PEEK-A-BOO!

There's nothing cuter than a little, wet kitten wrapped up in a big, fluffy towel.

But did you ever think about how many towels it takes to keep an animal sanctuary full of homeless pets dry?

It turns out it is a lot.

Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary uses hundreds of towels every months to keep its 59 dogs, 76 cats and 14 rabbits snug and warm.

This month staff at the Stadhampton centre put out an urgent appeal for more towels.

Assitant warden Aaron Denton said: "We need all sorts of different reasons, primarily for when we're having to bath kittens and wash them and dry them.

"We also use them as bedding and, because of the texture, the kittens will sometimes toilet on the towels so we have to replenish those.

"We use them when dogs go out for walks and get dirty, to dry walls and floors of enclosures, and especially when we're hand-feeding the kittens we wrap them up in a towel in case they dribble."

In December the sanctuary was given a donation of about 2,000 towels which staff used up in a matter of weeks.

In a single day if the dogs go out for a walk and get muddy staff can go through 30 towels just drying muddy pups.

Mr Denton added: "At the moment we've got four kittens on hand-rear so if we're using one towel for each and feeding four or five times a day that's 35 towels a week."

If you have spare towels you could offer the sanctuary contact Mr Denton at oxfordshireanimalsanctuary.org.uk or call him on 01865 890239.