OUT THE FRONT DOOR

Cats are not dogs. This seems obvious, and yet the correlative to that statement – that we cannot give equal treatment to cats by treating them the same way we treat dogs – seems to be lost on many people. In the last couple of years we have had proposals for innovative programs that seek to give homeless and lost cats the same chance for life that homeless and lost dogs have – not by treating cats and dogs exactly alike, but by recognizing and accommodating their differences. Some people have reacted to these new programs by complaining that cats are being treated unfairly, and are being made second-class citizens to dogs. I’ve even heard the new cat paradigms referred to as the “war on cats.” While it’s a good thing for people to be cautious before adopting new ideas, we don’t want to be so cautious that we reject lifesaving ideas. With that in mind, what are the new cat paradigms, and what is the evidence to back them up? I’m not an expert on the new paradigms – the experts would be Dr, Kate Hurley, Dr. Julia Levy, Scott Trebatoski, and all the other professionals who have been leaders in this field. But as I understand the new paradigms, one of the central ideas is that, in most circumstances, shelters should not take in healthy cats. Gulp. That certainly is a radical idea. But after looking at the evidence, it makes perfect sense. While an impounded cat is sitting in the shelter waiting for its owner to come looking for it, it may get sick, it is taking up space for cats who really need to be in the shelter (those who are sick, injured, or starving), and the likelihood of its owners finding it is far, far less than if it had been left alone. That italicized clause is one of the keys to the new cat paradigms, and I think it is the most often misunderstood or overlooked part of the new message. So what is the scientific evidence to support the idea that a lost or straying cat is more likely to find its way home if it is just left alone? I asked Dr. Hurley this question, and she sent me two peer-reviewed studies that address the issue. The first study was done in 2005 in Montgomery County, Ohio. It looked at cats lost by residents over a 4-month period and the success of methods that owners used to find the cats. The study included 138 cats. Just over half (53%) of the lost cats were recovered. Two-thirds – 66% – of the cats who were recovered returned home on their own. That is not a typo. All other methods, including neighborhood signs, identification, advertisements, and visiting the shelter, when added up, were only about 1/2 as successful as simply waiting for the cat to come home on its own. The second-most successful method for finding a lost cat was neighborhood signs, but only 11% of found cats were found by that method. Leaving cats alone was 6 times more effective than the second-best method at returning cats home. Only 7% of the cats were recovered from the animal shelter. Now you might argue that perhaps only a few of the cats wound up in the shelter in the first place, and that explains why few were recovered from the shelter. The problem with that argument is that owners in the study took a median of 3 days, with a range of 0 to 21 days, to visit the shelter to look for their cat. And the median time between visits was 8 days. Half of owners did not visit the shelter within the typical 3-day hold time of the county, and when they did visit, their succeeding visits were not frequent enough to allow them to reliably reclaim their cats within the hold period. As the authors of the study said, it was possible that at least some of the cats in the study who were not recovered were killed by animal shelters. So, either cats did wind up in the shelter (in which case their owners did not reliably go to the shelter often enough to find them) or cats did not wind up in the shelter (in which case the shelter was irrelevant to whether they were found). Either way, impoundment is not a reliable way of returning lost cats to their homes. This gets at one of the core differences between cats and dogs, which is that cats are more likely to hide when they get lost. A lost cat may hide for days or even weeks before it makes its presence known enough to come to the attention of animal control. People tend not to look in shelters for lost cats for a very good reason, which is that they know the likelihood of their cat being in a shelter on any given day is low. Unless they have the time to literally visit the shelter every couple of days for up to one or two months, their odds of finding their cat are not good even if it is impounded. And relying on shelter personnel or volunteers to recognize a lost cat from a photo or description is tricky because so many cats look alike. The shelter hold period was designed for dogs, plain and simple. The hold period does not fit cat behavior and it is ineffective to allow cat owners to recover their pets. The second study was a national telephone survey that made contact with 2,587 households in 2010. A higher percentage of lost cats – 75% – were recovered than in the 2005 study. Of the 54 cats recovered, 48 were recovered either by searching within