The state of Colorado will be releasing its shelter statistics for 2014 in the next week or two. The statistics are collected pursuant to the state’s PACFA reporting rule and include all intake shelters and rescues. The live release rate for Colorado as a whole for 2013 was 89%. We may find out when the statistics for 2014 come out that Colorado is the first state ever to go over the 90% LRR mark for an entire year. Summary statistics will be posted on the state’s PACFA website for those interested, and I will be reporting on the full statistics on the blog. The Austin Pets Alive! facility was flooded in the recent torrential rains in Texas. A call to the public resulted in dozens of people lining up to provide temporary homes for the animals. Volunteers also cleaned up the water and unclogged drains, allowing the shelter to reopen in only two days. Due to all the help from the public, APA! was able to take in 67 dogs from another facility to keep them from being euthanized. Maddie’s Fund has a helpful article on Twitter effectiveness for animal shelters and rescue groups, and another article with encouraging news on ringworm. Also a ton of information on saving orphaned kittens. Saving Our Companion Animals, a group that started up last January in Fort Bend County, Texas, is doing pretty much everything they can think of to help the county animal services division. The list of stuff they are doing includes animal care and socialization, networking on social media, taking photographs, interfacing with rescues, running adoption events, and doing pet retention. They also have an emergency medical fund and they work on spay-neuter. Whew! They need financial support – sounds like possibly a great opportunity for a grant-giving organization. From Arlington, Texas we have fresh statistical evidence that charging a surrender fee does not lead to pet abandonment. A pilot program instituting a $25 surrender fee correlated with a drop in stray intake, a drop in owner surrender intake, and fewer calls reporting loose animals. Win, win, win. The funds collected will be used to pay for an animal cruelty investigator. More win. Other shelters that have kept statistics after instituting managed admission policies, including Lynchburg, Virginia and Douglas County, Nevada, have also found that asking owners to be more responsible correlates with positive changes. Animal Farm Foundation has a great article about how animal shelters can best approach the issue of breed identification. The SPCA of Martinsville-Henry County just did its largest single transport ever with 122 animals going to North Shore. The transport was aided by  the American Humane Association. Since the 1990s shelters in West Virginia have relied on transports to the northeast to save their animals. West Virginia shelters tend to be extremely underfunded and often do not receive much support from local populations, either in reducing intake or increasing placements. Fortunately, the state has a convenient transportation corridor in freeways running across Pennsylvania. West Virginia also has many shelter workers and volunteers who work very hard networking the animals, getting them vetted for transports, and often driving the first legs of transports. I’m seeing more and more stories like this one about cities and counties building good, modern shelters. Sometimes the stories are about a private SPCA or humane society that has the contract for animal sheltering and is fundraising for the new building. In many cases, though, the local government provides all or a good portion of the funds. The Niagara Falls City Council has approved a 1-year contract with the Niagara County SPCA. The Pet and Women Safety Act (PAWS Act) is pending federal legislation that addresses the common situation where a victim of domestic violence is reluctant to leave an abusive situation if it means leaving pets behind. The proposed law also addresses situations where an abuser stalks a victim’s pet. Not much is getting through Congress these days, but the numbers cited in the linked article indicate this is a much-needed measure. Another pending federal bill takes aim at animal cruelty. It’s encouraging to see these proposed bills at the federal level, since most animal issues are relegated to the state and local level. The Huntsville, Alabama animal shelter has higher-than-average intake at close to 6,000 animals per year. It has recently been using reduced-fee adoption events and extended hours to increase its live release rate, which was 92% for May. The shelter faces ongoing challenges, though, including high recent intakes and an influx of dogs from hoarding cases.

