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How Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release Works in One Florida Community

Arden Moore
His official title is Community Outreach TNVR Coordinator, but most of the time, Paul Bates feels like a mediator, problem solver, and teacher. That suits him just fine.

Bates leads the team at Peggy Adams Rescue League in West Palm Beach, Florida. The organization works closely with shelter volunteers, cat rescue groups, and cat-caring neighbors to ensure free-roaming cats in Palm Beach County are properly vaccinated, sterilized, and fed.

It is estimated that more than 200,000 cats live on the streets in Palm Beach County. Once called feral cats, they are now identified as community cats.

“These are cats who live outside, who do not belong to anybody, and who are not adoptable because they are not socialized with people,” says Bates. “They certainly do not belong in animal shelters where they are often euthanized. Our job is to work with community cat advocates to make sure these community cats are neutered/spayed, vaccinated, and returned to their outdoor homes.”

On the Case

It’s a tall order, but Bates is up for the challenge. He is a Fear Free Pets Shelter Course graduate who works to educate people about the mindset of community cats and safe ways to trap, vaccinate, spay/neuter, and return these cats back to their colonies without stressing them or getting injured.

His shelter also helped get a county-wide law adopted that requires these cats to be sterilized, vaccinated, implanted with a microchip, have left ears clipped to identify these actions and then released to the same area where found.

Bates makes daytime and night-time visits to community cat sites in neighborhoods, car dealership parking lots, and alleys behind restaurants. He gives talks to volunteers and shares tips and resources on two key Facebook pages: Project CatSnip and Community Cats of the Palm Beaches. Project CatSnip is a program of the Peggy Adams Rescue League that provides free TNVR through grant funding and conducts free humane trapping classes.

Safety 101

Even though many of these cats appear friendly and may even allow a trusted person who feeds them to pet them, they are still capable of lashing out if they feel threatened.

“If you see a stray, friendly cat, do not attempt to pick up the cat and put him in a carrier because chances are that you will be bit or scratched,” he cautions. “Scooping up a cat in your arms can make them go into panic mode. The nails come out, and the teeth are ready to bite. It is far safer to set up humane traps to get them in so we can give them vaccinations and spay/neuter them and return them to their cat colony.”

To reduce fear or anxiety in the cat during transport, Bates recommends placing bed linens made of breathable fabric over the trap to help the cat settle down.

“A cat in an uncovered trap is apt to freak out and bounce off the sides of the cage,” he says. “Covered humane traps look like safe spots to a cat. Avoid using heavy blankets, thick towels or quilts because a cat inside could overheat due to the lack of air flow. And, he could also have to inhale the strong ammonia smell if he urinated or defecated during transport.”

To reduce fleas and ticks among these community cats, Bates recommends mixing food-grade diatomaceous earth powder with catnip and allowing the free-roaming cats to roll in it. This powder is safe for pets and people, but destroys exoskeletons in these parasites.

Tips for Success

Other insights shared by Bates:

Community cats should not be relocated. Many risk injury or death from vehicles or predators in their determination to travel miles to return to their colonies.
Attempts to completely remove a cat colony will only result in another cat colony moving in and producing kittens, a phenomenon known as the vacuum effect.
The best way to lure intact community cats into humane traps is to place traps where cats gather to eat and allow a few days for the cats to get used to them. Then create a trail of food leading into the traps and placing the highest-quality smelly food (to these cats, that is usually sardines or tuna or even Kentucky Fried Chicken) in the middle of the traps.
If you find a homeless cat whose left ear is notched, do not bring him to a shelter unless he is injured or ill. This is the universal sign that he is a community cat who has been neutered.
Do not leave bowls of food out; they attract raccoons and other wildlife. Set up specific feeding times and remove bowls within an hour.

Numbers indicate that this multi-approach effort is working. Before the TNVR program began in 2009, Palm Beach County shelters took in 19,000 homeless cats with more than 14,000 cats euthanized in 2008. That number has been cut to fewer than 2,000 cats euthanized this year in county shelters.

