OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Gallatin County, Kentucky, is located along I-71 between Cincinnati and Louisville. It is a rural county with a population of 8600 people. The county has a municipal shelter, the Gallatin County Animal Shelter, which is supported by a non-profit called Friends of Gallatin Shelter (FOGS). The shelter is open 7 days a week for adoptions. Deb Miller, president of FOGS, answered my questions about the shelter and provided its statistics. FOGS managed the shelter from January 2011 to April 2013, when a FOGS board member took over and FOGS remained as shelter support. Miller said that before FOGS took over: “The place was a horrible mess, and the one paid county ‘Manager’ was as bad as bad could be. Animals were found dead in cages regularly, the manager only came to clean and feed every other day or so, and of course, the cats never made it out alive.” The shelter accepts owner surrenders with no fee. They do not require an appointment for surrenders and do not use a waiting list, although occasionally during kitten season they may ask a person who wants to surrender a litter of kittens if they can wait until a foster is lined up or room is made. Gallatin animal control offers an owner-requested euthanasia service, but only for animals who are terminally ill. If an owner requests euthanasia for a non-terminal animal, the animal is taken into the shelter and placed by adoption or rescue. Owner requested euthanasias of terminal animals that are done by the animal control officer are not counted in the shelter’s statistics. In 2011, according to the statistics Miller sent me, the shelter’s live release rate was 99% (98% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias). In 2012, the shelter took in 410 animals and had a 95% live release rate. In 2013, the shelter’s intake increased to 463 cats and dogs. Despite the increased intake, the shelter had a 100% live release rate in 2013. The modified live release rate (counting the two animals who died in shelter care against the live release rate) was 99.6%. Miller said that they were especially proud of the 143 cats who were adopted from the shelter during 2013, which was a 60% increase in cat adoptions from 2012. She attributed the increase to their efforts at social networking and finding fosters. There was also a 55% increase in the number of dogs who went to rescues. Gallatin County, KY, is counted in the Running Total as a 90%+ community.

Georgetown, Texas, is a city of 47,000 people in Williamson County just north of Austin. The Georgetown Animal Shelter is run by the city and provides animal control and sheltering services for people who reside within the city limits. The shelter’s website describes the shelter as “an open door shelter that accepts all dogs and cats found within the city limits or surrendered by owners that live within the city limits.” It does not mention any conditions for owner surrenders. The city of Georgetown has announced that it achieved a 90% live release rate for its most recent fiscal year, from October 1, 2013, to September 30, 2014. The city noted that intake was 12% higher than in the previous fiscal year, at 1863 impounded animals. (That intake is high, at a rate of 40 per 1000 people.) Adoptions and returns-to-owner were also higher. The shelter manager said the shelter has been making increased efforts to find owners of strays and to work with owners to return pets to their homes. In the three preceding fiscal years, the shelter reported live release rates of 81%, 85%, and 90%. In a 2012 interview, the shelter manager attributed the shelter’s live release rate to volunteers, a barn cat program, an initiative to have shelter staff train dogs as they are cared for each day, and adoption outreach. Georgetown, TX, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

Archuleta County is located on the southern border of Colorado, in the western part of the state. Its population is 12,000 people. Its county seat and sole municipality is the town of Pagosa Springs, which has 1700 people. Archuleta County has a municipal animal control that transfers impounded animals to the Humane Society of Pagosa Springs (HSPA), a private non-profit that provides animal sheltering for Archuleta and Pagosa Springs. Pagosa Springs also has an animal control officer. I was told by an HSPA official that HSPA has a contract with the county to take in strays picked up by animal control, and that the contract includes Pagosa Springs. HSPA accepts owner surrenders subject to a waiting list, but it will take in an owner surrender immediately if the owner cannot wait. HSPS is a progressive shelter that has a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program, low-income and free spay-neuter assistance, behavioral assistance, and good community involvement. This page on the HSPS website describes how the shelter started back in 1984 and relocated to larger quarters in 2007 due to population growth. HSPS describes its transfer program on its website, and the program sounds like a model for such programs. HSPS screens its transfer partners carefully, transfers out only animals that it has not been able to adopt out locally, and looks for situations where it can “trade” animals with another shelter. The page describes one situation where they sent Manx cats, who were not in demand in Archuleta County, to a California shelter where they were in demand, and received cats in exchange. Both sets of cats were adopted quickly in their new locations, and as a bonus HSPS was able to help the California shelter set up a TNR program. HSPS says the adoption rate of the animals it transfers “has been in the high 90′s percentile.” The state of Colorado collects statistics from animal shelters each year, and I received copies of the reports by record request. In 2012, HSPS reported that it took in almost 500 dogs and cats. Its live release rate was 98% (97% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias.) In 2013, intake went up substantially to 787 animals. It appears that this increase was mostly in feral cats that had TNR. The live release rate went up in 2013 to 99% (97% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias). Archuleta County, CO, was originally listed by this blog on October 22, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Summit County is west of Denver and is home to about 28,000 people. It is a mountainous area of Colorado and the county was named for the many peaks within it. The Summit County Animal Control and Shelter is run by the county as part of the sheriff’s office, and it takes in strays from the unincorporated area of the county.  