I have had a message from Yorkshire Cat Rescue and the founder asked me to post this for your information. I live in Yorkshire and have supported them so I think only fair they have some input while Sammeul is unable to post.
The person from here who has posted on "Purrs ...." in the past is our centre manager, Sam (I think her user name is Sam Mewl). She has log on details. Unfortunately at the moment she is having to do jury service so it has put a huge amount of pressure on us to have her away. I can't guarantee she will have time to post.
She normally works 5 days a week and often stays late to finish, and as far as I'm aware most of the posting she does on forums such as Purrs is in her own time, and I can't insist that she posts in her own time.
If you would be so kind as to post some of the information below, that would be great.
We rescue and rehome almost 900 cats per year, and we are run ragged both caring for the cats and fundraising to do so. We have had some terrible terrible illnesses and conditions with the cats this year, many multi-cat households with very sick and very scared cats and we have been working like mad to try and help them (and succeeded). We've recently spoken to staff at a local council in their housing department to try and get the people who don't like cats to intervene and help before things get out of hand (the cat lovers already do!). But this will probably mean a massive increase in the number of cats we will end up taking - many of these households end up with in excess of 15 cats and sometimes over 20 or 30! We have had a large number of untamed kittens and though we have worked with them and turned them round so that they can be rehomed with families rather than as ferals (there aren't that many feral places anyway) it has put a further strain on us and on our fosterers.
We can't afford a dedicated fundraiser and though we have recently opened a couple of shops and they are helping out, we have to raise the rest of it ourselves.
Perversely this makes it harder for us to join in on forums such as Purrs, as we are so busy fundraising and raising awareness that we don't have time to make regular posts. There are quite a lot of forums for one thing or another and we just know we don't have the resources to utilise them as we would like to. The same applies to social media such as Facebook and we wold love a presence on Instagram, PInterest and others but we don't have the resources to manage this properly.
It seems unfair of us to just put a quick thank you and not much else, but having said that we do value any money raised and of course the awareness of our charity by visitors to the forum. At the moment we don't even have the time/resources to find the time to advertise our cats on catchat - we have to rely on our website (which is updated from our database) and our fosterers posting on Facebook and other social media. We would love to have volunteers who could post knowledgably about us on forums such as Purrs, but they simply don't exist!! If anyone volunteers to do things like that we grab them and tie them to a chair!!
To give some illustration of numbers, our vets bills since April (when our financial year begins) have averaged at just under £8,000 per month. We neuter all the cats, and vaccinate them and microchip them and we also treat them for worms and fleas and any other stuff they need - dental work and obesity being two of the more common ones, but we also have a kitten with diabetes, a cat with terminal cancer and have had a dwarf kitten (who sadly died a few weeks ago). We also support sick cats in their new homes so that the cats can get homes and not spend their lives in a pen. We have several geriatric cats on our books (in new homes), a cat with diabetes and a cat with epilepsy to mention a few.
I understand that the decision remains with the members who post regularly.