“It really takes a village to help these cats,” says Bates. “We have a passionate group of board members, staff, volunteers, and people in neighborhoods all doing their part to help feed and keep these cats healthy.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Arden Moore is The Pet Health and Safety Coach. She is a best-selling author, radio show host, in-demand speaker and master certified pet first aid/CPR instructor who travels the country teaching with Pet Safety Dog Kona and Pet Safety Cat Casey. Learn more at www.ardenmoore.com and www.facebook.com/ardenmoore.

Feline Needs in Confinement: A Tale of Two Kinds of Cats

Linda Lombardi
Spending extended time in a shelter or veterinary hospital is stressful for cats. Judith Stella researches how they respond to their environments and what we can do to make life easier for them.

“The quality of the environment is going to impact their welfare, whether in homes, shelters, or research facilities,” she says. “So I’m interested in, how do we optimize that environment to minimize distress, particularly when they are singly housed in cages?”

In a series of studies, she has looked at effects of various environmental factors and, more recently, how cats of different personality types respond. The results provide food for thought about what we should provide for cats who must spend time in confinement.

Surroundings

One study looked at the properties of the room in general, comparing the importance of that environment to what was provided in the cat’s cage. One type of room, which she called “managed,” was quiet, with a consistent caretaker who fed, watered, and cleaned cages at the same time every day. The “unmanaged” room tried to mimic the typical shelter or vet hospital. “We played recordings of dogs barking, had loud music playing, people walking in and out, and we turned lights on and off when we walked in and out of the room.”

It’s not surprising that cats preferred the quiet room, but Stella was surprised to find that the room was even more important to them than the environment in their cage. “In the managed room they did better regardless of whether they had an enriched cage or not,” she says. “Even in the absence of an enriched cage, they still tended to adapt more quickly than the cats in the unmanaged room.”

Personality Variances

Using what that work determined was the optimal environment for the room, the current study then looked at individual differences. Fifty-five cats were housed for three days with enriched cages and a predictable husbandry schedule. Behavior was recorded hourly, as well as the cat’s response to the approach of a familiar and unfamiliar person at the end of the third day.

Owners completed a questionnaire about their cats’ personality traits, and an analysis found that the cats fell into two groups. The 22 cats in Cluster 1 were described in terms such as shy, mellow, and timid; the 33 in Cluster 2 were active, curious, and easygoing. It turned out that the cats’ use of the resources in their cage depended on which cluster they were in. Cats in Cluster 1 tended to be alert and tense and used the hide boxes; cats in Cluster 2 were more relaxed and spent much of the time on the perch.

The results of the familiar/unfamiliar person test also differed by cluster. Owners described cats in Cluster 2 as sociable and cats in Cluster 1 as timid with strangers but friendly with familiar people. Cats in Cluster 1 took a longer time to investigate a new person but were just as social with a familiar person as Cluster 2 cats.

Cats Love Consistency

The “familiar” person was the one who had been taking care of them over the three-day period, whom they hadn’t known previously. This shows that the cats developed something of a relationship in that short period of time and indicates the importance for at least some cats of trying to keep down the number of people they’re exposed to.

“For those cats that are more stressed by unfamiliar people, having a consistent person take care of them every day will help them adjust a little more quickly,” Stella says. In most institutional settings it can’t be the same person every day, but in a shelter, two caretakers per cat instead of many could help. In a hospital, cats might benefit from having the same tech do all the treatments over the course of a day.

The researchers also looked at fecal glucocorticoid metabolites in an attempt to use a physical measure of stress that could be collected non-invasively, but results were not significant. Stella thinks this is partly because the time period was too short, but also because most cats did not produce a sample every day.

“This research aligns with previous work that demonstrated cats display individual variation in their behavior,” says Kristyn Vitale of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab at Oregon State University. “This can be applied by any person who owns or works with cats. It is important to recognize some cats will be more stressed in certain situations than other cats, so we should make management and housing decisions based on each cat’s behavior and stress level. Through a consideration of cat individuality, we can work toward forming healthier cat-human relationships and increase the welfare of cats.”

Stella says that since we won’t always know the cat’s personality type and coping style, for example when admitting them to a hospital or shelter, we can make the environment work for the largest number of cats by being aware of these different needs.