I spoke to a shelter representative and was told that the shelter does not have formal contracts with the municipalities within the county, but accepts impounded animals from the municipalities when they are not reclaimed by their owners. The representative told me that the shelter accepts owner surrenders from anywhere, as long as they are brought in within normal business hours.  There is a $50 fee for residents of Summit County and an $80 fee for non-residents, but the shelter will waive the fee if the owner cannot pay. The shelter reported a 99% live release rate for 2010, with an intake of 458 animals (scroll down in the link). It reported a 97% live release rate in 2011, with an intake of 388. The live release rate with owner-requested euthanasia and animals who died or were lost in shelter care counted in with euthanasias was 95% in 2011. Summit County is one of a group of communities in the area west of Denver that report to Maddie’s Fund and the Asilomar Accords as part of the Northwestern Colorado Coalition. Other members of the coalition are Garfield, Pitkin, and Eagle counties and the cities of Aspen, Rifle and Glenwood Springs. The coalition reported an overall 97% live release rate in 2010 and 98% in 2011 (see pages 1-2 in the links). In 2013 the shelter reported its statistics to the state of Colorado. The shelter had an intake of 562 animals, with a live release rate of 98%. If deaths in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 97%. Summit County, CO, was originally listed by this blog on May 9, 2013, based on its statistics in previous years. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Cape May County is a coastal resort area on the southern tip of New Jersey. It has almost 100,000 permanent residents, but the population increases greatly during vacation season. It has several townships (Lower (population 23,000), Middle (19,000), Upper (12,000), and Dennis (6000)) and the city of Wildwood (5000) as well as several smaller cities and boroughs. The county seat is in Middle Township. Ocean City (population 12,000) is at the county’s northern border. Animal control and sheltering for the entire county, with the exception of Ocean City, is provided by the municipal Cape May County Animal Shelter and Adoption Center (CMCAS). CMCAS also accepts owner surrenders from county residents, with an appointment and a small fee. In an interview in January 2011, shelter director Judy Davies reported that CMCAS had euthanized 8 percent of its dogs and 10 percent of its cats in 2010, compared to rates as high as 75% in previous years. The shelter reported a 7.5% euthanasia rate in 2011. The shelter does not post its statistics online, but Davies sent me the shelter’s statistics for 2012, which show a 91% live release rate with intake of 1157 dogs and cats. The statistics do not record any owner-requested euthanasias or animals who died or were lost in shelter care. The 2013 statistics reported by the shelter to the state of New Jersey show a save rate of 92%, with an intake of 1094 animals. A big part of the county’s success is its trap-neuter-return program for feral cats, which was instituted in 2001 and is reported to have reduced the number of feral cat complaints by 80%. A group called the Animal Alliance of Cape May County holds low-cost TNR clinics. County leaders showed their dedication to the program in 2007 and 2008 when they negotiated compromise wildlife conservation rules that allowed the program to continue. CMCAS director Judy Davies noted in the 2011 interview that the county’s intake is considerably lower than neighboring counties. The TNR program is certainly a factor in this lower intake, but Davies also attributed it to the shelter’s pet retention programs: “What we’re doing a lot more of is working with the owners of dogs. Someone might want to relinquish the dog to the shelter because it requires vet care they can’t afford or they just can’t afford the animal because of the economy. We intervene and try to help people.” There are several private organizations that are very active in Cape May County, including the Paws & Claws Society (PACS), Beacon Animal Rescue (BAR),  Animal Outreach of Cape May County, and the Animal Welfare Society of Cape May County. PACS has a suite of programs including pet retention and adoption programs. The Humane Society of Ocean City (HSOC) provides animal control and sheltering for Ocean City, and it has a high live release rate. I will report on Ocean City in a separate article. Cape May County was originally listed by this blog on April 26, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Fort Morgan is a city of 11,000 people located in the northeastern part of Colorado. It is the county seat of Morgan County, which has a population of 28,000. The area is mostly devoted to farming. The city of Brush, which is located in Morgan County, has 5500 people. Fort Morgan has an animal control service, but animals are impounded by a private agency, the Fort Morgan Humane Society (FMHS). I spoke to the shelter’s operations manager, Tina Gutierrez, who told me that the shelter has contracts