It has been a very difficult year for the Shropshire Cat Rescue Shop. The Covid lockdown closures have been the most obvious challenge of course, but before that Shrewsbury suffered severe flooding which affected the numbers of people getting into the town centre. Indeed, it affected some of our volunteers getting to the shop!
We have been closed for about 9 months on and off which has clearly had an impact on our fundraising, but our dedicated volunteers have risen to the challenge to try to keep generating funds to help our cats. Carol Beels has been selling donated items on our new and very popular SCR Selling Facebook page. She is so good at it – her next role is selling snow to the Inuit and I have no doubt she will excel at that too! We also had the idea of putting a contact email address in the shop window so people could enquire about any of the items we were showcasing in the window display. This was quite successful because we sold a couple of pictures for nearly £100.
Despite the challenges we looked forward to re-opening to our customers. In anticipation of this a few volunteers spent some Sundays getting the shop spic and span again (socially distanced and within Government guidelines of course). The donated items were sorted, and volunteers Peter and Julie Kampler gave some areas a lick of paint. Anne had been keeping up morale with much needed home-made cakes.
Obviously, it will be a bit different to normal to begin with. We will only be opening the ground floor to start with, and customer numbers will be limited to ensure a safe environment. We appreciate that some people may still be nervous about entering shops so we will have put baskets of books, DVD’s and CD’s outside the front door. Look out for some real bargains.
As always, we are looking for volunteers to pitch in and help out. From door control, working the counter to helping sort out donated items – there is never a shortage of work. If you feel you can help and have some spare time why not get in touch and join our friendly crew? You can contact the SCR Shop on 01743 236222.