“The cats are going to need different resources, or will use the resources provided to them differently, depending on those temperament traits. For some cats, having a hiding box is going to be imperative for them to be able to cope; for others, maybe not, but providing it for everybody will make sure we cover the ones that really need it,” she says. “Give them those resources in the cage, make sure we keep the room quiet, minimize traffic, have consistent people working as caretakers as much as possible, and it will give the greatest number of cats the best opportunity to cope and adapt to the environment.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Linda Lombardi writes about the animals who share our planet and our homes for magazines including The Bark, websites including National Geographic and Mongabay.com, and for the Associated Press. Her most recent book, co-authored with Deirdre Franklin, is The Pit Bull Life: A Dog Lover’s Companion.

Upping Adoptions for Black Cats and Dogs in Shelters

Arden MooreWhile there are no national statistics available on the rate of adoption of black pets versus ones with light-colored coats, shelter experts say that creative, cost-saving strategies are educating people and drawing attention to black cats and dogs to help them land in loving homes. Here’s how they’re doing it.

But first, let’s debunk a few myths about black dogs and cats. For starters, there is no scientific basis that black cats bring bad luck. Or that black dogs seem to be more at risk for health issues.

Okay, it may be trickier to take a selfie with a black dog than one with a red-and-white coat, but it can be done.

One common belief is that dark-colored dogs and cats have a more difficult time finding homes. That may or may not be true.

“In shelters, we do tend to see black dogs and cats get overlooked by potential adopters,” says Gary Weitzman, DVM, veterinarian and president/CEO of the San Diego Humane Society. “But it may not be as significant as we once thought. There are some studies that show that there are simply more black pets because black coloration is a dominant gene. Sure, black pets can be undeservedly overlooked by adopters, but the good news is that there are wonderful people who will only adopt black pets knowing this.”

Get Them Seen

At the San Diego Humane Society’s shelters located throughout this Southern California county, the staff hosts special adoption promotions for black cats and dogs. They also reach out on social media and to the news media during such holidays as Black Friday, Black Cat Awareness Day and Black Dog Awareness Day.

The shelter also recruits professional photographers who volunteer their time and talents to photograph all their adoptable animals, with special attention given to showcase those sporting black coats.

San Diego has also lifted its policy of not allowing people to adopt black cats during the weeks leading up to Halloween. Cats of all colors are up for adoption year-round.

“The fear was that these cats would be used in satanic rituals, which is a total myth,” says Dr. Weitzman. “The results? Most of the cats were euthanized due to shelter overcrowding. Preventing hundreds of animals from finding good homes by putting up unnecessary and ineffective barriers isn’t the answer to protecting them.”

In St. Louis, the Humane Society of Missouri found a clever way to showcase black dogs.

“In 2016, we had a large number of black dogs here, so we developed the Black Dog Club,” says shelter animal behavior manager Linda Campbell, RVT, CPDT-KA, who is one of only 16 veterinary technician behavior specialists. “Everyone who adopted a black dog got a Black Dog Club t-shirt and every six months or so, we would host a get-together with Black Dog Club adopters at a park we have across the street from our shelter. Now, we no longer have a problem adopting out black dogs.”

As for black cats, Campbell says giving clever names to adoption campaigns works. The shelter has been successful with its “Desperate House Cats Looking for Homes” (a play on the popular television shows named Desperate Housewives) and “Pick Your Price” (a play on long-running game show The Price Is Right). Adopters often receive a free bag of cat food and qualify for a free veterinary visit. Black kittens and cats up for adoption often sport pastel-colored collars to help them stand out.

“Our volunteers are trained in our feline enrichment program,” says Campbell. “These volunteers interactive with cats and kittens in our get-acquainted rooms with battery-operated toy bugs for cats to chase. For our shy or reserved cats, we spend time helping them relax in their kennels by taking the stick end of a wand toy and wiggling it under newspaper. We have found that they are not as afraid of seeing the stick moving as the other end of the wand toy. And, we do a lot of brushing for the cats. It has helped bring out the confidence and the personalities of our cats.”

Color Coded

The walls in the dog kennels have been lightened in color to help black dogs show up better. And, to encourage these dogs to be more interactive with potential adopters, the staff has installed Snack Tracks with a how-to sign posted on each kennel that sports glass fronts, not open cage bars.