with Fort Morgan, Morgan County, Log Lane and Wiggins for stray intake. She said that the county has a deputy assigned to animal control. The shelter accepts owner surrenders subject to a waiting list. Gutierrez told me that she is generally able to counsel owners to be able to keep their pets or, if that is not possible, to find a rescue placement for them. Gutierrez told me that transfers from FMHS go to approved rescues. One rescue she mentioned that has been of assistance to the shelter is Furever Friends, which does adoptions and has a lost and found service. FMHS has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats. They are neutered and given vaccinations and a full examination. The shelter does not offer owner-requested euthanasia. The state of Colorado collects statistics on animal shelters. According to those statistics, FMHS took in 1302 animals in 2012, which is an intake of 47 animals per 1000 people in the county. The live release rate for 2012 was 92%. If the number of animals who died or were lost in shelter care is counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 90%. Gutierrez told me that she instituted new medical protocols since she took over in 2012. In 2013, the shelter took in 895 animals, with a 97% live release rate. The live release rate was 93% if all non-live dispositions are counted as euthanasias. The city of Brush has its own shelter and an animal control unit run by the police department. The Brush shelter does not accept owner surrenders. FMHS takes in many animals from Brush who are not reclaimed within the 5-day hold period. Brush was not listed as a 90% community in 2012 because the Brush Animal Shelter reported killing 56 of the 111 cats they took in during 2012. In 2013, their intake was 238 animals, with a 91% live release rate. The live release rate is unchanged if all non-live dispositions are counted as euthanasias. I’m adding the city of Brush to the right sidebar based on its reported outcomes in 2013. Fort Morgan, CO, was originally listed by this blog on November 9, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Atlanta, Georgia, was known for years as a city with a very low live release rate. Rebecca Guinn decided to reform it. She gave up her lucrative career as an attorney and formed a non-profit called LifeLine Animal Project, which she built up until it was able to take over the animal sheltering contracts in Fulton and DeKalb counties in 2013. Together, the population of the two counties, which contain the city of Atlanta, is over 1.5 million. Here is a link to an NPR interview that was done in July 2014 with Guinn. Fulton and DeKalb have seen considerable progress since then. Lineline  has reported that its live release rate for the Fulton County shelter is just under 90%. LifeLine previously reported that the save rate in DeKalb was at 86%. It’s looking like both shelters are going to finish 2014 in the 80-90% range. Both shelters are open-admission municipal shelters that, between them, take in about 50 animals per day every day. The population of the two counties is over 1.5 million people. Fulton and DeKalb counties are counted in the Running Totals as 80%+ communities.

Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, had a population of 602,000 at the 2010 census and is growing rapidly. The city is surrounded by densely populated urban areas in Maryland and Virginia, and the metropolitan area has a population of 5,700,000. The Washington Humane Society (WHS) is an animal welfare agency chartered by Congress that has been in existence since 1870. WHS provides animal control and animal sheltering for the district. The shelter states on its website that “[t]he Animal Control Facility primarily houses dogs, cats, and pocket pets, but never turns any animal away.” It describes itself as “the open access shelter in the nation’s capital.” WHS has a comprehensive set of programs, including a Behavior and Learning Center that provides training and play groups for shelter dogs and answers questions from the public, a community cat program that provides TNR, an affordable, high-volume spay-neuter center, a Safe Haven program for pets who are victims of domestic violence or abuse,  and a task force for lost and found animals. This 2013 report provides more information on WHS intake and programs. Zenit Chughtai, a communications specialist with WHS, told the media that WHS had a live release rate of 87% in 2014. Intake was up slightly at 10,540 animals, as compared to 10,474 in 2013. Chughtai credited the shelter’s adoption promotions, including a “Petzilla: Adopt a Cuddle Monster” promotion last May, for the increase in their live release rate. WHS reported a live release rate of 80%, including wildlife, in 2013, so the shelter’s step up to 87% is significant. In an article that appeared in January 2014, a shelter spokesman attributed the shelter’s improvement in recent years to several factors, including new adoption policies, off-site adoption events, discounted and free adoptions, an expanded foster program, the community cat program, and a program to work with landlords. He also credited a new perception on the part of the public about the shelter, noting that in the past the shelter had been seen as “a dark, dreary place where animals come to die.” In addition to WHS, the District of Columbia is home to the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL), which was founded in 1914. WARL has a full-service veterinary clinic that provides discounted care for the pets of income-qualified residents of the district and 14 surrounding counties. WARL also offers discounted spaying and neutering regardless of the owner’s income or residence. WARL reported an 89% live release rate for 2012 with an intake of 1973 dogs and cats and 89% for 2013 with intake of 2343. Washington, D.C., is counted in the Running Totals as an 80%-90% community.