Niagara County (population 216,000) is in the far western part of New York state and includes the Niagara Falls area. The county is just north of Buffalo and has a border with Canada. The Niagara County SPCA (NCSPCA) is a non-profit located in Niagara Falls that serves the county and has a contract with the city of Niagara Falls (population 50,000) for animal sheltering. The NCSPCA also has agreements with the city of Lockport (population 21,000), and the towns of Wheatfield, Pendleton, and Cambria. The NCSPCA may refuse to renew its contract with the city of Niagara Falls after 2015 due to shelter space and budgetary constraints. The mayor of Niagara Falls has proposed building a new shelter. In January 2012, there was an uproar when a report alleged cruelty and high rates of euthanasia at NCSPCA, and a new board of directors took over in May 2012. The NCSPCA took steps to lower the kill rate, including changing its policy to no longer impound community cats and expanding its hours for adoption. In 2014 the shelter reported a 93% live release rate with an intake of 2574 cats and dogs. I am not listing the shelter as 90% Documented for two reasons. First, it sounds like the owner surrender process, which uses a waiting list, does not have an exception for cases where an owner must surrender an animal immediately. Second, the shelter has an unusually high rate of deaths in shelter care, and when deaths are counted with euthanasias the modified live release rate is only 86%. The high rate of deaths in shelter care may be due to overcrowding in the inadequate shelter building, which would presumably be ameliorated if the NCSPCA no longer serves Niagara Falls after this year or if Niagara Falls builds a new shelter and contracts with the NCSPCA to run it. Niagara County, New York, was originally listed by this blog on August 19, 2013. This post is a revision and update with 2014 statistics.

In my last blog post I discussed the fact that some parts of the country already have a shortage of shelter dogs, and observed that if trends continue we will have a nationwide shortage of shelter dogs in the not-too-distant future. What are the numbers to back that up? The HSUS estimates that we currently have an intake of about 7 million animals per year into shelters nationwide. Since the year 2000, shelter intake has been fairly stable in spite of a rapidly growing human population. Shelter outcomes include about 3.5 million adoptions and 2.7 million killings of healthy or treatable cats and dogs per year.  If we assume that half of the total 6.2 million adoption and euthanasia outcomes are dogs (in reality dogs are likely to be less than half, since the return-to-owner rate is much higher for dogs), that is about 3.1 million dogs per year who are in the shelter system and looking for homes. That means we would need a total of, at most, 3.1 million dog adoptions in 2015 to zero out shelter killing of healthy or treatable shelter dogs — i.e., to make demand meet supply. In 2013, Colorado shelters were able to adopt out 10.5 dogs per 1000 people. The United States currently has a population of about 320 million people. If Colorado’s adoption rate could be replicated in the United States as a whole in 2015, shelters would adopt out 3.4 million dogs. That is more than the supply of about 3.1 million healthy or treatable shelter dogs that will be available for adoption in 2015. Colorado had an overall live release rate of 89% in 2013. Right now Colorado is ahead of the pack with its live release rate, but the rest of the country is catching up at a very rapid clip. Big metro areas that are now over 80% include Seattle, Portsmouth, San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta, Richmond, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, and Fairfax County in Virginia. New York City is close to 80%. Big cities that are making rapid strides include San Antonio and Tampa. Entire states in the northeast are at No Kill, including New Hampshire and (by estimate) Maine and Vermont. No Kill is happening much faster than most people think, and I would be surprised if the majority of the United States population is not living in a No Kill city within 5 years. Given these statistics, it’s very reasonable to conclude that we will have a shelter dog shortage in the United States in 5 years or less. A comment to my previous post suggested that demographic changes in the United States, specifically the aging of the population, might reduce the number of future adoptive homes for shelter dogs. That is possible, but it seems unlikely. According to surveys done by the American Pet Products Association, the number of owned dogs has been trending up since 1988, the number of households owning dogs has gone up in all but one measurement period since 1988, and 35% of people who acquire a dog obtain it from a shelter, rescue group, or by adoption (not purchase) at a pet store venue. The Pew Research Center has projected that population growth in the United States will continue to be strong between now and 2050, with most of the growth coming from immigration. Although the