Buddy blossoms and helps raise £100K for critical cats ...
11 May 2016
A bedraggled stray, snatched from the brink of death by local vet Bryn Morgan and NBCP volunteer Jenny Reynolds, is featuring in a national fundraising campaign and has so far raised £100K – and the donations are still counting and mounting – for Cats Protection.
And Jenny couldn’t be more delighted with Buddy’s phenomenal journey back to reasonable health and happiness, and the funds his story has raised for the charity she is devoted to. She takes on fostering, welfare, fund-raising, jam-making and cage-washing - to name but five. The list is very long! And now she’s a ‘volunteer video’ star too.
“And not only am I delighted with the money raised,” says Jenny, “But the photographer from the agency that came to video us – Dan - for the national appeal, recognised me and another one-eyed cat we’d rescued several years ago – Kylie - who featured in a previous campaign and raised many thousands for CP. An amazing coincidence!
“Kylie was found in a dark alleyway sitting next to her dead sister. She was covered in fleas and lice and suffering with horrendously infected eyes. Cold, hungry and completely blind. But you’d not know that now. Naughty-torti-Kylie is still living with me enjoying rude health – and being very rude to my other cats. In fact, she runs the household!”
Dan Buxton, senior art director of direct marketing agency (DMS), based in Cheltenham, confirms his second trip to Erdington and meeting Jenny and Kylie again – and now Buddy. “It’s always great when we meet lovely cats like Buddy and amazing volunteers like Jenny. Getting the chance to sit with Buddy, hear Jenny tell his story first hand and see the huge amount of love and care she puts into nursing cats like Buddy is really inspiring. We had a bit of a surprise while we were there as we bumped into Kylie – who’d played the starring role in another successful appeal a few years back.”
Getting back to Buddy, Jenny recalls the day in October, 2015, when his story began. “A 10+ year-old stray was taken into Scott's vets in Great Barr with a request from the feeder to ‘put him/her to sleep’. The cat was seriously matted, had decayed teeth, a gaping, but not quite empty, right eye socket, and emaciation.
“Despite all this, vet Bryn thought the cat treatable. He couldn’t determine the sex because of thick mats around the backside – but asked our branch ‘whether we’d be prepared to take him/her on’, and of course, we were. And once we knew he was a boy, we gave him a name – Buddy – and a CP number.
“Buddy was anaesthetized and shaved, revealing maggots crawling out of the mats, and found to be a castrated male. His teeth were mostly removed, along with the remnant of his right eye. His lids were sewn together. Before shaving he weighed 3.5.kg. Afterwards he weighed 3.1 kg, so he was carrying round an extra 13% weight in filthy smelly matted maggoty fur.”
Now don’t recoil in horror, because – despite what he’d been through – he remained a lovely friendly boy – charming all his visitors with a head butt and the offer of a kiss! And when homing officer Sheila Pennell first called to see him to take photos, he posed good as gold - even giving her the ‘glad eye’ from the only one he has left!
Confirms Sheila: “Buddy was naked without his fur, and I could feel every bone in his body. But within 24 hours of arriving at Jenny’s after his initial vet treatment, he was eating well, using his tray, seemed upbeat and laid back at the same time. I’m thrilled that CP nationally decided to use his story, giving regular updates to thousands of supporters. This raises money for the fantastic work the charity does to save the lives of such needy and desperate cats as Buddy.”
Emma Smith, CPs Fundraising Assistant, is thrilled at how well the Buddy campaign is going. She says: “The appeal has been great – on line, by text, Facebook and in response to the pack sent out – and yes, it really does add up to over £100K so far! And the video the public/supporters can watch of Jenny and Buddy on line has been well-received too.
"DMS are passionate about good causes and they specialise in writing compelling copy to inspire our supporters. We in Cats Protection work really closely with them to develop traditional means of communication in print and newer digital mediums, through video and interaction."
** The video is available on the CP Facebook page www.facebook.com/catsprotection, and can also be viewed here - http://www.cats.org.uk/thankyou
If anyone would like to share the appeal where people can donate, the page is still live.
https://www.cats.org.uk/criticalcare