New VegaNation Kittens!

  We are supposed to be writing product listings today for our gorgeous little 100% vegan shop VegaNation  (find us at www.veganation.co.uk) as we have some lovely new bubble baths we're keen to tell people about, but we're not getting anything done today as we have KITTENS to play with!!
  They are our lovely Twitter kittens, who we adopted the day before yesterday, after seeing a link from the local, very hard working branch of the RSPCA.

Lovely Smokey helps with a maths lesson at Feline Care!

  As a national organisation, I have to say that I am not a huge fan of the RSPCA- I am vehemently opposed, for example, to their Freedom Foods policy, which, as far as I'm concerned, is tantamount to getting into bed with the meat-and-dairy industries. I was very upset, also, when I discovered that animals such as cows and sheep which have been rescued by the RSPCA in extreme cruelty and neglect cases, are later sold for meat.        When we wrote to the RSPCA head office, questioning this awful policy, we received a letter 'explaining' that the RSPCA doesn't have the resources to keep these larger animals and that the money gained by selling them for meat was needed to help recoup some of the money spent on the original cruelty prosecution. Hmm..is it just me, or does anyone else find that as perverse and horrifying as I do? If you know the level of cruelty and neglect that seems to go on at some of the RSPCA's so-called Freedom Farms (brought to light by the investigations of Hillside Animal Sanctuary), then you can only imagine the suffering of some of the animals on whose behalf the RSPCA does decide to pursue prosecution. And then, on successful completion of prosecution, even when cruelty and neglect towards an animal has been proven, the animal is then sold to undergo the terror and torture of the abattoir.
  However, on a local level, the RSPCA volunteers do an amazing job, and help thousands of animals every year and had stepped in to try and find these kittens a home.
   We already have 4 cats and weren't looking for any more cats and we also have a sort of  'If none of us are married by the time we're 30' arrangement with gorgeous 18 year old Smokey from Feline Care. He makes us sad because although he his very handsome, with a lovely shiny coat, and a lovely, friendly personality, he is probably only still at Feline Care because he of his age. There must be a home that would suit Smokey better than ours, so if you think that you could give Smokey a lap of his own, please contact Feline Care (www.felinecare.org.uk) and arrange a visit. Please ignore the place in Smokey's listing which says that he has found a home- Molly, the manager at Feline Care has been very busy trying to raise £70,000 by the end of September, so may not have had a chance to work on her website! Smokey found a home a few months ago, but, very sadly, was returned through no fault of his own, and is definitely available for rehoming.

  We read in the listing that the female kitten was deaf and so might suit an indoor home and that they would prefer a home with her brother, but would separate them. We really hadn't planned on getting any more cats, with the possible exception of Smokey, but we adopted a beautiful deaf cat from a shelter earlier this year as we felt that we could keep him safe as our garden is enclosed and we felt sad at the thought of the deaf kitten having to live indoors because she is deaf, so we offered her a home, and her brother too, as it seemed a pity to separate them. So, Nelly and Noah have joined our family, and we all love them already. The local RSPCA re-homing co-ordinator had got the idea that Nelly was partially sighted, so when we went to pick her up we thought that we were getting a kitten who was deaf and also blind in one eye. Very happily, although Nelly is indeed deaf she seems to be able to see perfectly well, she simply has odd coloured eyes, one blue and one green! She and Noah haven't cried at all since they arrived the evening before last; they have each other and are very close so they are happy and so are we.