population over age 65 will continue to grow, that segment will be only 19% of total population by 2050. I think the combination of the continued growth of the human population, combined with the continued popularity of dog ownership and adoption as a means of pet acquisition, means that the outlook for growth in the number of adoptions is bright. How bad will the shelter dog shortage be? The projected population of the United States for 2020 is 337 million. At a rate of 10.5 dog adoptions per 1000 people per year, that would mean 3,538,000 shelter dogs would be needed to supply the demand 5 years from now. While the demand for shelter dogs will be going up, though, supply will be going down. No Kill cities reduce intake with pet retention and spay-neuter programs, and further reduce the number of impounded animals needing adoption by increasing return-to-owner and return-to-field numbers dramatically. Effective pet retention programs can reduce owner surrenders by one-third, and effective return-to-owner programs can increase dog reclaims to 60% or more of strays. If No Kill continues to spread, it is not at all outside the bounds of possibility that the number of shelter dogs needing adoption will be less than 2 million in 2020. Indeed, the number could be even less if spay-neuter programs further decrease intake. At that point we would be short at least 1.5 million shelter dogs each year to meet the demand for adoption. We don’t want those 1.5 million dogs in 2020 to be acquired from commercial breeders, which is why we need to start thinking now about how to supply that demand. So what could go wrong? One way for this projection to fail would be if the No Kill momentum that is currently sweeping the country stalls. No Kill right now is a juggernaut, though, and I cannot imagine it stalling anytime soon. A more likely possible roadblock to continuing increases in pet ownership is the cost of pet maintenance. With incomes stagnant and veterinary costs seemingly increasing rapidly, it may be possible that some people who want to acquire pets in the future will decide not to due to costs. However, if costs do become a significant factor in the decision to acquire a pet it will hurt shelters less than commercial dog breeders. Adopting a dog from a shelter is much cheaper than buying one from a breeder, and No Kill shelters offer support systems for owners who are having trouble paying for pet food or veterinary care. A nationwide shortage of adoptable dogs is not something that animal shelters in the United States have ever faced. When people have thought about No Kill for dogs, they have thought about getting to a 90% or better live release rate. Now we need to start thinking beyond that to the entire market for dogs. What place do animal shelters want to have in the dog market of the future?

Best Friends Animal Society, which is located in Kanab, Utah, has a program to improve save rates at Utah shelters. In 2012, I listed 12 Utah communities in the right sidebar based on statistics sent to me by Best Friends. They recently sent me statistics for 2013, which confirmed that all 12 shelters again had live release rates above 90% and added 3 more 90%+ communities. In addition to those 15 communities this post contains an updated listing for Ivins, which was listed separately in 2012 based on statistics sent to me by the shelter director. I contacted the stray-intake shelters in each community to get information on their specific policies. Some of the shelters have a substantial rate of transfers, and I verified with each shelter that transfers are made only to organizations that have a live release rate of 90% or more. Most of these communities have small populations, which shows that even tiny jurisdictions can have successful shelters. The Ivins Animal Shelter and Adoption Center (IASAC) serves as the municipal shelter for the small town of Ivins, Utah (population about 7,000 people). The shelter was established in 2005 and became a non-profit organization in 2007. IASAC accepts owner surrenders from city residents and does not have an appointment requirement or fee. In 2006, the city council passed an ordinance stating a policy that no savable animals should be killed. That ordinance was renewed in 2010. The shelter’s live release rate in 2011 was 97%. In 2012 and 2013, the shelter reported a 99% live release rate. IASAC did not report any owner-requested euthanasias, and had two animals who died in shelter care in 2013. Kanab and Kane County. Kanab is the county seat for Kane County, which is located on Utah’s southern border. Kanab has a population of 3600, and the county’s population is 6200.  