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This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
A very weird feeling today because this is my last scheduled shift. It comes 2 days after I bumped into my ex team at my last job on their lunch walk. It was really good to catch up with them, and despite not enjoying the work I did with them, they were all very good eggs. I feel the same about the animal ambulance crew (except I enjoy the work a lot more!). I’m not looking forward to the time they become my ex-team too.
The shift also comes 5 hours early; Sally and I were rescheduled to the morning shift to help ease a shortage of personnel. It’s better to have 2 shifts of 1 team than 1 shift covered by 2 teams. Sally and I made sure that during the reshuffle we’d still be working together!
There wasn’t much going on when I arrived on site. The centralist hadn’t turned up yet, and Sally ran around the site finding things to do. I emptied the dishwasher. Brace yourself for a fantastic photo coming up…
The centralist (and her Paddy for the day) turned up, and after a brief chat I wandered outside and checked the ambulance contents over with Sally. We noticed a few things were missing so we stocked up. During this time 5 rescues came on our list:
- Cat in need of a call-me collar,
- Goose with “bread wing”,
- Appointment: Bring a cat to the vet,
- Pigeon who can’t fly,
- Jackdaw with an injured wing.
Priorities
The first 3 of these had an urgent component to them; the appointment with the vet at a specified time was clear, but the goose had been found at the side of the road and the finder (incidentally, a fellow volunteer) was holding her in the absence of any boxes to place her into. However, the centralist instructed us we needed to put the collar on the cat first.
Time was tight!
I geared up to finish restocking quickly which is when the centralist asked us to move a cat that had been with us overnight into a pet caddy. This was so she would be ready when an external driver arrived on site to bring her to the shelter.
Cat in a box
I don’t know the story behind the cat, but the poor thing was afraid and hid in her box. Sally and I positioned the pet caddy by the opening, and after much wriggling around on the floor and some gentle but forceful coercion with my hand, she made her way into it.
Sally remembered to grab the finder’s form and keep it by the pet caddy which we placed in a better lit room; there was no need for the calming dark now.
Cat in the bag, we set off to the next cat. Time had been ticking, and it was clear we weren’t going to make the appointment if it stayed scheduled as the 3rd rescue. On the same note, neither Sally or I understood the urgency in putting a collar on a cat when she was already inside the finder’s home. We called the centralist and she eventually agreed it would be OK to get the goose first, and then turn up for the vet; sometimes being late is OK if there’s an emergency rescue as there was now.
Sally pulled over and called the finder to let them know we’d be a little later. There were problems with the ambulance phone, so she used her own phone to make the call – and leave a message as there was no answer.
Goose with “bread wing”
I don’t know how this translates, but broodwing (literally “bread wing”) is a disease suffered by geese when they’re fed too much bread, and yes, it affects their wings.
Finder and goose were sitting on a grass verge by a busy junction. We felt bad bad she’d been waiting all this time, but she had her wits about her, and had placed her coat over the goose.
She showed us the wing and explained how she found her in a group but they flew away and she wasn’t able to. The finder put her into our largest rescue box; it was good watching her do this because she knew how to handle a goose.
There was some discussion regarding what to do with this goose. Normally we’d bring her to the wildlife rescue centre, but we knew there was a specialist centre fo geese with broodwing and maybe she would go there. The person at the base who knew this was the case was also sick at home, though we’d had instructions we could call her.
I can’t remember how the discussion went, but we opted for calling the centralist who advised bringing the goose to the rescue centre, but making a note in the admin she had broodwing. This meant the rescue centre could make the call; afterall, we’re not veterinary experts, and our diagnosis of broodwing may well be incorrect.
To be honest, at this time my mind was full with the rescues we had lined up and the limited time, and made all the more frustrating because the mobile phone wasn’t connecting to the ambulance. The finder tried to help me connect it, but also with no luck.
Phone calls
A brief note about the phone. Sally is awesome because she deals with most of the phone calls for me, knowing that I struggle with the Dutch language on the phone. But this means the phone needs to be connected to the ambulance to get the conversation on loudspeaker. This wasn’t working. Not by bluetooth, not by cable (charging only, no data *growl*) and not by swearing at it.
She resorted to trying to connect her own phone to the ambulance which also didn’t work. At a point I can’t exactly remember, the cat collar cat finder called on her personal phone, upset we still weren’t there. We couldn’t understand why he was upset, and it understandably upset Sally who was now getting angry calls on her personal phone.
And the centralist kept calling us to ask for updates relating to why we were changing driving direction and what we were going to do in what order and why. Sally and I felt we were reacting to reactions and it was a fast growing chaotic situation. We asked if she could call the cat collar man back as we were busy and had phone troubles. She said no 🙁
How not to catch a cat
This was our appointment. In fact, the appointment with the vet had been made by the cat owner, and we were to put the cat in a pet caddy and bring her (and her owner) to the vet so that her wounded head could be seen and hopefully treated.
The owner had 2 cats. She pointed to one, told us it was the other one we needed to capture, then she left the room. This was because the cat was easy to handle as a kitten, but as she’d grown older she became more and more difficult. Especially now with a wound, getting her into a pet caddy was not only difficult, it was also emotionally draining for the owner. Hence the call to us!