the neighborhood or the cat returning home on its own. The percentage of found cats who returned home on their own was 59% – not that far off from the 66% in the 2005 study, even though the two studies used different methodologies. Almost 9 out of 10 cats who were recovered either returned home on their own or were found by their owners right in their own neighborhood. Only 1 of the cats was recovered from the animal shelter (2% of the sample). Only 4 of the cat owners looked at the shelter for their lost pet. Once again, whether the low rate of recovery from the shelter was due to cats not winding up in the shelter or people not looking for them in the shelter, the result is the same – a very low likelihood of a cat being reunited with its family via the shelter. Both of these studies are small. As with just about every issue involving animal sheltering, it would be nice to have more studies and have studies involving larger numbers of animals. I think the studies are meaningful in spite of the relatively small numbers of cats involved, however, because the percentage of cats who found their way home on their own was huge in both studies. This was not a subtle result – not the kind of thing where you need a cast of thousands to make sure that your result is statistically significant. There are two possible ways for shelters to react to this data. One is to accept that impounding a cat is not a good way to reunite it with its family, and to change procedures so that healthy cats are not impounded and that people are advised about what does work – signs, searching the neighborhood, and waiting for the cat to come home. The other way would be to lecture cat owners about microchipping their cats and going to the shelter every day that their cat is lost. Which way do you think will be more successful? Some people argue that even a 2% or a 7% rate of reuniting cats with owners makes it worthwhile to impound cats. That argument completely overlooks the fact that cats who are impounded cannot go home on their own, and their owners cannot find them by looking for them in the neighborhood. When cats are impounded, we cut off their best opportunity by far to get home – letting them get back on their own – and instead substitute a method, impoundment, that endangers their lives. Shelters are stressful for cats, and stress predisposes cats to disease. Not to mention that the percentage of communities that are saving all savable cats is currently in single digits, so even if the cat does not get sick it still has the hurdle of whether it will be adopted. The two studies discussed above deal only with owned cats who are lost. There are a great many cats who go into animal shelters who do not have homes – they are either feral or they live in the community, possibly visiting many homes but not domiciled in any particular home. These “community cats” are not going to be reclaimed if they are impounded. Community cats who are healthy obviously are doing fine in their environment and do not need intervention by the shelter. Impoundment can only hurt them, unless the shelter can keep them healthy and find an adoptive home for them (or, in the case of a feral cat, a better situation than the one it was in). TNR and return-to-field are well established as the best solutions for most healthy community cats. Making return-to-field the default approach for healthy cats, whether they are community cats or lost pets, is the commonsense solution. This gets at another of the important differences between cats and dogs, which is that today there are almost no truly feral dogs in the great majority of communities in the United States. The dogs in animal shelters are, almost uniformly, dogs who have been socialized to people and have lived in homes or kennel situations before coming to the shelter. Cats have retained much more of their wild nature than dogs, and many cats who come into animal shelters have either lived outdoors all their lives or they have transitioned in and out of homes and are very capable of “living off the land.” Once again, basing our ideas of what is best for cats on our ideas of what is best for dogs does a disservice to cats. What about owner surrendered cats? When animal control stops taking in healthy cats, the shelter has more resources, and some of those resources can be used to expand pet retention programs. In cases where the owner has died or is unable to keep the cat any longer even with help, the shelter will be able to find a surrendered cat a home much more quickly because the number of incoming adult cats will be in better balance with demand by adopters. Keeping healthy cats out of the shelter not only helps the healthy cats, it also helps the ones who are not healthy. When a shelter has fewer cats it can devote more resources to each cat. If 50 cats who all need rehabilitation come in from a hoarding bust, for example, the shelter will be much better able to help those cats if it is not already full. Kitten season won’t be so overwhelming if foster homes are not already full of healthy cats. We hear a lot about improving live release rates to 95% and even higher. Having the shelter take