
He moved from garden to garden, bin bag to bin bag in search of
food, finding a shed with a broken window in which could shelter for a
while, but never going too far. They
might come back tomorrow.
Two roads down from yours lives a very different cat indeed.
This cat is a Tortoishell and she is pregnant. She was only born this April herself, and although hardly out
of kitten hood, is about to become a mum.
She used to have a home too.
She was bought as a present for the children, but she’d only
lived there a few weeks when they got that Play station thing.
They didn’t want to play with her anymore and she seemed to
always be in trouble with the grownups.
Now she is on her own, cold, tired and very, very hungry.
She is searching for a place secure enough and snug enough to
giver birth to her kittens. She
knows that wherever she chooses it must be within reach of the lady’s
house that puts a saucer of milk out each day.
She is more than a little frightened, not only of the birth, but
also of the future. What
dangers will she have to face? How
will she feed her babies when she can hardly feed herself?
What will become of her babies?
Will any of them ever have a home?
Across the road from the Tortie
lives dad. He’s a large
tabby tom with attitude. This
is his patch and everybody knows it.
He used to be very popular with the ladies with his sleek coat
and rippling muscles. These
days he resembles a moth-eaten bag of bones.
He’s rather smelly, but that doesn’t bother him.
His ears are torn and tatty and he has several scars on his face
and an eye that’s permanently half-shut, but that’s ok. It gives him street cred, shows he’s not to be messed with,
doesn’t it! He’s held
this patch for a long time now and he doesn’t want to lose it.
He knows where all the best bins are, and which cat-flaps he can
sneak through at night where he might find some leftover food before the
resident cat chases him out. He
usually has time for a quick spray before he leaves.
The people round here don’t like him and tend to shout and
throw things when they see him, so that he has learnt to keep out of
their way. Lately though,
life seems harder than usual. His
skin itches, his ears hurt, his bones ache and there’s this sore that
he got when fighting the ginger from the next street a couple of weeks
ago. It just won’t heal
up no matter how much he licks it.
It seems to smell now too. He
doesn’t like the night much anymore.
He might have to defend his territory and he feels so tired.
One day soon, he’s going to lose
Were you aware of the old lady that was
rushed off to hospital six months ago, who lived in the road that backs
onto yours? She never
returned. There was no one
left to mourn her except for Poppy, her 13-year-old black and white cat.
The council came along and boarded up the house.
At least she had lived there long enough to know the kindly
neighbours a few doors away who provided a rough shelter for her in
their garden and put out a bowl of food each day, but who unfortunately
couldn’t take her in because of the old man’s emphysema.
He isn’t allowed pets of any kind.
Although she is quite lucky to have kind people to feed her each
day, she misses her mum and her
home.
She misses curling up to sleep on her bed each night, or sitting
on her mum’s lap in the evenings, snug and warm and purring as her mum
strokes her. Poppy isn’t
feeling very well. Although
she eats all her food up, she’s still so very hungry. Each day her hunger increases, and she need to relieve
herself more often, too. As
her weight falls off, she begins to feel her heart pounding in her
chest. It races so fast;
she finds it hard to relax. Poppy
knows all is not as it should be, but all she can do is eat as much as
she can and take each day as it comes.
There
can’t possibly be any more strays near you that you don’t already
know about, can there? Well,
you wouldn’t know yet about the two brothers who were dumped in your
road in the early hours of the morning, unwanted now there’s a new
baby in the house. No one
has seen them yet. They’re
still in shock, huddled together where they can’t be seen, so very
scared and confused, terrified to venture out into this unknown world.
You see, they’ve never been outside before.
Their home was on the seventh floor of a block of flats.
The little
black cat, the pregnant Tortoishell. Dad and Poppy have all come to the
attention of concerned people who called the Cats Protection Help line
(the brothers have yet to be discovered).
Unfortunately the branch doesn’t have all the help it needs to
come to the aid of every cat reported quickly, but the volunteers do
their best and help as many as they can as soon as they can.
Foster spaces are always in short supply and a cat may have a
long wait for one to become available.
The little black cat, for instance, is on the waiting list for a
space, but he is healthy and young, and not as immediately in need as
the pregnant Tortoishell. She
needs a space as soon as possible.
Hopefully one will be found for her before she gives birth.
Dad will not come in to be fostered, but he will be taken to the
vets. As he is not a friendly cat he will need to be caught in one
of the special cat traps used for these situations. Poor old Dad will have to wait a while, as there are fewer
volunteers to do trapping than anything else, and those that do are
stretched to their limits – trying to cope with their ever-increasing
list of ferals, sick, long-term strays, nervous cats and garden-born
kittens that
cannot be just picked up and popped into a normal cat carrier.
Poppy is already on the
waiting list for a foster space, but wasn’t a priority when first
reported, as she was being well fed and the caller failed to mention her
condition. However, when
the caller rang again to see if Poppy would be collected soon, she told
the Help line volunteer how thin Poppy was getting despite the amount of
food she ate. The Help line
operative then realised Poppy was possibly hyperthyroid (a condition
common these days in older cats) and would need checking by a volunteer,
and taking to the vets as soon as possible.
From the vets she would need to come straight in to CP care
The
volunteer operating the Help line that day searches her list of people
who have offered to do cat checking and transport.
Most of them can only manage evenings and weekends and she really
needs to find someone who is available in the morning or afternoon, so
that Poppy can be collected and taken to the vet during surgery hours. She can find no one in Poppy’s area, but eventually finds a
volunteer who lives several miles away who offers to do it.
Now to find
Poppy a foster space. Our branch is an active one. We do all we can to help the many cats made known to us every
day, and we have a wonderful hardworking team who raise funds to get all
the veterinary treatment these cats needs.
However, with all the raised funds in the world, the cats can’t
be helped without the people to do it.
This group desperately needs more volunteers that are active.
Foster spaces are needed, cat checkers and transporters are
needed, trappers are needed. Wherever
you are in our area, you could be of great help.
So
if you feel you could give space in your home to foster a cat like the
little black cat, or Poppy, or even offer temporary emergency space, or
if you want to help Dad and others like him and make sure he gets the
veterinary treatment he needs, or if you could collect and take cats like
Poppy to the vet or a foster home, then please pick up the ‘phone and
make yourself known! If you are unsure about anything, we would be more than happy
to answer your questions and tell you all that’s involved.
There’s no pressure and no obligation.
Any offer of help is greatly appreciated.
Many
appeals for help have appeared on our site before, and I’m sure many
people think we’ve been inundated with offers.
Maybe you’ve thought, “I could help with that”, still,
they’ve probable got all the help they need by now” NOT SO! Very few
people have responded to these appeals in the past, which is incredibly
disheartening to those volunteers who need the help, so please, this
time don’t just think about it. Do something about it.
If you have wanted to go out there and help any one of the cats
in this article (ands there are many more like them reported every day)
then pick up the telephone and offer whatever you can.
Any help is better than none!
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