December 2011

Happily, 2011 has been a less stressful year compared with our crisis this time 12 months ago. On the whole our health record has been good, homing has gone particularly well recently and the introduction of three more volunteers has reduced the strain on our regular stalwarts.

Food stocks remain buoyant, largely due to the generosity of the customers of Morrison’s in Buxton and Chapel-en-le-Frith, the Co-op in Marple, Tesco in Whaley Bridge, the Post Office in Furness Vale and the pet stall in the New Mills indoor market. The donations come in throughout the year without fail and are supplemented by cooked fish from Frydays in Whaley Bridge, and by the wonderful children from Peak Forest Primary School, who again included food for our cats in their recent Harvest Festival.

The coffee mornings (we have two a year) continue to play a major part in the Sanctuary’s fund-raising activities. The recent November one exceeded all expectations, and it was great to see how many of you made the trip to Disley, where of course the Sanctuary originated, to support us. Our ‘Brand New’ stall did particularly well thanks to generous contributions from, in particular, the staff and residents of the Branksome Care Home in Buxton. It’s so encouraging to know that so many of you sympathise with our cause, whether it’s by coming to our coffee mornings, our garage sales and the occasional table-top sale, or by supporting our Annual Raffle, despite these difficult times. Our own helpers should be thanked at this point. They turn up at the crack of 9 a.m. (sometimes), smiling (not usually), uncomplaining (never) to set up stalls, organise coffees (Starbucks has nothing on our ladies!), wait on (often in chaotic conditions), sell raffle tickets and still continue to wear their Dove badges with pride. We could never achieve what we do without them; thank you again girls!

Now to the serious part. There have been several upsetting cases this year: One was too late to include in last year’s Newsletter but involved two kittens which were returned just before Christmas. The owners had decided to buy their children a puppy so the kittens had to go. What an example for the children to follow! Thankfully the kittens were homed to a lovely family in time for Christmas.

We’ve had our share of kittens dumped on the doorstep again. One wooden box in particular looked suspiciously like one that was left last year. A similar quick phone call from a withheld number told Dorothy that the kittens had been left, so thankfully they weren’t outside overnight. We suspect there could be two mother cats involved and if the owners identified themselves we’d gladly offer help with the cost of spaying and all this subterfuge could be avoided.

A very traumatised cat was returned during the summer because, being a cat, he insisted on going into next door’s garden, even though a six-foot fence had to be negotiated. The neighbour solved the problem by literally slinging the cat back over the fence, with the inevitable painful consequences .

Two beautiful young white cats found themselves embroiled in a serious domestic incident in Manchester. A person wielding a machete was involved and the police asked for help in getting the cats to safety. We were able to take them in and eventually they were homed in hopefully much safer surroundings.

We were sad to hear recently that Thomas, the Brookside Garden Centre cat, had died after a happy retirement in Romiley. Thomas was one of Dorothy’s earliest homings from Dove, so must have been at least 15 years old. We will always remember him as the cat that shared the manger with Baby Jesus in the Garden Centre’s Nativity scene one Christmas. He was even on local television that year apparently!

A word of warning ends this part of the Newsletter. If you have your pets microchipped, please remember to keep your records up to date if you move house. Some cats were brought out of a house in Wythenshawe after neighbours suspected they were being neglected. One of the cats that came to us had been microchipped and had been reported missing in 2005, but sadly the owners had moved out of the area without informing the National Register of their new address and so the cat had to be homed elsewhere.

On a happier note, after all this doom and gloom, is the story of three beautiful cats that came to us when their owner died unexpectedly. As they’d been homed originally from Dove, we were happy to help and took them in. The gentleman’s family then decided that the cats should go to a relative in Los Angeles (!) but they stayed with us for three weeks while all the necessary paperwork was completed. Eventually, after a final veterinary check, the intrepid trio left the quiet backwater of Dove Holes for the exciting challenges of LA, or even Hollywood! We’re still waiting for a postcard.

You may remember in last year’s Newsletter a paragraph or two on Dawn, a beautiful cat with an attitude problem. She had been at the Sanctuary for two years and some days commanded more respect than Dorothy! Well, Dawn has now been homed with a family that seems to be able to cope with her various shortcomings, where the mouse population is limitless (but rapidly being decimated), and where she can truly be a free spirit. We miss her terribly, but coffee breaks are less stressful (we can at least huddle around her radiator on cold mornings without being attacked) although there is a feisty young tortoishell coming up through the ranks that could well become her replacement...

So that’s it for 2011. A better year for the Sanctuary in many ways, but without your help and continued support, especially for our Raffle, our financial situation could become very serious.

As always our very best wishes for Christmas and 2012 go to you, your families and your pets. Finally, we’d like to remind you that we’d love to hear news or stories about any of the cats we’ve rehomed, so drop us a line or send us some photos (pop them in the envelope when you send back your raffle tickets or contact us at any time during the year).

Our tailpiece this year:

“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats” Albert Schweizer

Coffee mornings 2012  

Saturday 17 March and Saturday 10 November
Disley Community Centre - 10 a.m. until 12 noon