in only the cats who really need to be there is one way to get to those higher live release rates. Although the idea of shelters not taking in healthy cats might sound radical to us today, it is not radical at all from a historical perspective. When animal shelters first started up in the 1800s before rabies vaccines had been developed, their primary purpose was to protect people from rabies by getting dogs off the streets. It was not known at that time that cats could transmit rabies too. Some animal shelters, like the ones in Boston and New York City, impounded cats starting around 1900, but it was very common throughout most of the 1900s for animal control units in the United States not to take in free-roaming cats. The idea that all shelters should routinely impound stray cats is of relatively recent origin, and it has not worked out well. So, to sum up, even to a layperson like me it seems overwhelmingly clear from this data that shelters should not impound cats unless (1) the cat is ill, injured, or otherwise in need of help, or (2) the shelter has the ability to house the cat in a stress-free environment and quickly adopt it out once the hold period expires. Makena Yarbrough, the innovative director of the Lynchburg Humane Society, the open-admission No Kill shelter serving Lynchburg, Virginia, wrote an article for her local newspaper that advises people what to do if they find a cat (although the title of the article refers to “feral” cats, it applies to all found cats). We have advice for people on what to do if they find a baby bird, and I’m sure that has saved many millions of birds from people’s well-intentioned mistakes. So I love this idea of telling people how best to help any free-roaming cats they come across. One important point is that since cats on average take longer than dogs to make their presence known after getting lost, lost and found services for cats need to emphasize that a cat that was just found today might have been lost a month or two ago, or even more. We know how to help cats. Now we just need to get the word out. For more information, check out the Million Cat Challenge and the many helpful resources that Maddie’s Fund has made available about community cats.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Logan County, in northeastern Colorado, has 23,000 people. The county seat, Sterling, has a population of 18,000 people. The Logan County Humane Society (LCHS) is a private non-profit that provides animal control and sheltering for the city and, informally, for the county. I called the shelter and was told that owner surrenders are accepted on a space available basis, with immediate intake if it’s an emergency situation. In 2012, LCHS reported an intake of 468 animals, with a live release rate of 91%. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are included with euthanasias, the live release rate was 87%. Although LCHS reported a live release rate above 90% for 2012, I’m listing the community as Worth Watching instead of in the right sidebar, because the shelter official I spoke with told me that LCHS might have a slightly lower live release rate in 2013. LCHS started a trap-neuter-return program in 2013, and the program started with a colony of cats that had more very sick members than most. Several of those cats were euthanized. I’ll check on Logan County again after the full 2013 numbers are in and perhaps will be able to add it to the right sidebar at that time.

[NOTE: The Worth Watching category lists communities whose animal shelter systems are doing substantially better than average, but have not reported a sustained (for one year or more) 90%+ live release rate. These communities are not counted in the running total in the blog’s subtitle. For more about the Worth Watching category, see the Worth Watching page link in the blog’s header.] Rabun County is located in the northeast corner of Georgia in a mountainous area. It is a very rural area, with a population of 16,000 people. The county seat and largest town is Clayton, with 2000 people. Up until 2012, Rabun County provided funding to the Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter for animal sheltering in the county. In July 2012, local news outlets published stories accusing the shelter director, Lowanda Kilby, of killing dogs after taking money from their owners on the promise that she would find new homes for them. The board fired Kilby and she was subsequently indicted on theft and other charges. The Boggs Mountain Humane Shelter board announced in August of 2012 that it could not continue to run the shelter due to a lack of donations. Shannon Conrad, a business owner in Rabun County, organized a new non-profit, Rabun Paws 4 Life (RP4L), and in October 2012 the county commissioners approved the new group to take over the shelter. RP4L had a grand opening on December 8, 2012. RP4L has been posting its statistics on its website every month since April 2013. (If the link to statistics on the RP4L website does not work for you, substitute the name of the month you want to see for “April” in the URL linked above.) The shelter reports a live release rate of over 90% in each month.

