MARGARET Seaton can start work at 8am, clock off after 11pm and her salary is exactly £0 a year.

But long hours are a price worth paying for a woman who has devoted the last 12 years to caring for animals in distress.

As the RSPCA's home and welfare co-ordinator Margaret, who is based at the organisation's Altrincham branch, is responsible for everything from organising emergency medical care to finding suitable homes for abandoned pets.

She covers an area which takes in Sale, Timperley, Partington, Northwich, Winsford and Knutsford and says it's a far cry from the days when she worked as a cashier at Linotype and as a taxi driver.

Margaret became involved with the RSPCA in an unoffical capacity 14 years ago after adopting her dog Jacky from them.

The animal had been kept on a tiny leash, fed on crumbs and was suffering from the canine equivalent of chronic diarrhoea. Now she's a picture of health and happiness and the mutual adoration between the two is there for all to see.

Margaret works closely with the branch's inspector, whose job it is to investigate allegations of animal cruelty. Does she struggle to control her emotions when confronted by cases of sometimes appalling neglect?

"When you're not used to it youWork is a labou of love for Margaret get angry and almost manic about what's going on. But when you've done it for so many years, that goes. What you feel, I think, is numbness but you've got to do what you can for the animal at that time and then forget it and get on with the next one," she says.

Occasionally Margaret and her husband Keith offer a temporary home to abandoned animals - for instance, she has fond memories of rearing a litter of kittens which had lost their mother in a car accident. She's also bottle-fed a homeless puppy before now.

Margaret says the anti-social hours aren't a problem for someone with grown-up children, and though she has had no formal training from the RSPCA she believes personal qualities like common sense are just as important in her line of work.

There's a glut of animal welfare programmes on TV at the moment but Margaret believes they paint a slightly misleading picture of the work of the RSPCA - and there is definately a north/south divide when it comes to resources, she says.

"One thing we all agree on, though, is that since these programmes have been on television the cruelty has lessened," she says.

Her sons Mark and Nigel are 'animal minded' according to their mum, who believes her own love of all God's creatures comes from her father.

A master plumber, he used to take an animal home with him when he'd been doing jobs in the country. On one occasion, he returned with a blind collie dog which was to be her companion until Margaret was 18.

"I used to call him my brother," she laughs, fondly.

But there's more to this Altrincham resident than just animals. She's a big fan of Shirley Bassey, theatre and literature - one of her favourite authors is D H Lawrence - and is also interested in astrology and psychology, animal psychology in particular.

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