Arrival
I turned up to a packed car park with notably no ambulances in it. This was a good sign; teams were busy on rescues and were late back which meant there might be an overflow of rescues that still needed doing.
The reality wasn’t so great. 2 ambulances were in a garage, and only 1 other was out on a call and wouldn’t be back for quite some time and another was on some kind of errand. That left 4 of us (2 teams) sitting in the common room twiddling thumbs.
Thankfully the driver on my team time is a fellow astro fan and we had a nice chat about colliding galaxies and active galactic nucelei. The other team carried on twiddling thumbs.
On a much smaller spatial scale, I noticed the clothing cupboard was unlocked and open. I took my chance and raided it for some decent fitting trousers instead of the over-sized baggy things I was given. Unfortunately the next smaller size was much too tight. I did manage to swap my jumper from size L to S. No medium available. It’s hardly interesting stuff to read about, but that’s how the first hour went.
Call to Action
One of the ambulances returned, but the other team got it on the grounds that they were “Team 1”.
The rescue involved a hedgehog that had been found under a plank of wood in someone’s outside shed in a garden with no vegetation. He seemed healthy, so a call to the rescue centre was advised to see whether they wanted to take him in, or whether he should be returned to a natural area close to where he was found.
It was the latter, and it would have been nice to do because I’ve not yet returned a living animal to nature.
Thankfully the other ambulance turned up soon afterwards (complete with a flustered team who needed to deal with the police and therefore a lot of paperwork). And we had 4 call-outs on our list! 🙂
Two Kittens
Two kittens had been brought to the base, and had been there since 10:00 am. They were to be brought to a guest family before given up for adoption. I don’t know why this hadn’t been done any earlier, but the driver of the previous shift told me they hadn’t been fed or watered since then, and advised me to prepare a hot water bottle for them; the back of the ambulance isn’t always warm.
I felt like an idiot because I couldn’t open the pet carrier, so I brought it back inside from the ambulance for some help; there was the equivalent of a sunroof on the top I could use to feed the hot water bottle through, and place it underneath the towel.
The kittens had a sad backstory. They were found when a garden house was demolished and their nest was disturbed. The (wild) mother cat was present but couldn’t be caught, so only these 2 little kittens, just a few weeks old, could be rescued.
I was so happy to see that the couple who took them in were over the moon to see them! I expected cold, factual people who are used to cute things and see lovable balls of fur as not much more than a task, but these 2 awesome humans melted at the sight of them! They (and the driver) also struggled to open the pet carrier, but the reward of each of them holding a kitting in their hands and holding them lovingly against their chests was well worth it!
They’ll look after these kittens for a minimum of 10 weeks, and then they’ll be up for adoption. They need to follow strict guidelines and regulations regarding health and care (e.g. treatment for fleas, worms, etc.). I asked whether they feel sad when the kittens they raise leave their house or whether they’re used to it, and in a way I was happy to hear they found it difficult. At the same time, they make sure ‘their’ kittens go to a good home, and their service is ultimately to help these animals.
Personally, I felt like I’d helped this couple as well at the kittens! 🙂
Their service to kittens also extended to us – they offered us a drink, but we had a list of other calls which we needed to respond to.
As we tried to leave, the driver realised he’d left the keys inside on the table. When he went in to retrieve them I wondered whether he sneakily too the couple up on their offer of a cuppa!
Towel Collection
This next call was as exciting as it sounds and yes, I’d have preferred to be drinking tea with some adorable kittens and their temporary new owners!
A resident collects towels and sheets and saves them for the animal ambulance so we can use them to line pet carriers. I needed to call her to let her know what time we’d arrive, but the phone call was difficult because the satnav kept speaking through the speakerphone at the same time. We’d barely finished the difficult call when we arrived!
Road Traffic Cat and a Cat Trap
Next up were 2 calls in the same town. One call was collecting a dead cat from the side of a busy road, clearly a road traffic accident victim. There was no address, only the town name and a note that the cat lay near a waymarker. The trouble is that we had no idea where the waymarker was along the road until we’d seen another one. Our current position was near the un-named town so it seemed prudent to start from there.