“We take a colorful PVC pipe and install it in front of the kennel and into the cage,” explains Campbell. “There is a cup with dog food next to it. Anyone passing by can drop kibble into the tube to fall into the dog’s food bowl. So, instead of the dog jumping, they stand and look at the potential adopter and then look at the bottom of the PVC pipe. Kids especially love dropping treats in. This has really helped our adoption rates.”

Equally effective has been working with photographers who know how to use proper lighting and welcoming settings to take photos of black cats and black dogs up for adoption.

“A lot of these animals have wonderful personalities and we make sure to tell their stories so that when people come into our shelter, it is the personality of that animal – not the color of his coat – that matters most to them.”

Move Along

In the Minneapolis area, the Animal Humane Society ranks as the third largest animal shelter in the United States. It actively works with shelters in the South and local rescue groups to transport black dogs and black cats to their large shelter to give them better chances of being adopted.

“We do four transports a week to Alabama, Texas and Mississippi to bring back to our shelters senior dogs, special-needs dogs and of course, black dogs,” says Mary Tan, Animal Humane Society public relations manager. “We purposely tell them not to send us their highly adoptable pets – send us the ones who need help getting adopted. About 70 percent of the ones sent to us have behavior or health or age issues.”

Tan shares the story of a black dog named Buddy who was extremely obese. The staff worked with shelter veterinarians to help this Labrador retriever shed 50 pounds and surgically remove fatty tumors. When Buddy was down to 150 pounds, they staged weekly public weigh-ins – an event covered by the local media. As he lost excess pounds, his friendly personality emerged and so did his activity level. He got adopted when he was at a healthy 98 pounds.

“The story of Buddy’s weight loss was highlighted during the television ratings sweeps, so that helped bring attention to him and black dogs,” says Tan.

Tan also sees the value of teaming up with non-pet groups in her area. She recalls the day a young man surrendered a young black cat because he could not find an apartment that permitted pets.

“This young cat was scared, cowering in the back of his cage and would not eat,” says Tan. “So, we moved him into my office and within a day, he was all over me with affection. He had also been declawed and a senior living home was looking for a declawed cat for their residents. Binx is now happy bringing joy to residents there.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Arden Moore is The Pet Health and Safety Coach. She is a best-selling author, radio show host, in-demand speaker and master certified pet first aid/CPR instructor who travels the country teaching with Pet Safety Dog Kona and Pet Safety Cat Casey. Learn more at www.ardenmoore.com and www.facebook.com/ardenmoore.

How Fear Free and Best Practices Go Hand in Hand in Shelters

How Fear Free and Best Practices Go Hand in Hand in Shelters

Implementing best practices in shelters means less animals enter the shelter and if they do, the shelter operates within their capacity for care. In this webinar, Dr. Sara Pizano, Fear Free Certified Professional and animal welfare strategist, discusses how a Fear Free experience in the shelter must be top priority and can only be achieved when the shelter is operating efficiently and all resources used strategically. Tune in to learn how Fear Free and best practices are intricately woven together.

Can You Spare 15 Minutes? Study Shows Value of Brief Petting Sessions for Shelter Dogs

Linda LombardiWhen asked why they don’t volunteer at a shelter, people often say they don’t have time. What if they knew that just 15 minutes of quiet petting could have a measurable effect on a dog’s wellbeing? That’s the result of a recent study.

Research has shown the benefit of repeated sessions of human interaction for shelter dogs. “We wanted to see, if you only had time to stop after work for fifteen minutes and go in and pet a dog, would it have a positive impact on that dog?” says lead author Ragen T. S. McGowan, research scientist at Nestlé Purina.

To answer this question, researchers chose 55 shelter dogs who could safely interact with strangers. The dogs were fitted with cardiac monitors, and saliva samples were taken before and after the session. Volunteers were asked to sit in a small room with the dog and pet them calmly, speaking in a soothing tone of voice. The session was recorded for behavior analysis.

Petting Benefits

Measurements showed that the dogs had lower heart rates at the end of the session, as well as increased heart rate variability. Heart rate variability — whether the distance between heartbeats is regular or irregular — is an indicator of emotional state. Under stress, heartbeats are more regular. The increase in heart rate variability showed that the dogs had become more relaxed.