Rappahannock County, Virginia, borders the Shenandoah mountains west of Washington, DC. It is a rural county with 7400 residents. The county provides animal control and owns the animal shelter building, but contracts out operations to the Rappahannock Animal Welfare League (RAWL), a private non-profit. RAWL describes the arrangement as follows: “Within the delegation of responsibilities, Rappahannock County employs the animal control warden, provides and maintains an accessible kennel and office on county property, and pays RAWL a fee to operate the facility. From that point, RAWL assumes the balance of the responsibilities: staffing, management, daily care, supplies, veterinary trips, inoculations, arranging the reclaim of lost animals and coordinating adoptions.” RAWL primarily takes in dogs. In addition to the dogs impounded by animal control, it accepts owner surrendered dogs subject to a waiting list. If the owner is a resident of Rappahannock County and cannot wait, RAWL will take in the dog immediately. Rappahannock’s animal control, which is part of the sheriff’s department, does not pick up cats unless they are sick or injured. They treat the sick and injured cats and try to re-home them. A private rescue, RappCats, accepts owner surrendered cats subject to a waiting list when they are full. I spoke to a representative of RappCats, who told me that they have a small shelter for cats. They work with people to help keep cats in their homes or colonies. In 2012, RAWL took in 253 dogs and had a live release rate of 96%. RappCats did not report its statistics to the state of Virginia in 2012. In 2013 both RAWL and RappCats reported to the state. The combined statistics, with intake of 371 cats and dogs, showed a live release rate of 96% for 2013. No animals were reported as having died in shelter care.

Today, as the end of 2015 approaches, we can say with confidence that no healthy cat should be dying in a shelter. That includes feral cats, bad-tempered cats, and older cats. If a shelter is killing healthy cats today – any healthy cats at all – they are doing it wrong. I say this not as an ethical observation, but as a purely practical statement of fact. The new ideas that are saving cats are simple but revolutionary. They stemmed from people within the shelter establishment coming to the realization that because cats are so different from dogs, the procedures for sheltering them should be different too. Over just the last 5-7 years, new ways of sheltering cats have been developed that entirely threw out the old methods. The old methods of sheltering cats involved treating them like dogs. They were impounded, put in cages, warehoused during the holding period, and then killed if they were not adoptable. And because there were so many of them they were very often killed even if they were adoptable. The only thing that kept the situation from being yet more dire was that in many places cats were considered to be free-roaming and were not picked up by animal control. Shelters still took in cats that people had trapped, though, and they took in owner surrenders. Many places had people doing TNR, but TNR caregivers usually tried to steer clear of the shelter because a feral cat in a shelter was probably a dead cat. The old method of sheltering cats did not work at all. Take hold periods, for example. Hold periods work pretty well for dogs because dogs generally don’t hide and are impounded by animal control fairly quickly. An owner with a missing dog has a good chance of finding it at the shelter. Cats, by contrast, often disappear for days at a time, and an owner may not even become concerned until after the hold period has expired. And since cats hide, a lost cat may not be picked up by animal control for weeks or months. Even a diligent owner will have stopped visiting the shelter by that time. Cats tend to look alike except for coat color, so photographs and descriptions of lost cats are not of much help in lost and found. In traditional shelters that impounded cats, the reclaim rates tended to be around 1-2%. Even a No Kill shelter that worked very hard at return-to-owner was unlikely to have a double-digit cat reclaim rate. Traditional shelters are horrible places for cats. A traditional shelter building is hard on a dog, but it is hell for cats. Even a well-designed modern shelter is not the ideal place for a cat. Cats are very attached to their territories, which is why most people quickly learn to hire an in-home pet sitter for their cat when they go on vacation rather than taking it to a boarding kennel. The sweetest, most sociable cat may turn into a hissing basket case in a shelter and act for all the world like it is feral. Terrified, frantic cats do not make good adoption candidates. The stress that cats feel in shelters sets them up for sickness too. So a logical first step in saving cats was to try to cut down on the time they spent in shelters. One natural way to do this was to expand the concept of TNR. Many pet cats are like feral cats in that they are perfectly capable of living outdoors. Cats stay out of trouble by hiding from people, and they can forage in the trash and catch rodents. Many cats are only loosely attached to their homes, and look at their “homes” as merely one source of food and shelter among several that they have to choose from. Cat advocates realized that the same semi-wild instincts that made it so hard for a cat to be in a shelter could help that cat survive and thrive outside the shelter. Over time and by trial and error, a new paradigm emerged. One principle of the new paradigm was to handle all healthy outdoor cats (“community cats”) using modified TNR techniques called Return to Field (RTF). A cat that was found outdoors in good condition could be presumed to be a cat that could take of itself, regardless of