Caged In
By now it was rush hour so we took a detour whcih turned out not to help us much. When I checked to see if any more calls had come in, I noticed that the second call involved not just collecting a cat trap, but the cat trap had already caught the cat! This changed our priority as we try to rescue the living animals first. Thankfully it was only a kilometer from where we were, and after another difficult battle with the phone and the satnav (and my Dutch), we arrived.
But I was surprised – the trap was empty! The driver read the description, and it turned out when the description read “the wild cat has returned”, it meant the domestic cat had returned to its own home and not to the cage as I had thought!
All that remained was returning the deposit. Payments by card are a hassle, and it wasn’t possible to receive an electronic payment request here. We called the base for help and the answer was embarrassingly simple: use the petty cash!! I counted it out for her and we were on our way to find the waymarker on the main road.
Back on the Road
Traffic had built now to devilish proportions but at some junctions we were really lucky because many drivers tend to give us right of way when they see “Ambulance” on the side of the…ambulance. We joined the main road and turned left (why not?) and sat in traffic for 30 minutes until we found a numbered waymarker. It was 3 kilometers away from where we needed to be.
Another 15 minutes and we’d passed a second waymarker, and from the numbering we knew we were going in the wrong direction 🙁 . 20 minutes later we’d turned around, driven a few kilometers and were parked up (with flashing lights!) near where we were supposed to be.
Looking for a dead cat on the side of a busy road is not a nice experience. On the one hand, we were there to find it, so I wanted to find it. On the other, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing a deceased animal, especially one that had been mown down by a car (or other vehicle at 60 km/h. We didn’t know which side of the road to look either, so we took a side each and walked until we hit the next waymarker, then doubled back.
A friendly head-and-shoulders popped over a bush then we reached the van. A local resident had found the cat, and instead of chucking it into a bin, and thoughtfully buried it in his garden. Apparently he did the same a couple of years ago too. Of course he wasn’t able to tell if the cat was chipped or not, but there was no collar. Surprisingly, he said that the cat was intact.
The driver told me that dead animals are often removed by the time the animal ambulance gets there because they tend to be ‘saved’ until the end of the day. By then, there have either been a lot of calls about it to the base, or someone has taken action themselves and taken care of it.
Crossing the road back to the ambulance was a bit scary, and admittedly in my panic I reverted to my English habits (thinking drivers are on the left lane) and ended up running back to the kerb for safety until I was sure there was no traffic. As the driver told me, he didn’t want the resident to be burying more than a cat that day…!
Wounded Pigeon
We had one more rescue to do, and for the first time in the shift it was an animal that needed saving. But it was a 20 minute drive in the opposite direction (past the base) and it was already well after the time for the shift change. We headed back, and told the next team about it.
On the way to the base I entered the details of the dead roadside cat to a website which lists lost and found cats. There were no photos, so I dread to think what an owner might think if they’re missing a black cat around that area and read that it’s been buried.
Indeed, one of the team members told us the cat needed to be dug up again. Neither the driver or myself could tell if this was a bad joke, or serious. It’s indeed frustrating we know nothing about this cat (e.g. a chip number would put us in touch with its owner if he has one), but in fairness the resident acted kindly to give the cat a nice burial.
Epilogue
A day later I got a phone call from the financial administrator. I thought I was going to be spoken to about the buried cat, but it turned out to be something else – as perhaps the job title might suggest. It turned out I’d paid back too much money to the lady with the cat cage(!) Evidently I’d read the wrong box on the form, and instead of looking at the deposit amount box, I’d looked at the rescue call-out fee box!
It’s bad enough I’ve lost the animal ambulance 20 euros, but this comes after another money-related call I had a few weeks ago. Each ambulance carries petty cash, and it’s checked and signed for at the start of each shift. But at the end of one of my shifts the entire wallet was nowhere to be found, so they called me up!
Apparently I’d put it in the wrong pocket of the huge bag that holds the admin…!
Update: It turns out the call for digging up the tomcat wasn’t a joke! But thankfully the higher-ups have been convinced to let sleeping cats lie.