Cortisol measures did not show a difference, which McGowan says is not surprising in such a short time. She also notes that cortisol can be tricky to interpret because it’s really a measure of arousal, which can be negative or positive. However, the fact that cortisol did not increase suggested that the dogs were not stressed by the experience.

The dogs’ behavior also showed increased signs of relaxation, although the study did note individual differences, with the dogs falling into three general groups. “We had a good portion of the dogs that enjoyed this so much that they just melted into a puddle in the person’s lap,” she says. “We had other dogs that enjoyed it but also enjoyed walking around checking out the room, then going back to the person.” The third group seemed to not quite get it. “They stood at the door, like they were saying, ‘Are we going for a walk now? What are we doing in this room?’ ” she says. “But regardless, in all the dogs we saw a positive impact in their behavior.”

Volunteers Benefit Too

Erica Feuerbacher of Virginia Tech, who studies shelter dog welfare, calls this study “fascinating and very important.” She says, “The idea that you can just pop in and spend 15 or 20 minutes with a shelter dog and improve its welfare opens the door for more people to interact meaningfully with shelter dogs and know that they’re making a difference.”

Since the study shows the value of just sitting quietly with a dog, it also opens up opportunities for volunteers who don’t have the physical ability or inclination for more strenuous types of interaction, she says.

Volunteer training is important, since first meeting a stranger is exciting, and most people aren’t naturally inclined to greet dogs in a calm way. Volunteers for the study were given specific instructions on how to pet and interact with the dogs. “I don’t think it would take too long to train people to interact appropriately and let the dog have some say in whether they want to approach and interact,” Feuerbacher says.

The study also highlights the importance of providing shelter dogs opportunities to relax. McGowan says the interaction in the study was different from what dogs usually had with volunteers at this shelter. “In most cases the volunteers walk dogs, so dogs see a volunteer and think, ‘Oh, I’m going on a walk,’ which is exciting,” she says. “We wanted to try to trigger the opposite positive emotion, that state of relaxation, because that’s something shelter dogs often don’t get much opportunity for.”

Relaxation Nation

Dogs in shelters are already in a stimulating environment, with lots of noise and activity, but often the only enrichment they get provides even more stimulation. “You go into a shelter and often the dogs are bouncing off the walls, and there is the idea that they have this pent-up energy and what they need is to get out and run,” says Feuerbacher. “We’re now starting to challenge that notion a little bit. Do we know, is that really what they need?”

A lot of what we do with our dogs at home — cuddling on the couch watching TV, say — is like the calm interaction in this study. While it seems as if we’re doing nothing, it’s an important bonding experience. And while shelter dogs may appear to already spend a lot of time doing nothing, it’s a different kind of nothing. “They may be doing nothing active, but are on high alert the whole time, rather than getting to relax,” she says.

Shelters can give dogs breaks from that stimulation in several ways. One that Feuerbacher suggests is an office foster program, where a dog gets to hang out in someone’s office at the shelter for a few hours.

McGowan also notes that relaxed dogs are easier to work with. Sitting quietly with a dog for 15 minutes ahead of a veterinary exam or grooming is worthwhile for everyone involved, she says. “Spending that time to get that dog into a more positive relaxed state ahead of that handling makes the whole interaction go a lot easier.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Linda Lombardi writes about the animals who share our planet and our homes for magazines including The Bark, websites including National Geographic and Mongabay.com, and for the Associated Press. Her most recent book, co-authored with Deirdre Franklin, is The Pit Bull Life: A Dog Lover’s Companion.

Why Behavior Evaluations in Shelters Can Be Misleading

Linda Lombardi

There was a time when formal shelter behavior evaluations for dogs seemed like an important breakthrough. But while an objective way to assess behavior seems like a great idea, it’s increasingly clear that these batteries of tests aren’t doing the job it was hoped they’d do.

In 2016, Gary Patronek, DVM, and Janis Bradley published a paper analyzing the literature on canine behavior evaluations, concluding that they were “no better than flipping a coin.”

This did not prompt immediate abandonment of these tests and there were some understandable questions about their conclusion. How was it possible for their review of the literature to conclude that these tests were not valid and predictive, when individual papers said that they were?

