Animal sanctuary crisis

The sanctuary in Freezeland Lane has some 600 animals and birds at the moment, and they just keep on coming.

Barby said: "It's unbelieveable. It's mainly been cats and rabbits, and they started pouring in.

"We will have to turn animals away.

"But I keep saying - if you have a jam jar full of jam, you can't get any more jam inside it. That's the only way to explain it.

"There is a limit. If we take any more, we are not able to look after the ones we already have - we are living a shoestring now.

"Yes, we make a lot of money but we have to spend a lot, and the average vet bill alone is about 1,500 every month."

The Sanctuary in Freezeland Lane currently homes around 200 cats, 30 goats, 5 cows, 9 pigs, 9 horses, a donkey, approximately 80 rabbits, and 100 chickens, as well as dogs, geese and ducks.

The numbers have been going up since the week after Christmas to the point where Barby is preparing to say no to newcomers.

She said: "The beginning of January was the worst really. But these were not Christmas animals that people have bought and then don't want, it's because all of a sudden kids are allergic. A family will have a cat for five years and suddenly people are allergic. It happens with cats and rabbits - I am allergic to rabbits myself and I have to wear a mask...I look as if I have got mixamatosis, but there you go."

She has taken in 11 cats this month as well as five rabbits, six guinea pigs and three rats. On Christmas Day she sent out a taxi to pick up two cats whose owner had been taken into hospital, and she has collected animals from Heathfield and even Folkestone this week, with many calls from Eastbourne and Hastings.