The Community Cats Podcast

Dave Hanley, developer of the Tomorrow app, is an entrepreneur who is also a pet (and human) parent. Tomorrow is designed to help anyone set up a legal will quickly and easily—and even appoint guardians for their pets and/or children. The app is free, with no strings attached. (It is funded by the optional sale of life insurance products.) Dave’s own love for cats began as a child when his parents gave his older sister a kitten one Christmas. Since then, Dave has always felt a connection to cats and currently shares his home with two twin sister cats. He was inspired to create Tomorrow after learning that 50 million children are not protected by legal guardianships providing for their care. Dave’s experiences in wading through his own parents’ outdated estate plans and documents after their deaths provided additional motivation to develop the app, which he hopes will encourage everyone to protect themselves and their families with these important documents. One experience that really stuck with Dave after his

You may remember Dr. Kate Hurley, Director of U.C. Davis Koret School of Veterinary Medicine and co-founder of Million Cat Challenge, from CCP Episode 47. If not, be sure to check it to hear all about how Dr. Hurley got started in the world of animal welfare. In this episode, Dr. Hurley is back to talk with Stacy about the amazing success of the Million Cat Challenge (MCC) program that she co-founded with Dr. Julie Levy three years ago. Dr. Hurley talks about what she calls a “stunning transformation” that has taken place in the field of animal sheltering for cats since last time she was on the show, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Not only did the MCC hit its goal (a year early!), the program has seen many shelters decrease their euthanasia rates by 80-90% after joining the MCC. These shelters have saved over a million more cat lives compared to their own baselines before joining the MCC. Stacy and Dr. Hurley discuss the specifics behind the numbers, and how the MCC was set up to amplify successes that were

Nikki Martinez was always a dog person. That all changed one day when a kitten ran in front of her car on her way to a post-surgical doctor appointment. Feeling down and overly focused on herself after her surgery, Nikki poured her heart and soul into nursing that sickly kitten back to health, and eventually found it a new home. In the process, Nikki herself began to heal—and she found herself hooked on helping cats. Today, Nikki fosters kittens, serves on the board of directors for a Las Vegas TNR organization called C5, traps community cat colonies with C5, manages a popular kitten Instagram page, and runs a side business called Fostering a Purpose. She specializes in caring for critical care and neonatal kittens, and has fostered hundreds of kittens over the years. It took her a while to see the connection between the kittens she was fostering and TNR, but once she did, she devoted even more of her energy to TNR. As she put it, “I’d picture a bucket that’s overflowing with water, maybe it has a hole in it

Danielle Bays, Director of Cat Protection and Policy at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), is a frequent flyer here on CCP, having appeared before on Episode 55and Episode 261. She joins Stacy again here to talk about what’s going on across the country for cats, and about various events happening in the animal welfare world this spring. One such event is HSUS’S annual Animal Care Expo conference, being held this year in New Orleans on April 15-18. Danielle tells Stacy that not only will there be a cat track again this year, there will also be a day-long program devoted to kittens, and lots more about cats within the other conference tracks, like behavior and veterinary. Jackson Galaxy will be at the conference as a speaker on cat behavior, and also as part of a roundtable session with attendees. There will be a session in the veterinary track about FIV and FeLV, which will discuss everything you need to know to get those cats adopted like any other cat in your shelter! Several sessions on trappi

Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado, a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist with a Ph.D. in psychology, has quite a list of accomplishments under her belt. She has co-authored the book Total Cat Mojowith Jackson Galaxy, and she currently co-owns a cat behavior consulting business called Feline Minds, which assists both pet owners and shelters. Mikel is also a post doc fellow at the University of California at Davis doing research on cat behavior in multi-cat households and on the health and development of orphaned neonatal kittens. Mikel was, in her own words, “obsessed with cats” even as a child, though she never had particular aspirations toward being a vet, and it never really occurred to her until much later in life that she could have a job working with cats. Soon after the death of a beloved pet cat, Mikel began volunteering at the San Francisco SPCA, an organization with a robust cat behavior program. Mikel was hooked and ended up working for the SFSPCA for eight years before leaving to pursue her education. Today

In this interview, Stacy speaks with Karen Anderson, an animal communicator and afterlife expert who has been practicing for over 20 years. She has received several awards and is a best-selling author of several books as well, including her most recent, The Amazing Afterlife of Animals. As far back as Karen can remember, she has always loved animals. They were her very best friends and for many years, she thought everyone could understand and talk to them the way she could. It wasn’t until she worked in law enforcement many years later, however, that her animal communication abilities really came forward in a big way. She has no formal training as an animal communicator, just a very deep love of animals. In fact, Karen feels that anyone can learn to communicate with animals, and that you don’t need any special skills. “I can teach most people how to send their first message in 15 minutes; that’s how easy it is,” she tells Stacy. She and Stacy go on to talk about overcoming negative and doubt-filled thought pa

