Important Notice |
| The Sanctuary operates due to your support. Without that support we could not afford to help the animals that are mentioned in the magazine. These are only a few of the ones you have helped us to save, return to good health and find loving homes for. Please keep your donations coming, even a donation of £1 will help us. We know there are so many charities out there, worthy of your money. However, the charity puts donations directly into animal welfare and you can visit to see how your money is spent. |
Bursting at the seams |
| We are at the moment trying to help a lady who has fifty or so cats. The problem is that her father has died and his farm is to be sold off and demolished. We will certainly try to take in as many of the cats as we can. We have taken a few in, but we do not have a large cattery in Littleborough, as time is spent working on the cats, trying to make them tamer. If we had too many cages then we could not give each one the quality time that they need. We are doing our best to take more cats in, but it is a struggle. I have given the lady numerous telephone numbers of the very few organisations that deal with ferals, and hopefully, with the help of us all, we will manage to save these cats. |
Fox |
| A member of the public found a fox on the Moss in Irlam and brought it into the Silver Street Sanctuary. Its age appeared to be around six to seven weeks old and it was discovered to be quite ill and very weak. It was suffering from worms. It was decided to send it to the Wildlife Animal Hospital in Knutsford as they had another single cub. He will be released into the wild, when he is declared fit enough to cope. |
Jaffa Revisited |
| The lady that saved Jaffa from the auctions visited us again to see how he was doing. She was shocked and amazed to see the difference that a little time with us had made to Jaffa. Her first words, when she saw him with one of our staff was, I cannot believe that is the same pony, her second was, have you drugged him. We laughed and replied, not at all. Jaffa rested his head on a member of staffs shoulder while she scratched round his face and eyes. The lady was delighted to see this previous monster, with his eyes shut in pleasure, obviously enjoying being scratched round the face. As you approach Jaffa he still puts his ears back but you ignore this and carry on walking towards him. The next thing is he wants to be stroked and petted. If you ignore him and go to the other horses he gets quite impatient and begins stamping around his stable. This is quite an achievement on our part, as at the beginning he was not interested in interacting with humans at all, as he considered them untrustworthy. Jaffa will now let you in his stable and allows us to move his hay around. He switched from biting people to biting the lead rope, but this was swiftly dealt with, and now he quickly holds the rope, then remembers, then lets go. We now need to work with him with the farrier, as when he visited Jaffa earlier, Jaffa did not trust him at all and would not stand still, but this is another hurdle we will face together and help him with. |
Holly |
| Holly was brought to the farm by a lady whose father had passed away. He'd had a number of feral cats that lived on or around the farm. The lady asked the Littleborough branch if we would take them in. We agreed to this but told her she would have to catch a few at a time. She brought Holly first. We could not have Holly checked in properly as the vet was on holiday but we noticed that she was very young, pregnant and suffered with fleas. We gave her a small quick squirt of flea spray on her back and left her to settle in her new surroundings. Four days later, in the morning, Holly had her kittens. She must have thought that she needed to go to the toilet as she had delivered her kittens in the cat litter tray. The staff kept an eye on her from a distance but Holly, after only half cleaning one kitten, left the rest. She had laid her head on one kitten that appeared to have passed away, and the other was hardly moving. We approached Holly and for a feral she seemed to really appreciate the company. She seemed stressed and lost. We moved what we thought were the nearly dead kittens and took them to the radiator in the office, gently rubbing them dry with towels. As they were dried and warmed they both perked up, even the one that we thought had no chance, as it was not crying or moving suddenly began crying for her mum. This was great. Now the hard job, reuniting them with mum. We returned to the cattery where mum had not moved out of the cat tray. It was still messy from the births. Sneaking the kittens back was very easy, but mum was not moving over onto her side to enable them to drink. She just lay there in a normal position. We stroked her face (ignoring her spitting) and waited for her to calm down then gently moved our hands down the side of her body and this seemed to bring a reaction from Holly as she turned on her side enabling the kittens to drink. We felt it was time to leave them to it but we would need to keep an eye on them as Holly seemed to have no maternal instinct at all . We went back an hour later and she had moved two of them into the house area of the pen and left one of them behind. We placed the other kitten with the group and noticed that what must have been her firstborn kitten had wandered off looking for her while Holly was collecting her second kitten. We found a cardboard box and cut out the bottom and placed this over Holly and her kittens. Holly seemed too tired to care but we now had the kittens safe with mum. We placed hot water bottles, wrapped up in towels inside, for Holly would not want to move and this shrunk the size of the box so the kittens could not get far. Holly did well for three days. We checked her during the day but on the fourth day the little black kitten was cold, it had been well fed and seemed to be growing. We did not know why it had passed on. All we could think was that Holly must have laid on it. At the moment of writing this, the other kittens are doing well and so is their mother. She has turned from a spitting, frightened cat to one who is very interested in humans and we really think that the day she had her kittens was a turning point for her. We all think that she really appreciated us being there for her. |
