Felix and Charlie
Theo and TiaI have recently been approached by a Dog Club member regarding the "charges" made by rescue centres for adopting a pet. As a staff member at Freshfields Animal Rescue and a long standing member of the Nantlle Vale Dog Club I felt it was therefore my place to put pen to paper and explain a little about how rescue works.
All too often people turn up at the centre and expect to be able to adopt a pet without paying a donation. We are regularly told "We want to give a pet home, we don't want to pay for it!" If only it were that simple...
If I use for example the costs to the charity of one 12 months old female cat who's owner decided he "no longer wanted her." The cat stayed with us for 3 months before she was lucky enough to be adopted. (We'll call her Tilly)
On arrival at Freshfields Tilly was treated with Advocate, this is the product we customarily use to treat cats and dogs for fleas, lice, ticks and worms. One week later, Tilly along with the other new arrivals was taken to the vets to be spayed. During her 3 months with us luckily, as is not always the case, Tilly needed no further veterinary treatment but 6 weeks later had her second dose of advocate. After 3 months at the centre Tilly was lucky to find a home, she was micro chipped for identification and given another advocate treatment before leaving for her new home. Some of the costs for one female cat re-homed after spending 3 months at the sanctuary are as follows:-
Neutering - £40.00
Microchip - £10.00
Advocate -3 @ £5.20 = £15.60
Total = £65.60
At the sanctuary the animals are fed on a diet similar to what we believe they would be fed on in a pet home. For cats we use Whiskas, Felix, Kitekat and similar high quality tinned foods along with dry biscuit. The bedding is regularly changed and washed on site. To prevent the spread of infection we use the highest quality disinfectant, costing around £70 for 5 liters, all these products need paying for before you think of electricity, water rates and staff wages. (In a perfect world we would all do it for free - sadly it's not a perfect world)
As a small struggling sanctuary we have to ask a minimum donation of £50 to cover some of the costs incurred. But as you can now hopefully see this in no way comes close to covering the costs on the charity of caring for one cat for a three month period, and sadly many stay a lot longer before finding their "forever home." At present we have around 50 adults cats waiting to be adopted, around 50 ferals and 25 kittens who all need feeding twice daily and clean litter trays daily.(...and cat litter is expensive!)
We always have dogs available for adoption at Freshfields, most are based in foster homes in the area. As you can imagine the costs on the charity for caring for a medium size dog over the same time period is at least three times the cost of caring for a cat. Our book-keeper Veronica (Who most of you know as she is a club member) informs me that the average monthly vet bill is over £1,000!
I hope this is pretty self explanatory, simply if people are not willing to pay a minimum donation for a neutered, microchipped pet then where are we suppose to get the money from to help the next one and the one after that……? Unlike a Larger, well known charity our door is always open to take in the needy, and we never put a health animal to sleep. I only wish we had a small percentage of their funding so we could so much more.
May I take this opportunity to thank club members Tony and Beryl for their kind donation of dog food in the Summer and also a big thank you to everyone who supported our 1st Open day. Without the support of local people who give their time to help, foster dogs and give donations of food and money the sanctuary would indeed be struggling. And One last thank you, if I may, to Ann for recently adopting 2 of our middle aged cats, without the selfless attitude of people like yourself these beautiful adults would be passed by for the "younger models." This is so sad, when as you know too well Ann, these beautiful mature cats have so much more love to give in their lives.