whether it was friendly or feral. It did not need rescue, it did not need rehoming. It just needed sterilization, a rabies vaccination, and to be returned to the outdoors as quickly as possible so that it did not have to be subjected to the terrible stress of the shelter. Another principle was that cats who are loosely homed are almost certain not to be reclaimed, and so returning those cats to the place where they were found gave them the best chance of maintaining their ties with that home. A third principle was that since the situation of healthy outdoor cats was not broke, we didn’t need to fix it. If the shelter was full and taking in more cats would mean killing some cats, then healthy outdoor cats were better off left where they were. One of the offshoots of these principles has been that more and more shelters are advising people who find kittens to just leave them where they are unless they are obviously deserted and in distress. The mother of such kittens is usually lurking nearby, but won’t show herself out of fear. Scooping the kittens up and taking them to the shelter may be a natural reaction to seeing them by themselves, but the fact is that they are much more likely to survive if they are left with mom. Even better is if the shelter can provide a hotline for people to report such kittens. Then the shelter or a referral organization can go out and assess the situation and make sure mom and kittens get sterilized. This approach, if it becomes widely accepted and understood by the public, could help keep shelter intake down during kitten season. Most people already know not to pick up a fledgling bird but instead to watch it or report it, so getting the same message out about kittens should be possible. By not impounding healthy outdoor cats, the shelter will have more space and time to help the cats who really need it. The shelter can identify categories of cats who are not eligible for RTF, such as owner surrenders who are used to living indoors, declawed cats, young kittens, and cats who have health issues. With only this limited number of cats to care for, the shelter should have enough space for quiet rooms and colony housing to keep the cats as happy and healthy as possible. And with fewer cats to adopt out, hopefully their length of stay will be less. Some people have objected to these new techniques. They may be concerned that even though the reclaim rate for cats is very low, people should nevertheless have an opportunity to find their lost family member. This is an appealing argument, but studies have shown that cats are many times more likely to get back home if they are left alone rather than impounded. In fact, impounding cats is what tears families apart, because it destroys the cat’s best chance of getting home. Another objection to the new sheltering principles for cats comes from people who think that leaving cats where they are will result in them suffering. Cats suffer when they are taken from their territories, though, so a quick sterilization and return to their territory causes healthy cats a lot less suffering than impoundment. But what about the hold period? If local laws or ordinances require all impounded cats to be held for a certain number of days, those rules should be modified to allow for return of the cat as soon as possible following sterilization. There is no point in having a cat sit in a shelter for five days or seven days when it will be happier back in its territory as soon as it is safe to return it. Some people protest getting rid of the hold period for cats, thinking that shelters want to use that as an excuse to kill cats sooner. Instead of just abolishing the hold period, some jurisdictions have tried to ease those fears by providing that a cat cannot be killed by the shelter for a certain number of days (with an exception for cases of untreatable suffering), but can be returned to the field without a hold period. Other obstacles to the new techniques come from the same sources that can make TNR difficult. If TNR has never been implemented in a community, there may be laws that prohibit TNR that would also prohibit RTF. And of course the bird people are always ready to squawk about anything that even suggests that any cat should ever be allowed outdoors. These are probably the most serious obstacles that stand in the way of the new paradigms, but fortunately this type of opposition is gradually losing its effectiveness. The new paradigms are being rapidly accepted by both No Kill shelters and traditional shelters. Partly that is because almost all of the national animal welfare agencies that are involved with animal sheltering have signed on to them. Partly it is because the Million Cat Challenge and Maddie’s Fund have been promoting the new paradigms very effectively. Partly it is because the new approach has been proven to work in several places, most notably Jacksonville. And partly it’s because what’s not to like? The new approach is cheaper, since donations and volunteer labor can be used to do RTF. It’s more pleasant for shelter staff because they no longer have to kill healthy cats or deal with stressed-out cats who get sick all the time. No Kill advocates love it because, with shelters having more time and space for cats, they can treat the treatables and get them healthy and adopted out. So as we approach the end of 2015, there is no longer any reason why a healthy cat should die in a shelter. The new paradigms seem simple and obvious when you think about them, but they are revolutionary. It used to be that for a cat, going to a shelter was like the entrance to Hades, with the sign overhead saying “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.” That no longer has to be the case. Hopefully by the end of 2016 we will have at least the seeds of these new paradigms in place everywhere.