Birgit |
| A lady turned up at the Littleborough Sanctuary late one night asking for help for a little lamb she had taken in. She had found the lamb on a farm and had spoken to the farmer who told her that he was aware of the lamb, but could not save it. The lady offered to take the lamb and try bottle feeding it but the farmer said the best thing she could do was leave it where it was as it did not have long to live. She still took the little lamb hoping that it would survive. She took it to work so she could feed it little and often. At work the lamb caused trouble when a lorry driver saw it and wanted to cuddle it. He left his wagon without turning off the engine or putting on the handbrake. Whoops! The wagon rolled fully laden with goods and landed in the canal. It needed a crane to pull it out again. As the little lamb had already caused some expensive damage the lady decided to bring it to the Littleborough Sanctuary. The poor thing was very dehydrated so we kept feeding her liquids while we looked for a vet that would check her as our vet was on holiday . We eventually found a vet who would look at her and we took her straight away. She was put on a subcutaeneous drip and injected with antibiotics and vitamins. The vet said that if she was still with us by the next day we were to bring her back for some more antibiotics tablets. We kept feeding her every half an hour but we had to force feed her as she did not want to eat or drink at all. We kept her in the office as she was very thin and this gave her the warmth that she needed. After a day or two she had picked up really well and we kept taking her outside so that she could get a little strength back into her legs. Birgit as we called her, after the vet that treated her, progressed to eating in a grassy pen, no longer needing her milk. She put on weight and grew. Just as she seemed to be back to full health she suddenly passed away over night. The vet said she was a 'fader' but it's still painful for all involved. |
Swinton Shop Now Open |
| Our new Sanctuary Charity Shop at 177 Station Road Swinton which opened on Monday, March 14, 2005, is a great success. Station Road leads down to Swinton Shopping Precinct, so we are hoping for lots of visitors and especially buyers. We have much to offer in the way of clothes, videos, books, bric-a-brac, hats, handbags, evening and shopping bags, bikes, Jewellery, vases, picture frames, glassware, table lamps, lamp shades, and furniture. We would like to be open for longer periods of time but we are very much in need of volunteers to help out the stalwart volunteers who have got this show on the road. If you feel you could give a few hours to the shop, we would be very grateful. Just phone Mike at the Irlam Sanctuary. |
Samson Re homed |
| One of our ponies at the farm is about to go to a new home. From a rearing stallion with no manners, with the help of all the team at the Littleborough Sanctuary, he is now handled by a fourteen year old girl. He no longer walks through you as if you were not there but stands next to you and only fidgets a little, but this will improve as he gets more of one to one training. He will stand while you wash him down, mount him, have shoes put on and all the mundane things that need a standing position. He is going to a local stables where the owner, and the young girls mother will keep an eye on him and let us know if there are any problems. |
Poem For Animals |
For birds with broken wings
For rabbits caught in springs
For poor bewildered foxes
For butterflies in boxes
HEAR US WE BESEECH THEE
For dogs without a home
For cats that walk alone
For horses worn and old
For sheep without a fold
HEAR US WE BESEECH THEE
For all things weak and lowly
Depending on man solely
By all we hold most holy
HEAR US WE BESEECH THEE |
**** HELP **** |
| We always need your help in any way you can. This can range from collecting aluminium cans to running your own charity event or entering a sponsored event. Every little helps, as we have been saying for 38 years! Most goods can be turned into cash to help to fund the Sanctuaries and the Animal Ambulance. We are always in need of the following: clean clothes and rags, used mobile telephones, empty printer cartridges, furniture, bric-a-brac, clean newspapers, aluminium and warm blankets. Do you have any new ideas for fundraising? We always need volunteers to help at the Open Days and anyone who is able to set up and run a stall will be very welcome. Any offer of help is always gratefully received even if only for a few hours. |
| Please call Mel on 01706 371 731 |
A Little Bit Of Humour |
A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinarian. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest. After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadlyand said, "I'm so sorry, your pet has passed away."
The distressed owner wailed, "How can you be so sure", she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."
The vet rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room. He returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog and took it out. He returned a few moments later with a beautiful cat. The cat jumped on the table and also sniffed the bird from its beak to its tail and back again. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly, jumped down and strolled out of the room. The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is, most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead duck." Then the vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "£150!" she cried. "£150 just to tell me my duck is dead?!!"
The vet shrugged. "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been £20. But what with the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it all adds up" |