A group of organizations involved in animal sheltering, including large mainstream organizations such as HSUS, Maddie’s Fund, and the ASPCA, has just released a draft whitepaper with this stated purpose:  “to identify meaningful ways to realize California’s policy ‘that no adoptable [or treatable] animal should be euthanized if it can be adopted into a suitable home.'” The whitepaper makes 23 recommendations overall, several of which apply to intake policies. Notably, the whitepaper recommends that all shelters should establish an appointment system for owner surrenders (see recommendations 1 and 2), that shelters should use their discretion to decline to accept animals when full (see recommendation 3), and that shelters should not impound healthy cats unless the shelter is not euthanizing cats (see recommendation 13). The whitepaper sets forth the many advantages of appointment systems for owner surrenders, such as scheduling intake at a time when the shelter can best handle it and allowing the shelter to get information about the pet. It points out that intake can actually be reduced by an appointments policy, because an appointment provides an opportunity to refer the owner to resources that can help the owner retain the pet. The whitepaper recommends providing the owner with “an honest appraisal of the likely outcome for their pet if it enters the shelter (adoption vs. euthanasia).” The recommendation for an appointment policy includes two exceptions — if an animal is unhealthy or if there is “an urgent situation or risk to the animal or community” then no appointment should be required. The whitepaper further recommends: “Shelters should balance optional intake [] with their proven capacity to maintain humane conditions and positive outcomes for new intakes and the animals in their care.” In other words, if the shelter is full, the shelter should consider refusing optional admissions (such as healthy, non-emergency owner surrenders). In addition, the whitepaper recommends that shelters should not impound healthy cats, or if they are impounded, should return them to where they are found. The recommendation is crystal clear: “No healthy cat, regardless of temperament, should be admitted by an animal shelter if the admission of that cat would cause the death of that cat or another cat in the shelter.” The whitepaper is only a draft at this point, and it was developed to apply to the situation in California, but nevertheless the issuance of this report seems to me to be a watershed moment. In the past several years progressive shelters have been experimenting with creative new policies such as Help Desks, appointments for owner surrenders, and waiting lists to reduce the number of animals surrendered. These shelters have found that many owners would like to keep their pets and just need to be referred to help for behavior problems, vet bills, or finding pet-friendly housing. Shelters have found that if they are full and ask owners to wait to surrender their pet, most owners will agree because they want to help the shelter help their pet. These new recommendations codify what progressive shelters have been seeing for years — owners will behave responsibly when asked. We now have some of the largest animal welfare organizations in the country recognizing that these progressive owner-surrender policies work and recommending that they become standard practice. The recommendation that shelters not impound healthy cats, and return such cats when impounded (unless the shelter is in a position where it does not have to euthanize cats), is an even bigger groundbreaking advance. The report points out that outcomes are much worse in California shelters for cats as compared to dogs, and that shelters are not doing cats any favor when they impound them only to kill them. People expect cats to roam and, when a cat disappears, they often do not think to check the shelter until the hold period has expired and the cat has been killed. The whitepaper notes that return-to-owner rates for cats are extremely low — around 2% nationally. In fact, “cats are at least 13 times more likely to return home by means other than the shelter.” Up until now, relatively few of the shelters that I’ve researched have had a policy of not impounding community cats. Hopefully the release of this whitepaper will encourage more shelters to take this step. It’s exciting to think that, by this one change in policy, the number of cats killed in shelters each year could plummet. Another important step forward that could result from this whitepaper is that it may finally end the debate over “open admission.” There is a segment of the animal-shelter community that insists that shelters should accept every animal presented to them, upon demand, with no conditions and no questions asked. They define this as “open admission,” and they label all shelters who do not have this policy as “limited admission.” They blame “limited admission” shelters for the high kill rates found in many “open admission” shelters, on the theory that open admission shelters are overwhelmed with animals turned away by limited admission shelters. We now have this whitepaper from a large group of animal welfare agencies, including HSUS, the ASPCA, and Maddie’s Fund, that essentially says this idea is nonsense and that “open admission” is bad policy.

[NOTE: The 90% Reported category lists communities whose animal shelter systems report having been at a 90%+ live release rate for at least one year but who do not qualify for a listing in the right sidebar because they do not make their full statistics easily accessible online.] Kitsap County is in the state of Washington, right across Puget Sound from Seattle. It’s a large county, with a population of over 250,000 people. The county contains four cities — Bremerton (population of about 40,000), Bainbridge Island (23,000), Port Orchard (11,000), and Poulsbo (9000). Animal control and sheltering services are provided for Kitsap County by the Kitsap Humane Society (KHS), a non-profit. The shelter does animal control and sheltering for the county and the four cities. It has an animal control unit which handles stray intake, cruelty investigations, and responding to emergencies and disasters. The shelter takes in owner surrenders with a fee, which is reduced for low-income people, and it requires an appointment. If KHS decides during the surrender process that an animal is sick and medically untreatable, or dangerous, they ask the owner to request euthanasia. The shelter issues annual reports that include its statistics. The shelter does not list its full statistics online. According to its Annual Report for 2013, it rehomed 4197 animals for the year and had a 93% save rate. Stray cat intake decreased 37%, which they attribute to their community cat spay-neuter program. The 2012 annual report states that intake was 4703 animals and the live release rate was 94%.  