UPDATE Jan. 6, 2016: The city council meeting set for January 12, 2016 to discuss the ABC letter has been cancelled. At this time the mayor and city council do not appear to have any further action scheduled on the ABC letter. The Feral Freedom program in Jacksonville, Florida, is one of the exceptional success stories of No Kill. Feral Freedom is an initiative of First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP) in collaboration with the city shelter and with the support of Best Friends. It was an indispensable component in Jacksonville reaching No Kill two years ago. Feral Freedom developed a revolutionary approach to saving community cats that has done as much as any other initiative to reduce shelter killing of cats, not just in Jacksonville but as an inspiration to communities across the nation. Feral Freedom is not the only great thing about Jacksonville. I’ve been blogging about No Kill communities for five years now, and if I had to pick out one community to serve as an example of what is right with No Kill, it might very well be Jacksonville. Jacksonville is a large southern city, which is about the toughest venue for No Kill. It is not a progressive city like Austin or Charlottesville. It overcomes all its challenges by the organizations in the city, including the Animal Care & Protective Services Division (ACPSD), the Jacksonville Humane Society (JHS), and FCNMHP working together with terrific harmony. In Jacksonville, they can truthfully say “yes we can all just get along.” As Denise Deisler told me: “In Jacksonville among the partners, we have few boundaries . . . we are flying in formation towards the same goal.” The combined statistics for ACPSD and JHS for the year ending in September 2015 showed a live release rate, by the standard calculation, of 96%. That’s one of the highest live release rates that I’m aware of for any major city, ever. For a rate like that to be achieved in a non-progressive southern city is little short of a miracle. And the Jacksonville organizations do not just work in the city – they also reach out to help their neighboring jurisdictions get to No Kill too. But today this great success story is under imminent threat from outside. There is a strong effort being made to shut down the Feral Freedom program. This would not only cripple No Kill in Jacksonville, it is a threat to No Kill in every other city in the United States. I wrote a few days ago about the stunning success of the Million Cat Challenge, which has saved almost 400,000 shelter cats in the last two years. One of the core initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge is return-to-field, which was pioneered by Feral Freedom. The attack on Feral Freedom, if it succeeds, might set a precedent that would endanger the success of the Million Cat Challenge and the 300+ shelters enrolled in its program. It could also potentially endanger independent TNR programs throughout the United States. So what is this threat? It is a campaign by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) to get the Jacksonville city council to end the city’s relationship with Feral Freedom. In a December 3, 2015, letter to the mayor and the council, the ABC argues that TNR does not control the number of feral cats, that feral cat colonies are a threat to public health, and that feral cats are an invasive species that “impose severe ecological damage” on wildlife. The ABC letter, which is four pages long including footnotes, has only one sentence on the issue of what it thinks should replace Feral Freedom. That sentence says: “The City would be better served by treating cats like dogs, actively and effectively removing these feral animals, and/or completely enclosing every feral cat colony.” The suggestion to enclose feral cat colonies is not a serious proposal, and is probably included only to make ABC’s preferred solution seem not quite so harsh. What ABC is really recommending is that: (1) the city should force all cat owners to keep their cats indoors or under control at all times under penalty of law, and (2) all feral cats should be captured and killed. This is the program that ABC is putting forward as better than Feral Freedom. Let’s take a moment to think about what would happen if the Jacksonville city council adopted the ABC proposal. First of all, they would probably be voted out of office at the next election, but in addition to that, the ABC program would be ineffective. As to trying to force people to keep cats indoors, we should know by now that draconian anti-pet provisions never work. Good policy today is to work with people as they are, not to try to force them to do things they don’t want to do. Instead of mandatory spay-neuter we offer low-cost and free spay-neuter and targeted outreach. Instead of breed bans, we look at the behavior of individual dogs. We have learned that criminalizing people’s pets just results in people going underground, and tuning out the official message. As to catching and killing all the feral cats in the city, I cannot understand why anyone would think that this is a better approach than Feral Freedom. Not only is it cruel, and not only would it sweep up lots of people’s pets, it wouldn’t even work. The great majority of the real estate in any city is private property, and the great majority of feral cat colonies are located on private property. The city has no right to come onto private property willy nilly and take people’s cats. Even if we were to assume that the city was able to enact some kind of draconian ordinance that allowed them to legally come onto private property and take cats, that would simply mean that people would hide the cats. In order for a catch-and-kill program to work, the city would have to catch at least 70% of the free-roaming cats in the city and then they would have to repeat this