Catwel Newsletter Number 30

Dear Friends – welcome to CATWEL newsletter number 30 Firstly, Christmas cards – or rather, the absence of them! A few years ago I decided not to send cards to people living locally, or to anyone I see on a regular basis. So I want to belatedly thank everyone who sent me a card, but didn’t get one in return. I hope you didn’t feel hurt, but to be honest I just don’t have the time to bother these days, what with constant phone calls, helping in the shop, dealing with CATWEL problems, etc! I meant no disrespect, and did (and do!) wish you all well, and hope that your Christmas was a happy one. Special thanks to our wonderful supporters who continue to make monthly donations to CATWEL – it is greatly appreciated, and helps us to maintain our homing centre in Radyr and, especially, to care for our elderly permanent residents. MICROCHIPS – THEY WORK! A man in Radyr told me about a friendly – but starving – cat which had ‘turned-up’ in his garden. I advised him to advertise it in the South Wales Echo (free for ‘found’ cats) and also to get it checked for a microchip. I then added it to our homing centre’s waiting list. A week later he phoned again. He had to make an urgent visit to his daughter, so could the cat come into care? I asked if he had done the things I had suggested. No, he hadn’t – he had only put a notice in his local shop! I phoned the nearest vet and they agreed to check for a microchip. Needless to say, the cat had a chip, and was speedily and happily reunited with his family. He’d been missing for four weeks! ‘Found’ cats MUST be checked for a chip - they really do work! Julian Bowles - of Bristol! - ran in the Cardiff Marathon and raised £65 for CATWEL. Thank you so much for selecting us as your charity, Julian, we are very grateful. National Westminster Community Charities – I was very disappointed that we did not qualify for £2000 from this charity event. We applied for money to fund neutering but just didn’t get enough votes. I think one reason may be that voting had to be done on the internet, and many of our supporters are – like me! – elderly and not very ‘computer-literate’! Never mind, we’ll have another chance next year, so let’s all brush up on those computer skills, me included! Many people who ‘find’ cats or kittens really don’t try very hard to trace the owner before phoning us! I knew Helen was at our vet’s when a woman phoned, telling me she had found a kitten. She could not possibly keep it, she said, because she already had a cat. I managed to reach Helen, and she agreed to take-in the kitten as she would be re-homing two the next day. I phoned the woman back – it was about five minutes after her initial call – but got her answer-phone. I left a message, and she soon rang again to say she’d found the owner. Good news, but a lot of bother for nothing! PRINCESS – I’m sure you remember the poor Persian cat who, with her kittens, had to be returned to her neglectful breeder owners for legal reasons. There had been a lot of publicity about the Welsh Assembly’s plans to prevent unscrupulous breeders exploiting dogs, so I wrote, asking if protection could also be given to cats. The answer, when I eventually received it, was ‘No’. They have no plans to protect cats. Why not? Write to your AM and ask! Quince jelly has proved very popular in our shop! Made by Mrs Marilyn Davidson, it has customers coming back for more! Thank you Marilyn, for your hard work and generous support. To help Marilyn continue producing this best-seller, we need donations of small glass jars, just bring them to the shop. Waitrose in Pentwyn runs a Community Matters Scheme. If you can, please nominate CATWEL as a participant – then get lots of your friends to visit the shop, and vote for us to have a share in the nominated donation! Many thanks. What we love to hear – happy stories about cats we have homed! A lady at Pontypridd WI was very excited about a wonderful cat she had met at St Fagan’s museum – a handsome, friendly white lad who lived with the miller. It was, of course, ‘our’ Gwyn (aka Sebastian) who has a wonderful life, and is obviously a bit of a celebrity! Thanks, Gwyn, for being a great CATWEL ambassador! Grateful thanks to Morrisons (Llanishen and Cardiff Bay), Tesco (Rover Way) and Asda (Leckwith) for allowing us to locate cat-food collection boxes in their stores - and thanks, too, to Sainsbury’s, for agreeing to reinstate our box in their newly extended and refurbished Thornhill Store. A continuous supply of donated food really is essential to CATWEL, and much appreciated. It’s not just the recession which should be blamed for the large number of animals being abandoned. The current economic situation has had an impact, of course, but I feel that the problems faced by animal rescue groups are also being caused by some people’s irresponsibility. In spite of financial help with neutering being available for years now, a number of owners still allow their female cats to get pregnant. Then they simply hand out the kittens to anybody who will take one, and the cycle is repeated again and again! This past year has been the worst I’ve known in twenty years of cat rescue work, and the mild autumn didn’t help. Our pens are still full of beautiful kittens, some rapidly approaching neutering age (five/six months). People seem to want gingers or tabbies, while we have lots of black, and black and