The Community Cats Podcast

This episode is sponsored in part by CDE Cages and Doobert.com. Stacy’s guest this week, Gary Evans, works as the Clinic Director for the Humane Society of Huron Valley (HSHV), where he previously worked as a “cat wrangler” or Community Cat Coordinator. Before coming to the world of animal welfare, Gary worked in the entrepreneurial space with tech startups. HSHV is a high volume spay/neuter and full-service vet clinic, and adoption shelter. They have been working as the leading provider of TNR in Michigan for over a decade and have helped about 16,000 outdoor cats. Gary and Stacy talk about how Gary has been able to use his background to help scale up the number of cats HSHV helps, including finding better ways to use resources, mobilize volunteers, and provide tools and education to the community. While COVID-19 has slowed them down some, they’re still working toward their goal to make Washtenaw County the best place in the country to be an animal. To find out more about HSHV and to find resources on commun

This episode is sponsored in part by TICA and Doobert.com. This week, an inspiring chat with Peter Elueze, founder of Paw Salvation, a Chicago-based nonprofit that helps homeless people, veterans, and seniors care for their pets. Paw Salvation was founded 3 years ago and has been growing steadily, supporting those who need it by providing pet food. Stacy and Peter talk about the human-animal bond, the need for including pets when providing housing and writing policy for homeless people, how COVID-19 has affected homeless people, advice for starting a nonprofit, and finding blessings in unexpected places. Peter also shares his plans for a mobile grooming and wellness van and his hopes to be able to include flea treatment and microchipping in the future. To help Paw Salvation in their mission, donate or follow them on Instagram or Facebook. To find out more, visit Paw Salvation’s website.

This episode is sponsored in part by TICA and Doobert.com.  Stacy chats with Mariah McCulley, Director of Operations at Animal Friends Alliance, a limited admission, adoption guarantee shelter for cats and dogs in Fort Collins, CO. Mariah has experience with TNR, high volume spay and neuter clinics, adoption, and, her passion, fostering feral kittens. Animal Friends Alliance has a strong focus on providing community resources to keep animals in their homes. They provide subsidized cost spay/neuter, a kibble supply program, and a community cat program. Their work with TNR has seen success in reducing the volume of cats in Fort Collins and has now expanded to cover a wider range around Northern Colorado and into Wyoming and Nebraska. Mariah’s passion is fostering feral kittens and she shares with Stacy some tips for successful feral fostering and how organizations can support their fosters and adopters. Some of her tips include separating feral kittens from their littermates and using play as a tool for giving

This episode is sponsored in part by TICA and Doobert.com.  This week’s guest is Bridget Bowhay, Director of Content and Social Media for Cuddly, a fundraising platform that supports animal rescues. Bridget is also an avid cat lover and kitten foster. Founded in 2014, Cuddly is a crowdfunding platform dedicated to helping nonprofit shelters and rescues achieve their fundraising goals. Their specific approach matches donors to specific animals, helping to provide medicine or supplies. Cuddly does not charge shelters for their services, but donors are able to tip Cuddly at check out. Cuddly has more than 2100 partner rescues and they have raised $20 million since their inception. Bridget and Stacy also chat about the podcast, From Tip to Tail, that Bridget runs for Cuddly, which features different animal rescue organizations. Visit Cuddly’s website to donate or to register your nonprofit shelter or rescue. To listen to the From Tip to Tail Podcast, you can visit the podcast main page, or find them on Apple Podc

This episode is sponsored in part by KittySift and Doobert.com. Aysha Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is a double-board certified neurologist and preventive medicine specialist, with a background in public health, and is a U.S veteran. For a decade, Dr. Akhtar was a Medical Officer at the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Akhtar is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the author of the two books, Our Symphony With Animals. On Health, Empathy and Our Shared Destinies and Animals and Public Health, which argues for the need for health institutions to include animals as part of the “public” in public health. Dr. Akhtar is also the founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences. Stacy and Dr. Akhtar discuss the importance of empathy in our society and how stopping infectious diseases, halting climate change, improving medical care, and decreasing violent crime are all connected to our empathy for animals. Increasing empathy for all animals increases our own wellbeing, which means that caring for