In 2011, reported intake was 4993 with a live release rate of 95%. In 2010, it reported an intake of 4285 animals and a live release rate of 94%. Kitsap County, WA, was originally listed by this blog on June 26, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Austin is a city of 843,000 people located in the hill country of Texas. It is the capital of Texas and the county seat of Travis County, which has a total population of 1,024,000 people. The Austin Animal Center (AAC) is the municipal shelter for Austin and the unincorporated parts of Travis County. Field services are under the AAC Animal Services Department, although Travis County has an officer assigned to animal cruelty investigations. AAC describes its admission policy for owner surrenders as follows: “The center is an open-intake shelter serving [] Austin and Travis County. We accept any animal from our jurisdiction that needs shelter regardless of age, health, species, breed or behavior, and no matter whether it is a stray or an owned animal.”  People who want to surrender an animal are asked to attempt to rehome it themselves first, and if that is unsuccessful to make an appointment. Austin has a contractual public-private partnership with a private non-profit, Austin Pets Alive! (APA), which pulls a large number of animals from the city shelter. APA has a program called Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender to help people keep their pets or rehome their pets themselves. APA has a subsidiary, American Pets Alive!, that offers webinars and yearly conferences for shelter personnel and reform advocates. The Austin Humane Society (AHS), a private non-profit, takes in some owner surrenders. AHS also has a large TNR program for feral cats which has served more than 30,000 cats since it was started in 2007. In 2011 Austin became the largest city in the United States to report a 90% or greater live release rate, with AAC at a 91% live release rate for the year. APA collated the city shelter’s outcome reports for the fiscal year 2011-2012, and noted a 5% kill rate during that time. In 2013, the ACC started posting detailed statistics on its website every month for cat and dog intakes and outcomes, with reports analyzing and comparing the statistics. For the entire year, ACC took in 17,921 dogs and cats, which is an intake of about 17 cats and dogs per 1000 people in the ACC service area. (This number would be higher if intake by APA and AHS were counted.) The live release rate for the year was 93%. The 93% figure is unchanged if the 93 animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. AAC reported adopting out 7318 dogs and cats during the year and transferring 6272 dogs and cats to APA and to ACA’s rescue partners. Austin, Texas, was originally listed by this blog on April 22, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 calendar year statistics.

Montclair is a township of 38,000 people in New Jersey, about 12 miles from New York City. A private non-profit in Montclair, the Pound Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) of Montclair, ran the Montclair shelter until 2008, when the township took it over. The shelter is now called the Montclair Township Animal Shelter (MTAS). In addition to providing animal sheltering for Montclair, MTAS also provides sheltering for the nearby townships of Nutley (population 28,000), and Verona (13,000). MTAS provides animal control services for all three townships. MTAS has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats, a lost and found page, a volunteer program, and adoption promotions. I was told in a phonecall to the shelter that they accept owner surrenders from the three townships they serve on a space-available basis. The state of New Jersey collects statistics from animal shelters, and I requested a copy of the statistics that MTAS reported to the state for 2012. The shelter reported taking in 432 animals during the year. The live release rate was 91%.

We all know the importance of the live release rate in evaluating a shelter’s performance. There is another very important statistic that is often overlooked, however, and that is the average length of stay. A shelter that has an average length of stay of 10 days has twice as much effective shelter space as a shelter that has an average length of stay of 20 days. And the animals are twice as well off, because they are spending half the time in the shelter environment, which can be stressful unless the shelter is very well designed. It’s unfortunately rare to see the live release rate on a shelter’s website, but it’s almost unheard-of to see average length of stay. We need to make average length of stay part of the regular statistics that are kept and reported. This would allow us to identify shelters that are doing well on this metric and shelters that are doing poorly. It would allow us to recognize shelter directors who have been able to maintain a short length of stay along with a high live release rate, and to seek their advice on how other shelters can decrease length of stay. There are several factors that influence how long an animal stays in the shelter, including stray-hold time (which is generally mandated by law), medical protocols, behavior evaluation, and marketing. The best shelters manage to combine high live release rates with a short length of stay. Maddie’s Fund has been a leader in identifying factors that affect length of stay and devising protocols for reducing length of stay. For example, check out this webcast. One question is whether to include time in foster care as time in the shelter. I think foster care time should not be included because foster animals, although they may require some support from the shelter, are not taking up space and they are in a home environment. Plus, a foster home often turns into a permanent home. It’s hard to think of anything else that could improve shelter productivity as quickly as cutting down on average length of stay. I think average length of stay is worth more attention than it’s getting, but certainly a first step in raising the profile of this metric is to begin to routinely capture the data as part of shelter statistics.