Kanab Animal Control, which also serves Kane County, accepts owner surrenders with a $75 fee. The shelter had a live release rate of 100% in 2012 and 2013. The shelter does not perform owner-requested euthanasia unless it is an emergency, and reported no deaths in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. Most of the shelter’s transfers go to Best Friends. Ephraim. The city of Ephraim has 6100 residents and is located in central Utah. Ephraim Animal Control reported a live release rate of 96% in 2012 and 94% in 2013. Owner surrenders are routed directly to rescues by an informal arrangement, with most of them going to Wag-n-Train rescue. The city reported that no animals died in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. Iron County. Iron County is located in southwest Utah and has 43,500 residents. The Iron County Animal Shelter (which is under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department) serves the unincorporated part of Iron County, including the townships of Kanarraville, Paragonah, Beryl, Modina, and Newcastle. The shelter accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction with a $100 fee. The shelter reported a 99% live release rate in 2012 and 100% in 2013. The shelter does not perform owner-requested euthanasia, and reported no deaths in shelter care in either 2012 or 2013. In the last two years all of the shelter’s transfers have gone to Best Friends except for one animal that went to a sanctuary. Enoch. The city of Enoch is located in southwest Utah in Iron County, and has 5800 residents. The Enoch Animal Shelter serves the city. It accepts owner surrenders with a $100 fee, although the fee is waived for highly adoptable animals. The shelter reported a live release rate of 96% in 2012 and 99% in 2013. The shelter does not do owner-requested euthanasia. If deaths in shelter care are counted in with euthanasias, the live release rate was 95% for 2012 and 98% for 2013. Parowan. The city of Parowan is located in southwest Utah in Iron County, and has 2800 residents. The Parowan Animal Shelter is managed by a committee set up by the mayor called the Parowan Animal Assistance League. The shelter accepts owner-surrendered dogs from its jurisdiction, but does not impound cats. The live release rate was 98% in 2012 and 100% in 2013. They refer owner requests for euthanasia to a local veterinarian, and had no deaths in shelter care in 2012 or 2013. South Ogden and Riverdale. South Ogden and Riverdale are cities in northern Utah. South Ogden has a population of 14,400 people and Riverdale has 7700 people. South Ogden Animal Services serves both cities. The shelter accepts owner surrenders on a space available basis. They reported a live release rate of 97% in 2012 and 99% in 2013. The live release rates do not change if animals who died in shelter care are counted as euthanasias. Heber City, Midway, and Wasatch County. Heber City is the county seat for Wasatch County, which is located in north central Utah. Midway is a city in Wasatch County. Heber City has a population of 11,400, Midway’s population is 3800, and the county’s population is 25,300. The Heber Valley Animal Control Shelter, which serves the two cities and the county, accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction. The shelter is operated by Paws For Life, which has a transport program. The shelter’s live release rate was 100% in both 2012 and 2013. It refers owner requests for euthanasia to a veterinarian. If animals who died in shelter care are counted with euthanasias, the live release rate was 98% in 2012 and 100% in 2013. Hurricane. The city of Hurricane is located near the southern border of Utah and has a population of 13,700 people. The Hurricane Animal Shelter accepts owner surrenders with a small fee. The shelter reported a live release rate of 94% in 2012 and 97% in 2013. They treat owner requests for euthanasia as owner surrenders, and include them in their euthanasia total. Their live release rates for 2012 and 2013 are unchanged if animals who died in shelter care are included with euthanasias. Morgan County. Morgan County is in northern Utah not far from Salt Lake City, and it has 9500 people. Morgan County Animal Control serves the county, and accepts owner surrenders from its residents without conditions. The shelter reported a 92% live release rate in 2013. It does not do owner-requested euthanasia, and reported no deaths in shelter care in 2013. Grantsville. Grantsville is a city of 9100 people in northern Utah west of Salt Lake City. Grantsville Animal Control is a unit within the police department. It accepts owner surrenders from city residents without conditions. The city reported a 97% live release rate in 2013. It does not do owner-requested euthanasia. If animals who died in shelter care are included in euthanasias, the live release rate for 2013 was 96%. Roosevelt is a city of 6,000 people in northeastern Utah. The Roosevelt Animal Shelter (RAS) is run by the city. It accepts owner surrenders from the city and from Duchesne County with no conditions, although they ask for a voluntary donation. The shelter took in 1276 animals in 2013, and had a 91% live release rate. The live release rate was 90% if animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted with euthanasias. RCAS does not offer owner-requested euthanasia. The shelter transfers most of its intake to rescues, including Furever Buddies Dog Rescue and Ashley Valley Community Cats, which does TNR. These Utah cities and counties are counted in the Running Totals as 90%+ communities.