In a new paper they address those questions, delving into statistical issues, the difference between colloquial and technical uses of words like “valid,” “predictive,” and “reliable,” and the kind of evidence needed to justify using a test for real life–and sometimes life and death–decisions.

Testing the Tests

Standards exist for judging whether a test has real-world applicability. “This is not something we need to reinvent,” Bradley says. “There is robust human diagnostic test literature that tells us how to do this and what acceptable standards are, and behavior evaluations in dogs–at least the ones that we looked at, that were intended to have application to dogs in shelters–simply don’t meet any reasonable standard.”

One problem with research on predictive ability of behavior evaluations is that most of it has been done on owned dogs, not dogs in shelters.

“Epidemiologists will tell you there’s no such thing as saying a test is valid,” Bradley says. “All you can ever say is that we’ve demonstrated validity with this population, in this context, with this exact instrument. If you change any of those things–and likely all of those things are going to change in any application in a shelter–any claims you make for validity go completely out the window.”

Many shelters modify protocols, and it’s impossible to perform a test as consistently in the shelter environment as in a lab. Tiny details can change results. One study showed that factors like the evaluator’s height and how much they leaned over changed the outcome. “Try to imagine the world where you’d have the kind of consistency that would eliminate confounds like that in a shelter environment,” Bradley says. “It could never happen.”

The context is also different, and in an important way. The ability to identify aggression is of greatest concern in these evaluations, and results can vary by environment.

“The most common underlying motivations for aggression are fear and anxiety because aggression is distance-increasing behavior,” says veterinary behaviorist Wailani Sung, DVM, of the San Francisco SPCA. “Dogs in the shelter are already lower in tolerance because their overall stress level is so high. So they could test more negatively in a shelter environment versus in a home where they have more stable relationships and a more consistent environment.”

Another problem is that serious aggression is rare in dogs, and those dogs probably don’t get evaluated at shelters. “Most shelters eliminate the tail end of the bell curve without ever subjecting them to a behavior evaluation,” says Bradley. “If everyone’s afraid to go into the kennel with the dog, they’re not going to take it out and do a behavior evaluation.” For statistical reasons, it’s more difficult to design a reliable test for a rare behavior if there’s a concern about false positives. In this instance, false positives–a result that claims to show a dog is aggressive when he isn’t really–can result in unnecessary euthanasia.

“This entire enterprise to a certain extent appears to be based on an idea that there’s some elevated risk with regard to shelter dogs,” Bradley says. “There’s no evidence that this is the case.” Shelter dogs are no more or less likely to someday show aggression.

What’s the Alternative?

Although there’s a considerable body of research questioning the validity of behavior assessments, it takes time for that to trickle down to the real world. “There’s a huge discrepancy between the academic world that has been studying these things versus the practical world that’s out there on a day-to-day basis that still has the pressure of putting safe animals out into the world,” says Jeannine Berger, DVM, vice president of rescue and welfare at the San Francisco SPCA.

Change is hard, and this is a hard kind of change. “Sometimes you don’t want to be shown that what you’re doing is not helpful and may be harmful. That’s a bitter pill to swallow,” says Dr. Sung.

Dr. Berger says discussion about behavior assessments has increased since the ASPCA came out with a position statement last year referring to this literature. “People actually in the field are now starting to question if this is the right approach to making those decisions,” she says.

Amy Marder, VMD, who spent much of her career working on these types of assessments, now believes the best approach is for staff to observe dogs in day-to-day interactions and keep good records. This doesn’t have to involve more work or resources, since it happens during physical exams and walks, which need to be done anyway. “You can get a lot of information from doing routine procedures rather than a formal evaluation,” she says.

This is what San Francisco SPCA does. “We use the five freedoms model to assess welfare, and everyone is trained on that,” Berger says. “We are looking at, are they eating, are they drinking, are they comfortable in their environment, are they fear free and distress free, are they performing normal behaviors, are they free of illness and disease,” she says. “We use that to assess each animal every day, and anything out of the norm is reported and is addressed.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Linda Lombardi writes about the animals who share our planet and our homes for magazines including The Bark, websites including National Geographic and Mongabay.com, and for the Associated Press. Her most recent book, co-authored with Deirdre Franklin, is The Pit Bull Life: A Dog Lover’s Companion.