Cedaredge (population 2300) and Orchard City (3100) are located in Delta County in western Colorado. Development in the county has been primarily along two river valleys, following the Surface Creek and North Fork rivers. Much of the rest of the county outside the river valleys is mountainous and very sparsely inhabited. Cedaredge and Orchard City are in the Surface Creek valley, which is served by the Surface Creek Shelter (SCS), located in Cedaredge. Cedaredge has its own animal control, which takes in dogs only. SCS is managed by a non-profit, the Friends of Cedaredge Animal Control (FCAC). I was told by a shelter official that FCAC has a memorandum of understanding to impound the dogs picked up by Cedaredge animal control. In addition to Cedaredge dogs, SCS takes in non-feral stray cats, stray dogs, and owner-surrendered dogs and cats from the residents of Surface Creek valley, including Orchard City. SCS charges a small fee for owner surrenders and usually has a waiting list, but they make exceptions to the waiting list when needed. There are rescues in the county who do TNR for feral cats. Statistics submitted to the Colorado Department of Agriculture by FCAC for 2012 show that SCS’s intake, including strays and owner surrenders, was 313 cats and dogs. The live release rate was 95% (94% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care were counted in with euthanasias). The North Fork area of Delta County has also been doing very well at animal sheltering, but their animal shelter system is undergoing some big changes. Therefore I’m not listing those communities at this time.

Lamar is a city of 7800 people located in southeastern Colorado. Lamar has its own animal control and a municipal shelter, the Lamar Animal Shelter (LAS). The Lamar animal control site states: “Since late 2008, early 2009, the Lamar Animal Shelter and the Code Enforcement Officers have striven to avoid euthanizing animals which come into the shelter.“ The Second Chance Animal Rescue Foundation (SCARF) is also located in Lamar. SCARF has no physical shelter, but houses animals in foster homes. A volunteer with SCARF told me that they rescue animals from a six-county area in southeastern Colorado. Both LAS and SCARF take in owner surrenders from Lamar on a space-available basis, and SCARF networks with other rescues for owner surrenders. LAS only takes in dogs, but SCARF takes in both dogs and cats. SCARF has a trap-neuter-return program for feral cats and two big spay-neuter clinics each year. Statistics from the Colorado Department of Agriculture show that LAS had an intake of 329 dogs in 2012, with a live release rate of 99.7%. Two dogs died or were lost in shelter care, and when they are included with euthanasias the live release rate for LAS was 99.0%. SCARF took in 385 cats and dogs, with a 100% live release rate. The Lamar Animal Sanctuary Team (LAST) also reports to the state. They took in 79 strays and owner surrenders in 2012, with a 100% live release rate.

Fairfax County, which is located in northern Virginia within commuting distance of Washington, DC, has 1,082,000 human residents. The public animal shelter in Fairfax County achieved a 90%+ live release rate in 2013, and Fairfax County is now the largest jurisdiction listed as a 90%+ community by this blog. The Fairfax County Animal Services Division (FCASD) is the municipal agency providing animal control and sheltering for the county. The Fairfax County Animal Shelter (FCAS) is part of FCASD. FCAS describes itself as an “open access” shelter for owner surrenders. In December of 2012 construction was completed on a shelter expansion that doubled FCAS’s square footage. FCAS got a new director in November 2012, Tawny Hammond. One of Hammond’s initiatives for the shelter in 2013 was to increase the number of pit bull adoptions. They succeeded in nearly doubling the number of pit bull adoptions. (Although the article in the link mentions restrictions on pit bull adoptions, Fairfax County does not have breed-specific legislation determining dangerousness). FCAS has also begun to include pit bulls in their transports into the shelter. FCAS has a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program that has been operating since 2008 and has provided TNR to over 3000 cats. The shelter does not count feral cats in its impounds or dispositions. Cats are considered free roaming in Fairfax County and animal control officers therefore do not impound healthy stray cats. There are several other organizations in the region that should be noted. The City of Fairfax, an independent city of 23,000 people, has its own animal shelter which operates independently of FCAS. Owner surrenders and a small number of  strays are taken in by the Humane Society of Fairfax County (HSFC). The Friends of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter raise funds for FCAS, volunteer at the shelter, and help with marketing. FCAS sent me their statistics for 2013. Their intake was 3747 animals (not counting animals presented