As we’re waiting for the 2013 end-of-year statistics to start coming out, I thought this might be a good time to discuss a very interesting statistical study done by Makena Yarbrough, the director of the Lynchburg Humane Society in Lynchburg, Virginia. The study looked at her shelter’s experience with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) over several years. Yarbrough even included a “control” in the study in the form of statistics from the city of Danville, which is located south of Lynchburg along the Virginia-North Carolina border. Yarbrough’s blog post reporting on the study, linked here, is well worth reading. The study looked at the statistics for Lynchburg and Danville for cat intake and disposition for every year from 2005 to 2012. Lynchburg has a program that offers free spay/neuter and rabies shots to feral and stray cats. Danville impounds cats, but has no TNR program. The graph of outcomes in the two shelters shows a stunning difference. The Danville shelter’s live release rate for cats ranges from 3% to 10% (not a typo) for the years from 2005 to 2012, and the two lowest years are 2011 and 2012, which were both at 3%. Lynchburg’s worst year, at a 21% live release rate for cats in 2005, was never as bad as Danville but the really interesting thing is what happened in 2009, when the Lynchburg shelter began promoting TNR. The live release rate for cats, which had been creeping up slowly before 2009, took a big jump from 36% to 51%. Then in 2010 it took an even bigger jump to 75%. In 2011 and  2012 Lynchburg had an 85% and 81% live release rate for cats, compared to Danville’s 3% in each of those years. Total intake of cats in Lynchburg dropped from 1354 in 2008, the year before the shelter started promoting TNR, to 949 in 2012, whereas total intake of cats in Danville from 2008 to 2012 stayed fairly steady at 3622 in 2008 and 3557 in 2012. Not all of Lynchburg’s increase in live release rates was due to their drop in cat intake, because the number of cat adoptions went up substantially from 2005 to 2012, but the drop of about 400 cats per year in intake must have contributed greatly to the improved live release rate. As for 2013, Yarbrough said in August “so far this year we have seen an even bigger decrease in cats/kittens to the point where kitten season seemed very very mild.  And we were wondering if we even had one.” She points out that since TNR causes the number of free-roaming cats to decrease, bird conservationists and people who are concerned about rabies should be supporting TNR instead of opposing it. This isn’t the first time that Yarbrough has published an interesting statistical study. I’ve written previously about her study on the effects of Lynchburg’s appointment policy for owner surrenders. Statistical studies like these are so helpful for shelter reform advocacy efforts. I know that shelter directors are very busy people, but it would be nice to see more such studies, and I’d like to thank Makena Yarbrough for taking the time to analyze and write about her shelter’s experiences.

Flathead County is located in the northwest part of Montana, along the Canadian border. Its population is about 91,000 people. The county has a municipal shelter, the Flathead County Animal Shelter, which houses animals and adopts them out, and an animal control division that works with the shelter and provides animal control throughout the county. I was told in a telephone conversation with a shelter representative that the shelter also receives strays from the cities of Kalispell (population 20,000), Whitefish (6400), and Columbia Falls (4700). The shelter accepts owner surrenders with a $20 fee, but reserves the right to decline surrenders when full. The shelter used to be high-kill, but has steadily improved over the years. The shelter’s director, Cliff Bennett, attributes their success to several factors, including foster, volunteer, marketing, and adoption programs as well as spay-neuter efforts and outreach to rescues. A non-profit in Kalispell, Flathead Shelter Friends, provides help and support to the shelter. An article posted on Petfinder describes many of the innovations the shelter has made, including a strong return to owner initiative and many projects to make the animals more comfortable while in the shelter. It appears that the shelter’s live release rate has been above 90% since 2010. According to a news report, the county had a 9% euthanasia rate in 2010 with an intake of 2200 cats and dogs. And the Flathead Shelter Friends reported, on a page that has since been updated, that the county had a live release rate of 92% in 2011. The shelter’s 2012 statistics are posted on its website and show a 97% live release rate for the year, with an intake of 1950 cats and dogs. In 2013, the shelter had a live release rate of 98%, with an intake of 1764 cats and dogs. If animals who died or were lost in shelter care are counted as part of the euthanasia total, the live release rate was 95% in 2012 and 97% in 2013. Flathead County, Montana, was originally listed by this blog on April 24, 2013, based on its 2012 statistics. This post is a revision and update with 2013 statistics.