17 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress in Shelter Cats

Katie Costello

Imagine that you are in a remote part of a foreign country and become so ill that you need to go to the hospital. People are coming at you and doing things you don’t understand. All of your senses are off: the way things smell, look, taste. Worse, you can’t understand anything said to you.

Yes, I am asking you to put yourself in the paw prints of shelter cats.

A Cat’s Senses

We all recognize that shelters are unnatural environments for animals, but understanding how cats perceive their environment can provide clues as to how to help them deal with their stress.

Kelly Bollen, MS, CABC, owner of Animal Alliances, LLC, describes in detail what cats perceive. For instance, think of how loud shelters are. Cats can hear up to 80 kilohertz; that is within ultrasonic range! By comparison, humans hear up to 20 kilohertz.

Cats have excellent vision and are sensitive to motion. They have 67 million scent receptors. Their vomeronasal organ pulls in pheromones signaling the emotions of cats around them. The pads of their feet are sensitive to touch and vibration. That means that in multiple ways cats are sensing all the other fearful and stressed cats in the shelter as well as other environmental stressors such as barking dogs, people walking up and down the halls, and radios blaring.

What Can We Do?

It should be our daily goal to decrease the fear that animals feel in our shelters. Drs. Kate Hurley and Julie Levy at the Million Cat Challenge, a joint project of the UC Davis and University of Florida shelter medicine programs, say that making sure each cat has the right amount of space is the most important thing a shelter can do to prevent stress and stress related diseases such as upper respiratory infections (URI): “Our research showed not meeting this space requirement was one of the biggest risk factors for respiratory disease in shelter cats.” That space requirement is:

Individually-housed cats each require a minimum of at least 8.5 square feet of clear floor (not vertical) space.
Cats in group housing need at least 18 square feet per cat, plus places to hide. And again: vertical space doesn’t count!

Laura K. Frazier, BA, RVT, and owner of www.advocatsconsulting.com as well as previous owner of Meow Town in Martinez, Georgia, shares some additional recommendations:

Vertical space (even if cats are in their own space/kennel).
Boxes for hiding, with the open part facing the rear of the cage.
Moveable curtains or panels for privacy.
Spray the space/kennel with Feliway before cats arrive or use a plug-in. If using spray, wait 15 to 20 minutes to allow the smell of alcohol to dissipate.
Provide opportunities for scratching by attaching mats to walls or placing climbing posts in kennels.
Offer social play with wand toys, especially if cats can’t be touched.
Play yoga music or buy one of the CDs with music composed for cats such as “Through A Cat’s Ear.”
Speak softly and move slowly. Try to eliminate noises such as banging doors, loud music, or radios on cages.
Hide treats throughout cages so cats can hunt.
Offer catnip.
Allow cats opportunities to walk around and explore outside their cages.
Allow cats to come out of carriers on their own instead of pulling them out. Place the open carrier in the cage so they can come out when they want.

From my own experience, I’ve found that hanging dried lavender from the cage can be calming. Keep cats in a room separate from dogs so they don’t have to see or hear them. Consider giving them Cat TV—videos of fish or birds flying. Better yet, place cages so they face a window. Offer a variety of toys, especially problem-solving toys that deliver treats.

You will find that just a few simple changes can improve a cat’s physical environment and mental health. The result is a happier, healthier, more adoptable cat.

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

Study Shows Brief “Sleepover” Breaks from the Shelter Are Good for Dogs

Linda Lombardi

Even the best animal shelter can be a stressful place for dogs. Erica Feuerbacher studies how to improve their welfare and was intrigued by a program she learned about at Best Friends Animal Society in Utah. Volunteers could take dogs with them for an overnight sleepover, even volunteers on working vacations, who could bring them to their hotel. Feuerbacher and colleague Lisa Gunter thought they could answer some questions that were in the air about the program.

“Some people thought this was really useful,” she says. “The dogs got a break from the shelter, and they learned more about the dog when it was out and about.” Others were concerned that the program was stressful for dogs. Here’s what they found.

