I spent a week in Broadford on the Isle of Skye looking for somewhat different 4 legged creatures – eventually we found some that were living around a secluded hotel in Glencoe on the mainland called The Kings House (www.kingy.com) and were a little used to approaching people as the hotel kitchen staff would put out vegetable scraps on a regular basis. What a brilliant experience!!
Caroline
On Wednesday 22nd July, Sarah & Claire from SimplyCats attended a course on chronic kidney disease in cats at Lumley Castle Hotel, Durham.
The day long course covered treatment options, diagnosis, managing the condition and in-depth information about the disease.
Both Claire & Sarah learned a lot from the course, and as unfortunately this disease is common in cats, we now know more about it so can treat our feline patients even better.
The leading expert in the field recommends examining cat’s eyes and blood pressure regularly, particularly when the patient is suffering from kidney disease, thankfully at SimplyCats we have equipment to examine the cat’s eye and a ultrasonic blood pressure machine.
For more information on caring for a cat with kidney disease, click here. Alternatively call in to SimplyCats where we stock a range of books, including ‘Caring for a cat with kidney failure’ by Cat Professional
Claire
The first thing my husband (Pierre Senior) said to me when I joined the Simplycats team was “no kittens”.
Despite his protests and less than 2 weeks into my new job, we now find ourselves surrogate parents to Pierre Junior. Suffice it to say we have fallen for his charms and are both smitten kittens.
After a shakey start he is coming on leaps and bounds, putting on weight and doing all the things kittens should be doing. This includes running up the inside of trouser legs (ouch) and leaping from heights with reckless abandon despite the injury to his hind leg which was weakened by the abcess.
He’s such a brave little thing and stalks our other two long suffering cats leaping on them when they least expect it. He has simply taken over and we are loving having a kitten in the house again.
He has been through such a lot in his short life and we are eternally grateful to Sarah and Paul for giving him that second chance.
Margaret
We have recently created an online gallery of some of our feline patients.
If you would like to add your cat to the gallery please contact us and send us a photo and we will upload them onto the gallery.
Claire
We are pleased to say that Harriet the Hedgehog is doing very well after she had her leg amputated, she is recovering in Caroline’s (one of the receptionist’s at SimplyCats) garden, she has been running around and climbing up and down some steps and her wound is healing well.
Here is a photo of Harriet recovering in the back garden at SimplyCats
Claire
On Monday 13th July, a member of the public handed an injured hedgehog in, she had seen the hedgehog get it’s leg trapped in her fence and become entangled.
Although we are a cat only clinic, this was an emergency and required urgent treatment.
On closer examination the hedgehog had a severely broken left hind leg, we anaesthetised her and examined her closely (as you can imagine, hedgehogs aren’t the easiest patients to examine) and Sarah decided to amputate her leg as the leg could not be repaired.
She is now recovering well, has been treat for parasites and is going to live in our back garden for now.
We’ve named her Harriet the Hedgehog and she has been wandering around enjoying the sun today and burrowing in her new home filled with leaf litter and plenty of cat food!
anaesthetised hedgehog
hedgehog's broken leg
preparing for surgery
after leg amputation
Harriet the hedgehog recovering
Claire
On Friday 9th July, the RSPCA handed in a small 7 week old kitten with a suspected broken hind leg, we admitted the kitten and x-rayed his leg, thankfully his leg wasn’t fractured and he has an abcess on the leg, we aren’t entirely sure how or why he has an abscess on this leg as there are no wounds .
He came in collapsed and hypothermic and thanks to some medication and TLC he’s starting to recover, he spent Friday night with Claire for close monitoring and observating and then he spent the weekend at home with our receptionist Margaret and her husband Peter.
We have named the kitten ‘Pierre’ as you can see from the photos he has a little black mark across his nose and we think it looks like a little french moustache and Margarets husband Peter (who also has a moustache) fell in love with him, so he got nicknamed Pierre.
He had a tough weekend but is now picking up as you can see from these photos he’s been spoilt rotten and looks a lot better!
Click here for an online gallery of Pierre
Claire York RVN
SimplyCats would like to thank everyone who attended our Tea Party/Open Day on Saturday 11th July and made this a fantastic day!
We certainly had nice weather for it and the day was brilliant, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
We are pleased to announce that so far we have raised £360 and are still receiving donations.
The day would not have been a success without those who attended so once again, a big thank you from everyone.
Please see below some photos of the day, click here for more photos of the day.
Claire York RVN
Hi everyone, I’m coming to the end of my second week at SimplyCats and thanks to the whole team for making me feel very welcome.
I am loving the whole experience of meeting existing and new clients and their adorable owners! One in particular, a beautiful Bengal kitten made herself known to me by announcing her arrival before she’d even entered the surgery, a very vocal little thing but adorable and she knew it.
Peter and I were invited to Sarah and Paul’s barbeque last weekend in Northumberland which gave us the opportunity to meet the rest of the team from both practices and their families.
I even played my first game of football in years and it was very satisfying to be on the winning side thanks to Chris and Sarah’s goals. I am looking forward to the Tea Party and hope it’s a huge success, fingers crossed for sunshine.
A kitten has survived despite being trapped in a washing machine for a full cycle.
Lucky kitten survives washer spin
Toby is thought to have crawled into the washing machine before it was switched on, to escape the summer heatwave.
See the full article here
Claire
Our Blue Cross Tea Party is rapidly approaching, the Tea Party starts at 1pm on Saturday 11th July 2009.
We have some fantastic raffle prizes to give away and plenty to see and do on the day.
There will be plenty of tea and coffee, there will be cakes, biscuits, games, things to do, a raffle plus many more exciting things to see and do.
The practice will be open for you to look around behind the scenes and see what a cat only vet practice really looks like!
We will be holding the event at SimplyCats Veterinary Clinic. Everyone is welcome; infact the more the merrier!
If you don’t know how to find us, click here for directions and a map.