for owner-requested euthanasia). This is an exceptionally low intake of 3.5 animals per 1000 people. There are several reasons for the county to have a low intake. One of the most obvious explanations is the county’s policy not to impound stray cats. Another reason is that HSFC takes in some owner surrenders and a few strays. FCAS has a robust pet retention program, which no doubt keeps many potential owner surrenders in their homes. Another possible explanation is the county’s very high median household income (third highest in the United States in 2012). Studies have shown that wealthier families are more likely to spay and neuter their pets. Whatever the full range of explanations might be, FCAS has achieved a very low intake. FCAS’s live release rate for 2013 was 92% (based on statistics sent to me by a shelter official). This includes 1120 animals returned to their owners, 1777 adoptions, and 376 transfers out. If owner-requested euthanasias are included in total euthanasias, the live release rate drops to 82% (see discussion below). The 31 animals who died in shelter care, if added to euthanasias, do not change the live release rate. HSFC has not made their statistics available yet for 2013, but in 2012 they reported a 99% live release rate to the state of Virginia with an intake of 551 animals. The City of Fairfax houses their shelter animals with a local veterinarian and does not report to the state. I noted above that FCAS’s live release rate for 2013 drops to 82% if owner-requested euthanasias are included in total euthanasias. This drop of 10 points is really an artifact of the shelter’s extremely low intake per 1000 people. The typical yearly intake for a shelter serving 1,082,000 people would be in the range of 16,000 to 32,000 animals. If FCAS took in that number of animals, then the 454 owner-requested euthanasias they had in 2013 would represent only about 2% of intake, a much more typical number. One thing we must keep in mind as shelters succeed in decreasing their intake is that it will cause changes in the statistics we generally see. I communicated at length with a shelter official about FCAS’s policy as to owner-requested euthanasia, and the policy is to restrict the practice to animals who would be euthanized for severe aggression or untreatable illness if they were impounded. The shelter official told me that in 2014 they are going to require that the shelter veterinarian examine every animal where euthanasia is requested by the owner and verify that euthanasia is required. Ultimately, FCAS officials would like to move this service out of the shelter and to a clinic setting where it could be provided for low-income people along with other essential veterinary services.

Otsego County is located in a rural area in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and has a population of about 23,000 people. Otsego County Animal Control is the municipal agency that provides animal control and sheltering services for Otsego County. The shelter is supported by the Friends for Life organization, which provides a range of services including Petfinder listings and foster homes. A new shelter building was completed in January 2012 after funds were approved by local taxpayers. I called the shelter to ask about the owner surrender policy, and was told that Otsego County residents do not have to make an appointment or pay a fee to surrender an animal. The shelter appreciates people calling ahead if they wish to surrender an animal, but does not require advance notice. The shelter takes in stray cats as well as dogs. I was told that the county does not have many feral cats, but if they get a call about feral cats they offer TNR. They also sometimes relocate cats through a barn cat program. In 1999, the county adopted a resolution supporting the concept that no adoptable companion animal should be killed. The resolution “was also founded on the belief that ONLY those animals received in a condition of terminal illness or mortal injury that are beyond clinical redemption and/or animals that are deemed aggressive and/or dangerous and cannot be successfully rehabilitated with available resources should be humanely destroyed.” Friends For Life reports that the shelter had a “reclaiming/adoption” rate of 99.5% in 1999 and 98.75% in 2000. I was not able to find statistics for the years from 2001 to 2006, although partial statistics from 2001 and 2002 indicate the shelter had a 90% or higher live release rate in those years. The Michigan state database shows that the shelter reported live release rates as follows from 2007 through 2012: 2007 — 91% 2008 — 95% 2009 —  96% 2010 —  95% 2011 —  95% 2012 — 95% (Note: The form that Otsego County Animal Control submitted to the state of Michigan for 2012 contains an error in that it states that 197 cats and dogs were sold for research. I spoke to a shelter official who verified that this was a mistake on the form, that no animals were sold for research, and that the 197 number was for returns-to-owner.)