This episode is sponsored in part by Tamadori and Doobert.com. Steve Appelbaum has more than 40 years of dog training and pet industry experience. He is the creator of Animal Behavior College (ABC) which provides many different pet industry certifications. ABC started off with only programs for dog training but Steve noticed a big problem with cats being surrendered or euthanized for treatable behavioral problems, so he set out to fix this problem. Steve and Stacy debunk the myth that cats can’t be trained and discuss how training cats isn’t about teaching obedience like it is for dogs, but actually treating behavioral problems. Steve gives some  tips on how to train your cat for going to the vet and shares how enrichment and training go hand in hand. We in the animal welfare community know there is a shortage of veterinary assistants and veterinarians; Stacy and Steve talk about how ABC’s veterinary assistant program is their most popular program and they expect to have 2200 students enrolled in the next yea

This episode is sponsored in part by Tamadori and Doobert.com. Maura Nevel Thomas is an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and author on individual and corporate productivity and work-life balance, and the most widely-cited authority on attention management. Maura has trained thousands of individuals at hundreds of organizations on her proprietary Empowered Productivity™ System, a process for achieving significant results and living a life of choice. She is a TEDx speaker, successful entrepreneur, and author of Personal Productivity Secrets and Work Without Walls. In this episode, Stacy and Maura talk tips for working remotely including managing attention, email best practices, guidelines for using different communication tools and apps, and how leaders can create a healthy and efficient culture at work. They also chat about Maura’s book Work Without Walls, which takes her previous book on personal productivity a step farther, helping leaders and managers create a productive environment for whole t

This episode is sponsored in part by TICA and Doobert.com. You might remember Sam Wilson, who spoke at our Online Cat Conference in January. Sam is the Program Director at Iowa Humane Alliance, a high volume spay/neuter clinic, where she manages and develops outreach programs like the Iowa Trap-Neuter-Return Resource and Assistance Program (I-TRAP). Stacy and Sam discuss how a passion for community cats and affordable spay/neuter services led Sam to Iowa Humane Alliance, how COVID has shifted their procedures, how many cities in Iowa are passing community cat friendly ordinances to support TNR and community cats and their caretakers. They touch on mentorship programs that help spay/neuter clinics get started, and the partnerships they have with community cat organizations, shelters, and rescues. The Iowa Trap-Neuter-Return Resource and Assistance Program helps to support TNR in the community by providing trap rentals, spay/neuter and vaccination packages, as well as training and education. To find out more vi

This episode is sponsored in part by KittySift and Doobert.com. This week Stacy talks to James Evans, president of CARE and multi-award winning creative strategist and leader with 25+ years of experience connecting organizations with their constituents. He has worked on numerous animal welfare projects including Gulf Spay/Neuter Campaign and HSUS’ Pets for Life,  Outdoor Cats Research, Stop Puppy Mills and Spayathon, as well as Best Friends Animal Society’s Outreach Action Team, Maddie’s Fund, and SPCA of Texas’ Let’s Fix This Campaign. Throughout his work, he has always advocated for more diversity and inclusion throughout the field. James shares how he came to animal welfare organically, marrying his passions for art, mass communications, and animals, and how he discovered animal welfare was an area lacking in services for underserved communities. Stacy and James discuss how to build sustainable community development and what marginalized people bring to the table when they’re included. CARE, of Companions

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com. You might already know Nathan Khen from Instagram or Tik Tok, where he is known as @nathanthecatlady. Today Stacy talks to Nathan about cats (of course), building a following on social media platforms, reaching younger audience, balancing social media and mental health, the effects of COVID-19 on the world of cat rescuing, and dating as a cat person. Nathan is an actor, cat lover, volunteer with Milo’s Sanctuary and the Cat Cafe Lounge, and a spokesperson for Tabby Dates, a new dating app for cat lovers. Studies have shown that men who pose with cats in their profile pictures on dating apps are less likely to get a match. Tabby Dates eliminates that problem, as well as all negative stereotypes related to cat people, since everyone on the app is a cat person. To find out more about Tabby Dates, visit their website or download the app from the Appstore. You can find Nathan on Instagram, Tik Tok @nathanthecatlady, Twitter, and Youtube.