white, kittens! Our overhead costs are rapidly increasing, with so many cats in care for such a long time. So we desperately need lots of good homes to come along! PAMPURREDPETS in Morganstown have been incredibly supportive, and we are so grateful. They have a CATWEL food collection box, a money collection box for change, and have promised to ‘adopt’ us as the recipient of the money they raise from the sale of plastic bags. Thank you so much! Thanks also go to Lakeside Townswomen, who always donate a share of the money they raise at their annual party – and to Mrs Bulmer who raised £60 for us with a charity coffee-morning, and gift-aided it, and to Amy Jones who donated a prize won in a quiz. So much help from so many different people – we are very grateful for it all. MY WISH LIST FOR OUR SHOP! Jewellery, including ‘costume’; jewellery and sewing boxes; odd beads; clothes; bric-a-brac; wool oddments; fabric, including lace; haberdashery items, including buttons; scrap gold and silver; foreign coins; medals; knitting needles; knitting and sewing patterns; DVDs and CDs; small rugs; small pieces of furniture; china; curtains; records; books; sheet music; small musical instruments; and bedding (Welsh Wool blankets are particularly popular). As you can see, we sell just about everything! Other fundraising: Now that we have opened a shop our priority has to be that venue, as we have to concentrate on covering our overheads there. However, during 2011 several events did place at other venues and they were very successful. Jackie, Barbara and Sian ran our usual stall at Roath Park in July, plus a stall at St Mary’s Church Hall, Whitchurch which raised £200. Similarly, a fair run in Ely by busy fosterer Roz, helped by Sheena, was well supported by other members and raised over £300. Barclay’s Bank very generously doubled this sum, as Sheena is a retired staff member, and they support a nominated charity event every year which has been run by an ex-employee. Thanks and ‘well done’ to everyone involved in these ventures! Some of our beautiful cats who need homes: Bramble, aged 2, a silver tabby; Norris, aged 4, a tabby; Smudge, aged 1, black and white; and Ruby, aged 2, white with tabby and ginger. They all have lovely temperaments. There are also black and white 14 week old kittens! Liz, who co-manages our shop, writes: We have a great team of dedicated volunteers who help to sort and price stock as well as selling in the shop. Customers tell us that it’s their favourite charity shop, and we have lots of compliments about the window display as well. It was lovely to see so many supporters at our Annual Social in December, which we held in the shop – hope you all enjoyed it! Also, many thanks to the supporters who have generously donated goods for us to sell. (See the previous page for our ‘wish list’!) Our haberdashery and craft section has been particularly successful, and we now plan to launch a vintage section with vintage clothes, bags, hats, linens, china etc – mostly pre-1970’s. In order to publicise this we have organised a Vintage Fair on Sunday March 11th – see next page for full details! CATWEL will have a stall, of course, and there will be 18 others. All will be selling pretty vintage clothes, accessories and home-ware. In addition, we will be serving tea and home-made cakes! We’d love to see you there – and do please pop into our shop, 10am - 4pm, Monday to Saturday. For more information phone 02920/694019 or email catwelshop@yahoo.co.uk. Thanks to our shop, situations like this don’t worry us quite as much…A little grey female cat who came into care needed a huge amount of veterinary help. She was young, loving – and had awful injuries caused by her collar. She also needed to have her tail amputated. To ‘put her right’ cost over £500! A slightly less alarming sum now that we have the shop, though we hope it doesn’t happen too often! Now this special little cat needs a special home. A cat and baby are both precious: I expect some of you read the South Wales Echo. If you do, I’m sure you will have seen the delightful photo in the ‘You Say’ column dated January 27th. It showed a young woman, a baby, and a very contented looking cat. The cat had gone missing and the owner and child were devastated. Every cat welfare group and cat lover would have known that Laura Thomas was desperately looking for her cat! At last it was sighted at a derelict house. After a huge amount of effort – including the partial demolition of a wall by a helpful builder – ‘Harry’ was rescued. A delighted Laura even took the time to phone me with the good news. What a contrast to some calls I receive! For example, a woman with a new baby is finding her cats a problem, and wants to get rid of them…A mother phones on behalf of her daughter, who has a baby so must get rid of her young cat…Yet Laura very happily looks after her baby and her cat – because, of course, she loves them both. Another case of people being too quick to involve cat welfare groups! In November a message left on my phone told of a cat abandoned and left behind by its owners. It was crying outside the informant’s friend’s flat, and she couldn’t take it in, she had two cats already. Sheena went to collect the cat, and happened to ask another neighbour if she knew anything about it. Have you guessed yet? The cat belonged to that neighbour and hadn’t been abandoned, it was just sitting on its own wall!