vast catch-and-kill program every couple of years. Good luck with that. And in the meantime, with TNR shut down, there would be no way to slow down cat reproduction. TNR has gained such wide acceptance not because it is a perfect method, but because it is the best of the methods that are actually possible to implement. We live in a complicated world, and simplistic solutions like “catch and kill all the cats” won’t work. The ABC is failing to consider the following factors: (1) the citizens will not support what ABC wants to do, (2) feral cat caregivers and humane advocates will work as hard as they can to thwart any mass killing plan that the city might adopt, (3) you can’t force people to keep their cats indoors if they don’t want to, unless you plan to hire a lot more police officers, and (4) a catch-and-kill program, unlike TNR, would not be staffed by volunteers or funded by donations – the burden would fall on the taxpayers, and it would be expensive. This is getting to be a long blog post and I have not even touched on the issue of whether the ABC’s arguments that cats are bad have any validity. There is an awful lot that could be said on that issue too, because the peer-reviewed literature on feral cats has so many yawning gaps that you cannot draw many conclusions from those studies one way or the other. For example, the “Smithsonian” study, which many bird conservationists cite as definitive proof of harm to wildlife from feral cats, admitted that no studies had been done on feral cat populations in the United States. The authors of the study then proceeded to guess what they thought the feral cat population might be. I can understand why someone might make a guess in the absence of data – but to recommend killing millions of animals, including people’s pets, on the basis of your guess – that’s chutzpah. I’d like to end this post by presenting some actual data – the statistics for what the Feral Freedom program has done in Jacksonville since it was founded. Unlike the ABC with its guesses and assumptions, the fall in cat intake at the city shelter is a fact. According to statistics going back to 2003, cat intake at the city shelter reached a high of around 13,000 per year in the years before Feral Freedom was founded in 2008. In fiscal year 2009-2010, the numbers began to fall. By fiscal year 2014-2015, cat intake at the city shelter was half what it was at its peak. During this time FCNMHP was taking in anywhere from 2000+ to 5000+ cats per year from the city shelter. Those cats were sterilized, which is why cat intake at the shelter fell. Community cat programs do work. Jacksonville mayor and city council – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Getting to and sustaining No Kill is more difficult in some places than others. If I were looking for the easiest place for a No Kill transition, I would pick a small town with a lot of educated or wealthy people – maybe a ski resort or a college town. The town should be in the northern part of the country, the colder the better, and preferably in a mountainous area. The shelter should be owned and managed by a humane society, preferably one with an endowment or income stream that can help fund the transition to No Kill. And it would be a great bonus if the town had a veterinary college nearby with a shelter medicine program. No Kill in those circumstances would probably be easy to achieve and sustain. On the other hand, think about a job as director of a municipal-owned shelter in a big southern city, in a place that has warm weather for most of the year and a long kitten season, with a population that has average or less-than-average levels of wealth and education, and with no subsidized access to advanced veterinary care. That would be tough. There are people who have succeeded in creating No Kill in such circumstances, but it’s hard work. Until the last few years the great majority of No Kill communities have more closely resembled the scenario described in the first paragraph than in the second. But recently we have seen an explosion of cities with live release rates over 80%, in places where it would have seemed impossible just five to ten years ago. We have seen shelter directors taking on No Kill projects in big cities in the south and the midwest, including in states like South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Missouri. Even Mississippi has a No Kill shelter now. That’s great news, but unfortunately some No Kill advocates are not making the distinction between the little resort town in Colorado and the giant metropolis in the south. There have been several reports of shelter directors saving 98%, 99%, or 100% of animals in little county shelters in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or in wealthy small towns in mountainous areas of Colorado, or in college towns in the northeast, and some advocates seem to have gotten a skewed idea of what is possible in places that look more like average America. Actually, the 98% to 100% save rates seem to be pretty rare even in the small northern towns. Even in those places 90% to 97% yearly save rates are probably more common. The result of the high expectations has been that some shelter directors who are revolutionizing shelters in the south and saving tens of thousands of lives every year are nevertheless being criticized because so far they are “only” at 80% or 85% or 89% instead of 98% to 100%. And the criticisms are not gentle. I was talking to one such shelter director recently who said she and her staff have been called “SOBs” and “murderers.” And those are the printable epithets. This director and her organization stepped in to save a dysfunctional shelter system in a large southern city, and they are raising the live release rate very rapidly. They are working under extremely difficult conditions, with