Henderson County is in a rural area in the western part of Kentucky. The county contains the eponymous city of Henderson, which has a population of about 28,000. The combined population of city and county is about 46,000. The Ohio River separates the county from Evansville, Indiana, a city of about 117,000 people. The Humane Society of Henderson County (HSHC) is a private non-profit that has the animal control and sheltering contract for both the city of Henderson and Henderson County. The shelter also accepts owner surrenders from its jurisdiction, with no conditions. In a recent article, a reporter interviewed Josh Cromer, who was hired as the director of the shelter on October 3, 2011. Cromer discussed his first year with the shelter, and stated that the euthanasia rate for the first nine months of 2012 was only 5%, compared to 40-45% in previous years. Cromer stated that his three greatest accomplishments during the year were getting a good team together, reducing the euthanasia rate, and creating a cage-free area for cats. He expressed disappointment at not being able to attract as many volunteers as he wanted, and listed several improvements to the physical plant that are planned or in progress. The shelter posts statistics on its home page, listing its statistics through September 22, 2012 as intake = 1247, return to owner = 80, adoption and transfer = 998, and euthanasia = 65. This is a 94% live release rate under the method used by this blog. Last year the county floated a plan to take over animal control and build a pound. Some people feared this would lead to the county simply killing the animals that were impounded in the new facility. Fortunately, the proposal for the new pound has been tabled, and there do not appear to be any plans at this time to bring it up again. Henderson County, KY, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.

The Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter (WCRAS), located in Texas just north of Austin, provides animal sheltering services for Williamson County (population 423,000) and numerous communities within the county. WCRAS has contracts with four of the communities: Round Rock (population 100,000), Cedar Park (population 54,000), Leander, (population 27,000), and Hutto (population 15,000). In addition to taking in strays picked up by animal control, the shelter accepts owner surrenders during its business hours, with a small fee. WCRAS provides a link on its home page to its statistics for the calendar year and for its fiscal-year annual reports going back to 2009-2010. The shelter’s statistics for the calendar year of 2012 show a total intake of 7488 cats and dogs. The live release rate for the year was 94%. I’m not able to calculate a modified live release rate (including animals who died in shelter care in the euthanasia total) because the statistics provided by WCRAS include animals who were dead on arrival in the number who died in shelter care. However, the modified live release rate is at least 90%, because the rate calculated with the DOA’s included was 90%. The shelter’s Annual Report for the fiscal year 2011-2012 shows that intake for the 2011-2012 fiscal year was the highest in the last 5 fiscal years. The shelter reduced its number of euthanasias in spite of increased intake. The Annual Report states that the shelter has 335 foster homes who took in 1764 fosters during the fiscal year (page 9), and volunteers who logged 9166 hours (page 11). One interesting statistic from the Annual Report is the average length of stay for animals in the WCRAS shelter. Cats on average stayed 15 days, and dogs on average stayed 11 days. Average length of stay is a very important criterion in measuring shelter performance, but it is one that we rarely see in a shelter’s published statistics.

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.

One of the first things that new students learn about in law school is the famous 1803 Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison, which was decided when our country was still new. That was an exciting time, because the fundamentals of how our country was going to operate were being created and put into place. Marbury v. Madison was important because it held that it was the duty of the courts to “say what the law is.” From that day forward, the courts have been the final word in interpreting the law. Who has the final word in saying what No Kill is? Who speaks for No Kill? No Kill is very different from the law. While the law is a set of rules, No Kill is a process. While the law must treat each citizen equally, No Kill must be applied in a wide variety of different circumstances. And while the law is designed to provide a stable framework that gives society a certain consistency and predictability, No Kill is constantly changing as new techniques evolve and progress is made. Although the concept of a lawgiver from on high does not fit very well with the ethos of No Kill, there is another great American institution that fits No Kill perfectly – the public square. The public square in the early days of the United States was a literal place in the center of town where people would gather to debate the issues affecting them and decide what to do about those issues. It was quintessential democracy, and it had all the strong points and the discomforts of pure democracy. There were lots of different viewpoints, lots of creativity, and lots of conflict. It was not a particularly comfortable process, but out of it arose the wisdom of the