The cat was indeed a difficult capture! Two unknown faces (and scents) in the room made her very cautious and she bolted away from us at a speed even too fast for us to hear the sonic boom. But there were plenty of other sonics to come.
The closest we got to her was when she sat on a chair that was pushed under the table. Space was limited so we couldn’t hold the pet caddy close to her, and even ‘just’ holding out a hand to put some liquid snack on the floor nearby attracted hissing and growling. It was understandable.
We played with the idea of catching her with towels and sheets but all to no avail because we simply couldn’t get close enough. Maybe at some point we did and she ran to the other side of the room and up and into a cat climbing pole thing with little shelters. This is when I realised I’d made a huge mistake…
I’d been trying to catch the wrong cat!
No matter, this one was also impossible to catch too. We couldn’t get her to move into the pet caddy which we held by the opening of the little shelter on the climbing pole, and even tipping the pole on its side for some gravity-assist didn’t work either (I didn’t think it would, but at this point the owner stuck her head around the corner to see how we were getting on (we weren’t!) and suggested tipping the pole.
I put a cloth over her head to get her in the dark and help calm her down, and then tried lifting her. She now had the weight of a thousand black holes and she wouldn’t budge.
We’d spent at least half an hour here, so Sally called the vet to let them know we were having trouble. They weren’t surprised because they were familiar with this cat, and whilst they’d made a house call before, they weren’t willing to do that again now. They were running behind time anyway, so the missed appointment wasn’t a problem. They suggested giving the cat some medication to calm her down, but as far as we were concerned, this was a ‘long term’ solution because it could take a couple of hours to kick in.
I can’t remember the exact details, but after a series of calls with / to the centralist / vet we left, letting the owner know that the vet would call her with some more information.
Both Sally and I left frustrated that we weren’t able to help the cat and owner alike 🙁
(un)Collared Cat
‘Back’ to this rescue. Sally had called the finder to explain we were delayed because of the emergency rescue (the goose). With the phone kerfuffle, this was done on her own phone, so she was understandably upset when the finder called her back angrily on her personal number asking where we were. When we left the above cat, Sally called the finder again to let them know we were on our way.
We were met at the door and lead into the lounge. We understood then the frustration of the finders in our late arrival; the lounge had a lot of furniture and nik naks all over the place and it wasn’t particularly cat-friendly. That said, the cat was friendly because she allowed herself to be stroked by one of the finders! This was a good sign; the cat was tame…but unfortunately not for us!
As before, 2 unfamiliar faces and scents sent this sweet little cat into a fearful bundle, and she bolted, first behind a settee, and then into a cupboard.
Space was really really tight, and again, there was hissing as we approached. Getting a call-me collar on her was going to be impossible. Perhaps drained from our last (non) rescue, we threw in the towel. I marked 3 call-me collars with the rescue number, and left these with the finders. Sally explained to them how to use them, and let them know that if they weren’t successful they could call the ambulance back up and see if someone else had more luck catching the cat.
Pigeon that couldn’t fly
This pigeon had been found in a grass verge, and the finder kindly brought him home and put him in a cage. When I picked him up to put him int the rescue box I saw a little feather damage on his wings.
Finally, a rescue where we could get hold of the animal!
Jackdaw
This guy was found on some gravel outside a building in an industrial area a couple of days ago. The finder realised he was in trouble because he was still there a day or 2 later, so they placed him in a box for us to collect.
We were met as we pulled up with the finder holing a large cardboard box. We moved it inside the back of the van so we could move the bird to our own rescue box without fear of him flying away. The box was really well sellotaped shut so it was a struggle to get inside; thankfully there were ventilation holes!
We brought the pigeon and he jackdaw to the wildlife rescue centre.
Fueling up
Hardly worth a separate section, but the small detour here on the way back to the base meant we came across a man with his dog waiting at the side of a zebra crossing.
Zebra Crossing Man and the Hedgehog (and his dog)
We stopped and then he started to cross. But it turned out he was waving us down! He walked over to the driver side and let us know he’d seen a hedgehog by the grass verge a few meters back. He walked back to show us the exact location whilst we turned round at the next roundabout.
Unfortunately the hedgehog was already deceased so we “returned him to nature”, i.e. I clambered into the nearby undergrowth and placed him there. I was shocked and then annoyed to see an idiotic cretin had dumped a load of plastic there. And that too with a rubbish dump barely a hundred meters away.
On the way back to the base I wondered what we’d have done if the hedgehog was still alive. Presumably we’d have needed to make a ticket for the admin before we could bring him to the wildlife rescue centre.
End of Shift
What a strange feeling! Is this my last shift with the animal ambulance? I hope not, but I’m not scheduled in, and when I look at when I’m planned in with my internship, and at my current reading pace through my course notes (I’m saying “current” because I hope I”m gonna speed up), I wonder if I will have time to plan a shift in myself.
(Note: It’s taken me more than a week to write this post…)
My first shift with the ambulance was on a Wednesday morning, and the first shift involved catching a cat with an injured leg. There’s a certain poetiscism in that I was moved to this same shift, and that today was very much cat-centric!
Sally met me in the carpark as I was preparing to leave and she handed me a thank you gift for the shifts and good times we’ve shared together. I’ll certainly miss her and them if I don’t come back.
