Eventful

As Sunday is drawing to a close, and I'm knackered and want another day off, my thoughts are turning to the week ahead and when I might next get a lie in cos I didn't today cos I foolishly forgot to turn the alarm clock off, which in turn makes me get up to pee and in turn makes all the furries in the house think it's breakfast time and pounce on me! I always try going back to bed but end up feeling guilty and getting up to feed them all. Pathetic.

I told you a while a go about having a kitten on cage rest for a month due to a fractured elbow - well, as predicted it is hard work. She is the most excitable, giddy kipper kitten you could wish to meet and caging her is just the worst thing and just results in endless choruses of crying unless, of course, she is eating, sleeping or allowed to have a 5 minute looney launch around what was once the dining room but has since been taken over by foster rabbits, foster kittens, my hammie and my chinchilla, oh and my two bunnies Larry and Mrs H. She is a sweetie though and participated in a bit of a photo shoot on Wednesday for my local paper, the Salford Advertiser. We should be in it together next week. We spent half an hour getting the 'perfect' shot, which entailed my hand being smothered in tuna to get her to stay still. I then went straight out for my driving test with the lingering smell of fish. Needless to say kitty was happy but I failed the test. Oh well, another 6 weeks on the bus won't kill me. I hope.

So, to the week ahead, what's in stall? Firstly, actually, more interestingly is that yesterday, by the end of the day, we had reserves on 3 cats and 1 dog- all of which are new arrivals, which is great because hopefully they won't be in kennels/cattery for long, but also sad because we have lovely dogs and cats that have been around for months and keep being overlooked and really do deserve a new home too.

We also had babies yesterday!

You may remember the tale of Princess the rabbit who came in as a stray from Princess Parkway and appeared to be very heavily pregnant, except after a week there were no babies and her tittywaas had shrunken back up. So, I figured she must have had them prior to capture and so three weeks later she was booked in for neutering. But guess what? She presented heavily pregnant again and so we had an ultrasound done and two heart beats and bubs were found!

I reckon our Gilly got it sussed right in that she probably got 'caught' straight after having had the first lot cos there were 4 other rabbits roaming stray with her too. Anyway, last night at 7.15 I got a text from Jo to say we've had babies - 4 of them - how 'citing! Mind you, they are pretty gopping at this age - 2-3 weeks of age and then your talking.

So, back to the original purpose of the blog - planning for sleep and events!

On Thursday we are holding a free pet health clinic in Partington with the Altrincham Branch. It went in the local paper this weekend but they didn't print the times, so Catherine and I went down to the area yesterday afternoon to put out leaflets etc and we were staggered at how many people knew about it already so I reckon we are going to be very busy. Crumbs. Hopefully not quite as busy as the one we did in Little Hulton in April when 264 animals turned up. Now that was hard work.

The pet health clinics we've been running since the start of 2008 involve giving out free veterinary health checks in areas where access to vet care is not readily available due to financial constraints or proximity to nearest veterinary practices.

This time we will have three vets, two of them specialists in exotics too, and we will also be offering free microchipping and free flea and worming treatment at the Community Centre on Central Road between 11am and 4pm.

It will be a bit of an end of an era for us because we can no longer afford to offer free chipping and free flea and wormer and in future it will be just free vet checks and chipping for a pound. The free clinics often cost in the region of £2-3k and we are running at a £40k deficit so far this year and have to make some cut backs. So, rather than scrap the free clinics altogether, we can kind of afford to do them still if we make a compromise here and there. We will, of course have flea and worming treatment available, but just won't be able to give it out so liberally. It will be interesting to see what a difference this makes to attendance figures as the clinics have always been really popular in the areas we go to.

So, the other big event of the week ahead is PRIDE. We have been invited to have an info stall on the Sunday in Sackville Gardens 'Womens' Space'. We were so chuffed to be asked and so we will be going along with our gazebo armed with displays of all our animals and info about what we do. So, if you are going along please come and say hello - we have free sweeties!!!!