RSPCA Cambridge and District Branch
RSPCA Cambridge and District Branch covers an area of South Cambridgeshire stretching from Littleport in the North to Royston in the South and from Gamlingay in the West to Newmarket in the East. The branch is responsible for raising funds to run our animal welfare services within this area. We have two charity shops: a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge, at 188 Mill Road and our vintage/retro shop Emporium61 in Burleigh Street, Cambridge. We hope to reopen a third shop in Newmarket in Market Street.
Services we provide
- A subsidised small animal clinic at 1 Pool Way, Whitehill Road, Cambridge for owners on means tested state benefits.
- A veterinary voucher scheme to provide emergency help with veterinary treatment at private vets for owners on means tested benefits who cannot attend the clinic.
- A neutering voucher scheme to help prevent the birth of unwanted animals.
- Veterinary treatment and care for injured stray animals reported to the RSPCA national control centre and their eventual rehoming.
- Boarding and rehoming of neglected and cruelly-treated animals brought in by RSPCA Inspectors.
Users of the RSPCA clinic must bring proof of benefits or paperwork such as a bank-statement which shows that they have a very low income each time they visit the clinic. If you are unable to bring your pet yourself it's fine for a helper to bring them for you, but the helper must show proof that you are in receipt of benefit and needs to have a signed note from you confirming that they are bringing the animal on your behalf.
Cambridge Secondhand Bookshop
The RSPCA Cambridge secondhand and antiquarian bookshop is now open at 188 Mill Road, Cambridge; packed with lots of excellent books at reasonable prices. Our shelves are being updated daily with fresh stock as we bring out more of the thousands of books we've collected during the past year.
We need more volunteers!
We need people with an interest in books and/or music (or just willing to carry books up and down the stairs!) to help in our second-hand bookshop.
If you could help please email Ffiona camshop@rspcabookshop.co.uk or phone 01223 212 644.
Online sales: secondhand books
This is just a small selection of our stock. If you live in Cambridge, do drop in and browse. If you see a book you want in the online catalogue it may not yet be out on the shopfloor - please ask.
Vintage/retro charity shop
Our new shop in Burleigh Street has lots of bargains for the fashion-conscious. All our stock is carefully selected for quality, interest and value. Discards which are not quite up to our high standards will be sold at our jumble sales.
We need your clothes donations!
We are still collecting donations of clothing, linens, china, etc. etc. at the bookshop to sell at 61 Burleigh St. Only the best items will go out on sale at the shop, but even worn or damaged textiles can be sold for recycling and raise valuable funds to support our work.
Online sales: retro/vintage clothes
This is just a small selection of our stock. If you live in Cambridge, do drop in and browse. If you see a book you want in the online catalogue it may not yet be out on the shopfloor - please ask.
Newmarket Shop
Our bigger and better shop in Newmarket, at 10a Market St. opens on 14th February! We will need volunteers to work in the shop and to help with collecting donated goods to sell.
House Clearances
So long as there are enough saleable items to cover the costs and make some profit for the charity, we are able to arrange house clearances free of charge.
To discuss this, please phone 01223 528314 or 07914 940 956 and ask to speak to someone from the RSPCA house clearance team.
It may not be possible to do clearances if the site is a long way from Cambridge or if there is a very large amount of rubbish which needs to be disposed of; however Melik or Vanessa will be happy to discuss what's feasible.
Join the RSPCA Today!
You can become a member of the RSPCA by joining via the internet. Membership will give you voting rights on important issues and the chance of joining your local branch committee as well as simply supporting the society, so it is very worthwhile if you want to help animals.
Volunteering with RSPCA Cambridge
Volunteering at one of our charity shops can involve much more than sitting behind a till - for example some volunteers help by doing online searches to find what prices we can charge for unusual items; adding descriptions of second-hand books to our online catalogue; and running stalls at local fêtes to get the maximum value from any books that didn't sell in the shop. You don't necessarily need to commit yourself to regular volunteering - there are also one-off tasks like house-clearance and donation collection where temporary extra hands are enormously helpful.
Volunteers sort, steam and price donated items - think of the bags of donated goods as a kind of gigantic lucky-dip from which we occasionally pull a vintage dress worth hundreds of pounds.
Our charity shops are at 188 Mill Road, Cambridge CB1 3LP (specialist second-hand bookshop), 61 Burleigh St., Cambridge CB1 1PS (general) and 10A Market Street, Newmarket. Just drop in between 10 am and 4 pm Monday to Saturday, or phone 01223 212 644 (Bookshop) or 01223 312 802 (Burleigh St).
Why we go on so much about fundraising
Running our animal welfare activities costs an average of £96,000 each year. This money is spent on keeping animals alive and relieving suffering by paying for veterinary treatments and on boarding unwanted animals until we can rehome them. In an average year we help around 3,000 individual animals. A very large proportion of our welfare work consists of providing low-cost veterinary care for animals whose owners cannot afford the full cost of treatment. There is no National Health Service for animals and without us most of them would either go without treatment or be put to sleep. It is often true that their owners ought to have been more responsible, but we have to deal with society as it is - and unfortunately we are all too often presented with a desperately ill animal and an owner with no money at all. The majority of the animals we take in for rehoming are not simply healthy unwanted animals but are either ill, injured or neglected so they usually require a considerable amount of expensive treatment before they can be rehoused.