virtually no establishment support, and they are practically killing themselves doing it. The director told me that she had just recently taken her first vacation in five years, and that all she did was sleep. I would defy any of her critics to give up what she has given up to do this work, and I would defy any of them to do a better job. And yet there is a segment of our own No Kill movement that thinks that she and her team are not good enough! Similarly, in another large southern city that has seen many failed past attempts to raise live release rates, the current director of the municipal shelter is slowly and steadily raising live release rates. It’s looking good for his shelter to have a live release rate in the 80% range for 2015. Will he ever get to 90%? I don’t know, but the year before he took over the shelter didn’t even get to 50%. Yet he was the subject of relentless criticism from some local advocates before he even had a chance to get started. In another southern city some local No Kill advocates have been criticizing the shelter even as it has reached and exceeded the 90% standard. They disapproved of the program that shelter management chose to use, because there is a different program that they like better. And in a northwestern city a group of No Kill advocates have been pillorying a No Kill shelter that reports live release rates of over 90%. None of the shelters in the cities and towns I mentioned above are perfect, and criticism can be a good thing when it points out real flaws and urges even better performance. But undeserved criticism can be draining for shelter directors. And calling out shelter directors who are rapidly improving their live releases but are not up to 80% or 90% yet can actually cause harm and slow their momentum by undermining the support and engagement of the community. Unreasonable critics are only part of a larger problem, though, which is that good shelter directors working in the tougher cities are often not seeing enough rewards for a job that can be incredibly difficult and draining. When we fail to appreciate good directors we risk losing some of our best leaders to burnout. Burnout may not be a big problem in the case of directors of small shelters in wealthy northern towns, but it is potentially a problem for the new generation of shelter directors who are taking on tougher challenges. Just offhand, I can think of several No Kill stars who have left positions as municipal shelter directors in recent years. Most of these people have gone on to other important work on the national stage in No Kill, which is a good thing, but we have lost them from the front lines. So what can be done to combat burnout and keep great directors on the job? First, we need to make sure that directors have the help they need. No Kill advocates, instead of standing on the sidelines and demanding that the director work miracles, can get involved themselves. They can approach the city or county government (in a reasonable, respectful way, after doing their homework and keeping in mind that governments have many important priorities) and seek more resources for the shelter, including higher pay for good performers. They can work on revising ordinances, an important task that is often overlooked. Perhaps most of all, No Kill advocates can either start their own organizations to assist shelters, or work on reforming local legacy humane societies that are not doing their part. It is hard to overestimate the importance of supporting organizations in getting to and sustaining high live release rates. For example, two large cities in the south that have live release rates around 95% have been able to reach that level in part because in each of the two cities there are three large organizations that help each other in the No Kill effort. But in some cities there are unhelpful legacy humane societies that are sucking up the lion’s share of local donations and mostly using them to put on a happy face and keep their payroll up. I’m speaking here about some local organizations, not the national organizations. In the last few years the traditional national organizations, with one notable exception, have become very supportive of No Kill and they are now doing some innovative stuff. Both the HSUS and the ASPCA, for example (along with other national organizations that have always supported No Kill), were early supporters of the new cat paradigms, and have used their enormous national influence to gain increasing acceptance for what otherwise could have been a hard sell. Legacy humane societies that haven’t really changed the way they operate in the last 20, 30, or 40 years are a problem. Imagine the difference it would make for the municipal shelter director, on the morning of a puppy mill bust when 40 dogs in poor condition are being impounded, to get a call from the local humane society with an offer to take in the 25 sickest dogs. That type of help from local organizations goes a long way to preventing burnout, and it is really what every municipal shelter director has a right to expect. It might behoove local No Kill advocates to ask what the local humane societies are doing before they go after the municipal shelter director. The work of a No Kill municipal shelter director has a lot of intrinsic rewards. It is important work. It is life-saving. No Kill shelter directors know they are making the world a better place. But a person who has the managerial and people skills and the work ethic needed to succeed as a shelter director in a typical American city is someone who has talents that would be rewarded with a lot more pay and status and a lot less stress in another profession. If we are going to retain our stars and attract other stars to the profession, we need to appreciate them and try to support them rather than make their jobs harder.