Test Tactics

They collected urine for analysis from a sample of dogs before, during, and after a sleepover. “We found that their urinary cortisol levels, a measure of stress, significantly dropped while they were on the sleepover,” Feuerbacher says. “They came back up when they returned to the shelter, but not above baseline levels, so they weren’t more stressed when they came back.”

This suggested that the sleepovers were good for the dogs, but would they have the same effect elsewhere? Best Friends is not a typical shelter; most of the dogs are long-term residents and many had been on sleepovers before. They repeated the study at four other shelters, from small limited-intake facilities to large municipal shelters. Urinary cortisol measurements for dogs getting two-night sleepovers revealed the same stress reduction effects.

Good Stress

Repeated sleepovers appear to have a positive effect. At BFAS, the number of sleepovers a dog had previously experienced was correlated with lower cortisol, suggesting that the experience at first involves a small amount of stress.

“Likely the results we saw were the decrease from stress in the shelter overlaid with some new stress from the new situation, but the decrease overrode the small increase,” she says. “With repeated exposure to this new experience—‘I go home with new people and hang out for a night’—the dogs show an even greater reduction.”

Dogs at the four shelters in the second study also wore activity monitors as a way to follow up on something the volunteers at Best Friends reported: that the dogs would check out the new place for 20 or 30 minutes and then sleep the rest of the time. The monitors showed that the dogs not only spent much of the time resting in the foster home, they seemed to be able to get more rest when they came back to the shelter.

“The longest bout of uninterrupted rest occurred at the foster home, which made sense, but we did see some carryover effects,” she says. Dogs got significantly more rest in the shelter after the sleepover. “We had lots of reports from staff saying ‘When the dogs came back from sleepover, they’re a different dog, they’re calm in the kennel, they’re showing better’ and our data supported those anecdotal observations.”

So while the cortisol measurements did come back up when the dogs returned to the shelter, the break appeared to improve their ability to be calm in the shelter environment. “I always compare it to a weekend,” says Feuerbacher. “I’m stressed on Friday at work, I relax on Saturday and Sunday, and yes on Monday I’m stressed again, but I’ve had rest and I’m probably better able to cope with it.”

Canine R&R

The fact that dogs spent most of their time away from the shelter resting might be a bit of a surprise, but a pleasant one, as it potentially makes a program easier to implement.

“Oftentimes we think about shelter dogs that they need to go out and do things, go on hikes, and get all this environmental enrichment, but it’s possible that the shelter environment is so stimulating already that what they really need is just some quiet time,” she says. “This opens up new opportunities for fosters who might say, ‘I don’t feel comfortable taking a new dog to Starbucks, but I can take this dog home and let him sleep at my house for a few hours.”

Success Story

One shelter that participated that was so pleased with the results of the sleepover that they continued the program after the experiment was over was the Humane Society of Western Montana in Missoula. Director of Programs Mariah Scheskie says staff sees a difference in the dogs that come back from a sleepover. “When they come back, not only are they calmer, the potential adopters looking through the kennels are more drawn to them because mostly they don’t pick the dog that’s jumping up and lunging at the glass.”

Now that the program is established, it’s easy to run. Volunteers know the procedures, what to take home with which dog and what the schedule is, so it doesn’t add work for shelter staff.

The finding that dogs mostly want to rest makes participation less intimidating. “Before having this information, people did think, ‘I have to take this dog and run them for 10 miles and do all these things, and that’s a lot of pressure,” she says. “But we’re saying no, just rent a movie and open a bottle of wine and stay home.”

One unexpected finding was large differences in baseline stress at different shelters that didn’t correlate with any obvious factors. This is something Feuerbacher thinks needs further study. “Yes, sleepovers help, but we really need to understand these differences between the shelters and how housing, handling, and husbandry practices are impacting those dogs,” she says.

In the meantime, short sleepover programs can offer benefits to dogs and a new way to volunteers to get involved. Scheskie has found that it makes shelter staff feel good as well. “The volunteer is going out, everyone’s yelling goodbye, the door closes, and everyone has this huge sigh of relief together,” she says. “I looked at my coworker the other day and said, ‘It’s amazing how good that feels. You just know they’re snuggling in the bed, they’re with a human, they’re having a great time.”

This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.

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