people. The miracle of democracy is that you can take a bunch of average people, put them together, give them a problem to solve or an issue to decide, and more times than not they will come up with a pretty good solution. The process of the public square is not perfect, because it can be demagogued or highjacked. Over the years our constitution has been amended and interpreted to include protections for small, disfavored groups, so that we can be sure that everyone has a voice in the public square. Today the “public square” is more often metaphorical than real, as we carry on our debates in print, on television, and by social media. Richard Avanzino, the person who created the idea of No Kill communities at the San Francisco SPCA in the years from 1979 to 1994, would, I think, agree with the idea of the American people as the voice of No Kill. Avanzino believes that each person’s contribution, whether it be fostering an occasional pet or starting a rescue or running a No Kill city or running an advocacy organization, is an important part of No Kill. He told me that he does not believe that No Kill is a cookbook, and that he would never presume to tell a community how they should go about No Kill or what would work for them. He is a fan of bottom-up thinking, not top-down. In fact, what we think of today as the core components of the San Francisco approach to No Kill morphed over time, developing organically from the experience and creativity of volunteers and staff. The offsite adoption program, which dates back to 1980, started when volunteers decided to take shelter pets downtown to their work places at lunch hour so their fellow workers could see them. That worked well and the initiative grew. Eventually the SPCA made offsite adoptions a formal part of operations, and the program developed to the point of having several sites around town with dedicated vans for setting up in the morning, delivering more animals during the day, and breaking down the sites at night. It all started with the ideas of volunteers. Today I frequently see people make statements about what “No Kill” means, or how a shelter or community should get to No Kill – or an accusation that some shelter or community is not really No Kill. I see people proposing that new No Kill advocates should be instructed in a certain way – told that they have to use a cookbook, or that the traditional shelter establishment is full of uncaring people and it is always a waste of time to work with them. I see people issuing edicts about the “right” way to calculate live release rates. Anyone who has a different idea on any of these points is called an enemy of No Kill, or worse. We need to counter these attempts to shut down dialogue. We need to make a conscious effort to ensure that No Kill sticks with its roots as a democratic creation – a bottom up process based on creativity, open-mindedness, and a belief in the fundamental goodness of humanity. No one individual or group has the right to define No Kill or to speak for No Kill. Instead, we should all have the right to be heard and speak our minds without fear of being insulted or ridiculed. Out of that process will emerge a consensus that shows the way forward in each time and place. That has historically been the strength of the No Kill movement. We got where we are today by creativity and inclusiveness, not by following rules or shutting people out. We must keep our public square open and free, and resist those who want their voices to be the only ones heard.

The Million Cat Challenge was launched on December 10, 2014. Remember that date, because this is going to be big. As Peter Wolf said in his blog about it, the launch “felt like something historic – as if we’ve entered into a new era of animal sheltering where cats are concerned.” I could not agree more. If the Million Cat Challenge initiatives are fully implemented, they will stop shelter killing of healthy and treatable cats. And the initiatives are not difficult, nor do they require any special talents on the part of shelter leadership. Three reasons why the Million Cat Challenge will be so important: the ideas behind it are great, the people behind it are wonderful advocates, and just about every important organizational player in animal sheltering in the United States today has signed on to it. The organizations that are supporting the Million Cat Challenge include Maddie’s Fund, Best Friends, HSUS, ASPCA, Alley Cat Allies, PetSmart Charities, NACA, NFHS, the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, and the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. Having the agreement of all of these organizations is crucial, because it will give local shelters with conservative directors the confidence that they need to adopt the new ideas. The designers of the Challenge want every municipal shelter in the country to sign on. The support of almost all of the important national organizations should help make that possible. And confidence will be necessary, because the ideas proposed by the Challenge are revolutionary. The Five Key Initiatives add up to nothing less than a complete overhaul of how cat sheltering is done in the United States. Two of the initiatives, alternatives to intake and removing barriers to adoption, are elaborations on ideas that are already fairly standard in No Kill programs. Another initiative, managed admission, has been around for a few years with great results, but is still somewhat controversial. The other two components of the Five Key Initiatives