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com. Our guest this week, Allen Kamrava, has an impressive and widely varied resume focused on both business and medicine. Dr. Kamrava is a colorectal and general surgeon and the founder and CEO of Eusoh, a powerful platform working to change the insurance industry by helping pet owners afford their vet bills. Eusoh is an online community of pet lovers committed to helping each other with unexpected vet bills. It is an alternative to pet insurance, which Dr. Kamrava notes, only about 1% of pet owners have, though 67% of Americans have a pet in their household. Stacy and Dr Kamrava talk about how Eusoh is committed to creating a more transparent and efficient system, reducing economic euthanasia, and building partnerships with employers to offer Eusoh memberships to employees in benefit or perks packages. To find out more, or to get signed up, visit Eusoh’s website.

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com. Mikaela Fleisher is the secretary for a nonprofit spay and neuter organization called PennyFix. She has been involved in animal rescue since 2009, volunteering with various organizations as well as working as a receptionist at a busy animal hospital. Stacy and Mikaela discuss PennyFix, an organization founded in 2017 whose goal is to partner with pet food companies to add one penny to the cost of each can or bag of pet food sold to fund spay and neuter as well as rabies and distemper vaccines. This would help to take the burden of federal and local governments to help fund spay and neuter. The organization is still young but so far PennyFix has funded 15 clinics in 11 states and they hope to grow to cover the whole United States. This episode also delves into identifying areas of greatest need for spay and neuter services, the shortage of funding for those services, and the growing trend of animal shelters with food pantries partnering with human food pantries

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com, and KittySift. Our guest this week has a very impressive bio. Dr. Michael Blackwell had a doctorate of veterinary science as well as a masters in public health. He directs the Program for Pet Health Equity at the University of Tennessee, chairs the Access to Veterinary Care Coalition, and serves as a member of the HSVMA Board of Directors. In the past he has served as dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee, the chief of staff at the Office of the Surgeon General of the U.S., the deputy director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, and the chief veterinary officer of the U.S. Public Health Service and The Humane Society of the United States. During 23 years of active duty, he achieved the rank of Assistant Surgeon General of the U.S Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. He has owned two private practices and has received numerous awards and recognitions. Dr. Blackwell chats with Stacy

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com's FosterSpace. In this episode, Stacy chats with Holly Ganz, Ph.D., a micro-ecologist who studies how microbes and mammals interact, with a specific interest in the role that the gut microbiome plays in gastrointestinal (GI) conditions in cats and dogs. In 2015, Holly founded Animal Biome to create better diagnostics and therapeutics for cats and dogs with GI conditions. She and Stacy discuss how she became interested in this field, and the Kitty Biome Kickstarter that began the whole thing. They review what the term gut microbiome means and how all this relates to animal welfare work. Today, Animal Biome offers microbiome testing and fecal transplant capsules for dogs and cats that can be given at home. Holly explains what a fecal transplant is, how it works, and what conditions it can be helpful for, and she discusses what’s ahead for Animal Biome. To learn more, visit the Animal Biome website, where you can find all of their products, as well as a new articl

In this information-packed episode, Stacy sits down with Dr. Bob Weedon, a retired veterinarian who is still going strong as a volunteer at the TLC PetSnip low-cost clinic in Lakeland, FL, a board member of the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs (ACC&D), and in other volunteer posts. Bob worked in private practice and also spent many years teaching in the shelter medicine program at the University of Illinois, including teaching high-quality high-volume spay/neuter techniques to veterinary students. He also holds a Master’s degree in public health. Along the way, he also became involved in TNR. “I just recognized there was such a need,” he says, “and that I had the tools that… could address that need.” Stacy and Bob discuss why the “V” in trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) is so crucial, both for the cats and for proving the value of TNVR programs to community leaders and officials. He discusses the concept of herd immunity in relation to rabies, and also goes into great detail about cats and

