It's been such a long week

I'm knackered, no two ways about it. It's been a 6 day week and with little positive going on.

The bank holiday typically saw animals falling ill...so yep, you guessed it, off I had to go. Our bunny Jessica was the worse case, and in a very bad way. The old girl had decided she was going to be spectacularly ill and make it very hard to diagnose too. in the end it was narrowed to a contortion in the intestines and despite major efforts to alleviate her pain and suffering we couldn't, and on Wednesday we had to let her go. There was no way she was going to recover from this and she was in so much discomfort that I felt it really was the only option.

So, that meant 4 weeks in a row of having to have an animal put to sleep, something that is really unprecedented and very miserable to deal with.

On a happier note, my predictions for cat reserves were correct - the lovely people chose Douglas and Annie and they are now in their new home! However, I was being exceptionally greedy hoping for more reserves but we did get one later in the week and I believe we may have another this weekend too, which is a relief because we have 7 cats waiting to come in - I know, don't. I haven't a clue where we are going to squeeze them in!

I hate kitten season.

We also took in a fantastic chappie called Suggs, whose owner has lung cancer. He looks like Basil Brush and is sheer bonkers! He is a wire haired terrier, one year old, and mental. He has bags of energy and personality but needs a lot of lead training. But he's my new hunk, along with newbie Roger the cat, who has the most gorgeous coochy cheeks you've ever seen.

Roger was in an RTA and still seems uncomfy to me so I'm going to pop him to the vets Mon for a second opinion. We also took in kittens Oz and Glinda - who are crazy mentalist that batter hell out of each other - so much so that one has an infected wound on their lip that they did late last night, typical - lil beggars!!! They were dumped in a box outside the animal hospital at 3 weeks old and were thankfully hand reared by one of the nurses there.

We also had JRT pup Lily returned after 2 months of being adopted. She was originally being kept in car because the landlord wouldn't allow pets in the house. She apparently never settled in her new home and had shocking toilet habits. But I am delighted to say she has been fantastic from the moment she came back into our care on Thursday; she obviously just didn't like the other dog she was living with.
Lily is also good as gold with Mel's two labs too, so thankfully there appears to be no major issues and we will be able to get her up for adoption again by the end of next week.

We also had two rabbits returned, after nearly a year, because they didn't 'bond' with the adopter's other two rabbits, which we stressed to her from day one that it was unlikely to happen. But here they are, at 18 months old, back in our care once more. Actually, what really annoyed me more than that was that we stress not to feed dried food to rabbits and guinea pigs. The most a rabbit should ever be fed is an egg cup full each, and low and behold these two bunnies came back in with a bag of dried food and overgrown teeth. At 18 months of age there is only one culprit for that....Grrr.

And then came Friday. I felt sick for some hours afterwards but I guess it's something we are just having to face up to for the first time. Yes, you guessed it, we had to have another animal put to sleep.

You probably remember me telling you about the long-term stray cat that came in with his tail exposed to the bone? Well, it turned out that Cole had something called Feline Aesthesia Syndrome. After monitoring him in foster care for two weeks it became painfully clearly that he was deeply troubled and frightened by his tail. Amputation wasn't a solution and the only option was for him to go on anti-depressants, but this was just not realistic cos who on earth would take on a cat with psychological disturbance and pay £1.20 per tablet per day? Precisely, no one. And to be honest, seeing the degree of distress he had whenever he caught sight of his tail just reinforced how unkind it was to keep him going - he was just so troubled and getting worse too.

So, Cole became the 5th furry in 4 weeks that we had to have euthased and I just have a feeling it won't end there because we have had another cat returned this weekend after about 2 months because it looks like he has been kidney failure and so the adopters didn't want to keep him because of the expense and the heartache. So, again, who is going to take on a cat with 2-3 years left to live and pay £25 a month for his medication?

I'm tired, and fed up, and I suspect you are too after reading this so I'll end on a happy note, I promise, but before I do, my week was topped off with the biggest fundraising disaster ever...

We had our swap shop during the day on Saturday, which got a reasonable turn out and enabled me to learn never to do it again! We found that either people didn't understand that no money could be exchanged, or, they swapped absolute rubbish for something really good! So, that idea of stock regeneration has gone straight out the window; we took more stuff to the tip than we took to the shops afterwards.

And then, the piste de resistance of the week was the classical piano recital. Alessandra, the pianist, was outstanding. The acoustics were amazing. And she led us through a journey spanning 2 centuries and played the most spellbinding pieces and it was magic. And this is coming from someone who has never listened to classical music before in her life. But how many turned up? Well apart from my 4 friends and Alessandra's 5 friends/family - 2. Yes, that's right, 2 people turned up. Do I need to say anymore?

So now, let's end on a positive...little Dora the explorer bunny with the fractured leg went for a check up this week and the vets are very happy with her progress. In about 5 weeks time she will be xrayed again to see if the fracture is stable enough for the pin to be removed. But just take a look at these pictures. Animals are amazing, aren't they? Apparently she's not bothered at her pin once. My lot wouldn't be that good, they'd be a bloody nightmare, and yes, Gilly is falling in love with her.......
I hope you all have a good week and please keep your fingers crossed I don't loose all my hair or have a nervous breakdown. Yay, this job is great!