West Midlands third worst county for abandoning pets
The RSPCA says there has been a 19% increase on last year
Last updated 31st Aug 2022
As part of its ‘Cancel Out Cruelty’ campaign, the RSPCA has revealed it received more than 100 reports of animals being abandoned every single day throughout 2021.
The West Midlands had the third highest number of animals being dumped.
This year there has been a 19% increase in the number of abandonments in the West Midlands from January - July with 1,076 reports made to the charity already this year (2022).
More than 450 reports were made to RSPCA last year in Shropshire alone and 268 so far this year (Jan-Jul 2022).
An average of over 3,000 abandonment reports a month were made to the charity’s cruelty line last year. That’s 104 a day, or four animals every hour.
The number of animals being dumped is also on the rise nationally with a 17% increase from 2020 to 2021 and a 24% increase in 2022.
A recent report released by the RSPCA in partnership with the Scottish SPCA also showed that the cost of living crisis is the most urgent threat to pet welfare in the UK.
The charity fears that a huge rise in pet ownership during the pandemic coupled with the cost of living crisis putting a strain on people’s finances means even more animals are being given up this year.
The animal welfare charity has released the stark figures as part of its Cancel Out Cruelty summer campaign which aims to raise funds to keep its rescue teams on the frontline.
On 17 August, the RSPCA Worcester and Mid Worcestershire branch’s rescue and rehoming centre in Kempsey took in 12 abandoned animals - nine cats and three rabbits - on one day alone.
They included four tiny kittens, estimated to be between four and five weeks old, who had been found in a soiled cardboard box on the doorstep of a house in Small Heath, Birmingham, the previous day.
Collected by an RSPCA officer, they were taken for immediate veterinary treatment before being transferred to The Holdings.
Despite receiving round-the-clock care from the centre’s staff and volunteers, the kittens - who were all extremely underweight and too young to be away from their mum - all sadly died in the following days.
Dermot Murphy, Chief Inspectorate Officer at the RSPCA, said:
“We understand that sometimes the unexpected can happen - the pandemic and cost of living crisis proved that - but there is never an excuse to abandon an animal. There are always other options for anyone who has fallen on hard times and can no longer afford to keep their pet.”
The RSPCA receives around 90,000 calls to its cruelty line every month but in the summer (July and August) calls rise to 134,000 a month and reports of cruelty soar to 7,600 each month - a devastating 245 every day.