In this episode, Stacy sits down with Julie Posluns, the founder and owner of Cat School, an online training school for cats that uses clicker training to teach fun and practical behaviors and strengthen the bond between cats and their human in the process. Julie, who is a trained animal behaviorist, worked entirely with dogs until a small black kitten showed up at her back door. The cat, now called Jones, convinced the humans and the dogs in the family that he should stay—and he soon showed an interest in the training Julie was doing with her dogs. Julie began training Jones as well, and the rest is history! Stacy and Julie talk about what clicker training is, what its benefits are, and how this kind of enrichment differs from other types. (Hint: This kind is good for both of you!) Julie explains that clicker training is based on positive reinforcement, and she talks about what her program consists of, how the plan works, and how it can work in different situations (training for fun vs. training for behavior

In this episode, Stacy is joined by Camille Labchuk, an animal rights lawyer and the executive director of Animal Justice, Canada’s only animal law advocacy organization. Camille also hosts the Animal Justice’s Paw & Order podcast, which was reviewed in the CCP blog back in February. Stacy and Camille discuss what’s going on in Canada with regard to cats, including the fact that, as Camille puts it, “People are really waking up to the idea that cat declawing shouldn’t be a practice that we allow any more in society.” Stacy and Camille also chat about community cats in Canada, how Camille would like to see the government give more support to community cat-related issues, and about the relatively new legal concept of putting an animal at risk. To learn more, visit the Animal Justice website, where you can also link to the Paw & Order podcast. You can find out more about Animal Justice’s conferences, which are open to everyone—not just lawyers—at the Canadian Animal Law Conference website.

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com, and KittySift. In this episode, Dr. Jennifer Conrad, who founded The Paw Project in 1999, joins Stacy to discuss the organization’s mission to end declawing in the U.S. & Canada, using education, research, and legislation. The Paw Project is made up completely of veterinarians and the group compiled the evidence, drafted the legislation, composed the language of the legislation, built the coalition of support, and obtained the representatives for every law prohibiting declawing in the U.S. Stacy and Dr. Conrad discuss the surprising way Dr. Conrad became interested in ending declawing and educating people everywhere on its devastating effects on cats. “Declawing is a misnomer,” Dr. Conrad tells Stacy. “It is really more appropriately called de-knuckling. It is the amputation of a toe bone.” They discuss the behavioral issues of biting and litter box avoidance that declawed cats have been shown to be prone to, and they talk about the organization’s new “Cla

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com. This week’s guest is Brad Kriser, founder of Kriser’s Natural Pet and Chief Education Officer of Independent Pet Partners. Brad lives in LA with his family and a menagerie of rescued animals. Stacy and Brad chat about Brad’s role with Independent Pet Partners and how he promotes education around natural pet food both within the company and out in the community. They talk about the 5 Pillars of Wellness, developed with the University of Denver, which include nourishment, play, comfort, companionship and purpose. Brad also shared the great resource Things My Human Knows, a fillable document to leave with a pet-sitter when you go away, or to have on hand in the event of an emergency. You can find their natural food retailers around the country at Kriser’s (California, Illinois, Texas and Colorado), Chuck and Don’s (Colorado), Loyal Companion (East Coast), and Natural Pawz (Texas).

This episode is sponsored in part by Doobert.com. Founding member of Archimedes’ Printing Shoppe and Sundry Goodes, Susan Russell has had diverse experience as a writer, attorney, and animal advocate. She has led municipal animal shelters in Chicago and Philadelphia, worked as a litigator, and published an array of books including A Ruff Road Home: The Court Case Dogs of Chicago, several children’s books, and the new series Gata Unbound. Susan and Stacy discuss Susan’s newest book series (co written with Lucy Nolan and illustrated by Katy Lacy), Gata Unbound: A Series for Ailurophiles of all Ages. Volume One of the series features two stories, Klein's Weird Evening & Archimedes’ Ear. This series aims to introduce children to the important topic of TNR. Stacy and Susan finish up their interview with the importance of bringing joy, humor and kindness to our lives. To buy Gata Unbound, you can head over to the Archimedes' Printing Shoppe and Sundry Goodes website; you can also find them on their Facebook pag