are completely new – using return-to-field for healthy community cats, and insuring that cat impoundment and length of stay are balanced with shelter capacity. Surprisingly, even though these programs are unconventional, shelters are jumping aboard the bandwagon in big numbers. Almost every shelter I research these days that is making any effort at all to increase live releases for cats is using at least one of the 5 key initiatives. And that includes shelters that no one would think of as cutting edge. It’s almost as though everyone has just been waiting for permission to change the way they handle cats. In addition to offering support from virtually everyone who is anyone in sheltering at the national level, the Challenge makes it as easy and inviting as possible for shelters to participate. Shelters can choose to adopt one of the initiatives or all of them. The Challenge asks each shelter to provide only 3 numbers each year, from 2014 through 2018, as well as the same 3 numbers for the baseline year of 2012. The three numbers are cat intake, cat euthanasia, and cat live releases for each year. Shelters report only once per year, with their estimate for the upcoming year and their actual data for the previous year. What could be easier? Although the goal of the Challenge is to save 1 million cats over the 5-year period, the potential is even greater. No one knows exactly how many cats are being killed by shelters every year currently, but estimates are around 2 million per year. If every shelter adopted all five of the initiatives, that number could fall to well under 500,000, since only unhealthy and untreatable cats would be euthanized. Thus, the upside potential of the Challenge is that it could save over 1.5 million cats every year. Any shelter can participate, even if it is very small or is already No Kill. Existing organizations that support local shelters, such as TNR groups, can get their numbers counted by encouraging their shelters to sign on to the Challenge. The proposals in the Challenge ask shelters to recognize something that is intuitively obvious but has never been fully acknowledged by animal shelters in the United States – cats are different from dogs. Animal shelters originally started as dog pounds, and the methods for impounding and releasing cats were simply borrowed from what had always been done for dogs. The average return-to-owner rate for cats is about 2%, and even the best shelters generally do not even hit double digits. For decades people have simply shaken their heads over the pitiful return-to-owner rates for cats, while shelters continued to kill them. One of the saddest parts of my job in researching shelters is to see those tiny numbers for return-to-owner for cats, even in shelters that are trying hard and are very successful at return-to-owner for dogs. The shelter-capacity and return-to-field initiatives that are part of the Challenge will ensure that far more of those cats find their way back home. The Challenge is the joint project of two well-known shelter medicine specialists and their organizations – Dr. Kate Hurley of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and Dr. Julie Levy of the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. For some background on how Dr. Hurley arrived at her ideas about how shelters should handle cats, this article from a 2013 issue of Animal Sheltering magazine is a good read. My favorite quote from the article – “we can just stop euthanizing healthy cats.” And then Dr. Hurley explains in detail why this is not a crazy idea. The Challenge website has a lot of information on how to get started. In addition, Maddie’s Fund is presenting a 90-minute free webcast and Q&A on the Challenge on January 15, 2015. Dr. Levy has emphasized that resources are being made available to allow participants to network with and support each other, and that the Challenge is designed as a collaborative effort.

Seattle, with over 600,000 residents, is the largest city in the Pacific northwest, and ranks 22nd among US cities in population size. The Seattle city government provides animal control and sheltering for the city through the Seattle Animal Shelter (SAS). The shelter accepts owner surrenders from any person within its jurisdiction, and from outside the jurisdiction when possible. In addition to the city shelter, Seattle has the Humane Society for Seattle/King County (HSSKC), a private organization that also accepts owner surrenders. The humane society requires an appointment for owner surrenders. The city shelter and the humane society report their statistics as a coalition to Maddie’s Fund. The most recent available online report for the coalition is for 2010, and it shows a 91% live release rate for the coalition as a whole. HSSKC is at 94% and SAS is at 85%. A couple of notes about the statistics. First, there may be some overlap in intra-community transfers, as it is not clear that all of these were separated out. Second, there were 645 owner-requested euthanasias out of a total intake of 9921 animals. HSSKC offers owner-requested euthanasia for animals who are “seriously ill or suffering.” A modified live release rate for the coalition with owner-requested euthanasia and died/lost in shelter care counted in with euthanasia is 84%. It is problematic to use the figure for owner-requested euthanasia, however, since HSSKC may be receiving such requests from the larger metropolitan population of 3.5 million people. Seattle, WA, is counted in the Running Totals as a 90%+ community.