Kim Saunders was a practicing attorney when she decided to move into the animal welfare world full-time (after years of volunteering). She spent 15 years at Petfinder before moving into a more hands-on role at St. Hubert’s. She is now the Operations Director at Liberty Humane Society (LHS), the only licensed animal shelter in Hudson County, NJ, which one of most densely populated counties in the state. Hudson County has rich cultural and socioeconomic diversity, with 15% of the population falling under the poverty line. LHS provides all animal control services, as well as shelter and adoption services to the county. In this interview, Stacy and Kim discuss how the recent government shutdown has impacted shelters, particularly pet retention programs. Kim is passionate about keeping animals that already have a home in those homes, and LHS offers a flexible pet retention program that assists with whatever people need—from super basic supplies like crates and litter to more complex needs like intensive medical ca

Elena Battles of Shelterluv software has been working for animals in one capacity or another since 1999. It was then that she found Trini, a stray beagle who truly changed her life. Elena had been working as a physical therapist, but after rescuing Trini, she was re-awakened to the issues facing animals, and decided to change paths. She began volunteering, then moved on to several staff roles in animal welfare organizations all over the country. Now, at Shelterluv, Elena helps provide those in the animal welfare world with access to the technology she wishes she had when she worked in a shelter. Elena knows that working in animal welfare operations is much more complex than just working with animals, so she is so excited to be able to give people the technology tools to help make that job easier. She tells Stacy that considering making a change in systems often starts with asking some important questions about your organization (and she shares what those questions are). Elena & Stacy talk about configurab

Kay Stout is the Executive Director of PAAS Vinita in Oklahoma, a multi-faceted group that grew out of the initial shelter that gives the group its name (PAAS stands for “Peaceful Animal Adoption Shelter”). Back in 2015, the shelter opened, but no one was coming in to adopt the animals. That’s when Kay realized they had to do something different. She reached out to animal welfare contacts and soon had a transfer program set up with Dumb Friends Animal League in Colorado. Today, the group continues large transports of dogs, as well as occasional transport of cats, to Colorado, but it also serves as a local resource center. PAAS offers spay/neuter services to local cats, a TNR program, and is also helping many groups work toward 90%+ save rates through the Save Lives, Unite Oklahoma project. Kay and Stacy talk extensively about the history of PAAS, including Kay’s successful early strategy of getting a handful of community leaders onboard with what she was doing. Having these people on her side made it easy for

Sandy Rees, the CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) at Get Fully Funded and Founder of Arf Club, joins us for her second visit to Community Cats Podcast. If you missed her first chat with Stacy, check it out here. Sandy’s company shows passionate nonprofit leaders how to fully fund their big visions so they can spend their time saving lives instead of worrying about money. Based in Loudon, TN, Sandy teaches her students to focus on donor outreach, authentic messaging, and relationship building in their fundraising. In this episode, she talks with Stacy about some of the current trends she’s seeing in fundraising for the small nonprofit (hint: think videos!). She also gives some great tips around what constitutes “authentic messaging,” shares a simple ratio to follow to prevent donor fatigue, and reminds everyone that acknowledgment of donations is “a simple thing, but it is…a critically important thing.” The Arf Club portion of Sandy’s business is an animal welfare-specific fundraising training program, designe

Dr. Angie Kraus, a holistic house-call veterinarian in Boulder, CO, has known since the age of 3 that she wanted to be a vet. She was trained conventionally, but after graduation, she began to explore other, less traditional modalities of treatment, leading her to holistic veterinary medicine. For Dr. Kraus, being a holistic vet means doing anything that works for her patients. In this interview, she tells Stacy, “Not only do I use all modalities that I think can be helpful, I look at my patient as a whole.” As a result of being a house-call vet, Dr. Kraus sees a lot of cats, since cats often tend to be particularly challenging to transport to traditional veterinary appointments. Dr. Kraus and her technician approach their patients slowly and gently, allowing the cat to evaluate them first before they try to proceed with an exam or treatment. Dr. Kraus feels that cats are underserved and that both owners and veterinarians can do better for cats in terms of proper feeding and stimulation, as well as developing

Veronica Coit, a full-time hairdresser who is married with two children, calls herself a “cat lady for life.” She spearheads the Asheville Cat Weirdos, a Facebook group that she started in 2016. That group has now grown to almost 9,000 members, all from the greater Asheville, North Carolina area. The group has also grown from simply being a place for cat lovers to converse to a full-fledged 501(c)3 organization with multiple programs to help local cat owners in need keep their beloved pets. Programs include an emergency fund to cover the cost of veterinary bills, the “Cat Pantry” (a cat food pantry that also carries litter and flea and worm treatments), and a spay/neuter incentive program. The group has a full board of directors, and a number of volunteers who make these programs happen.   Veronica, who has some personal experience with what it’s like to be working and yet still not be able to afford needed veterinary care, is thrilled at what the Asheville Cat Weirdos have accomplished in just a few short ye

Dana Andresen started as the first executive director of Feline Rescue, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based, no-kill companion cat rescue organization, in April 2016. Dana came to her current role after working with a pet food company and then as the first executive director of the Minnesota spay/neuter assistance program (MN SNAP). She got interested in animal welfare after running a fundraiser with the pet food company she worked for after Hurricane Katrina. Feline Rescue has three programs: shelter, foster, and outreach. The first two programs are adoption programs, while their outreach program is more geared to pet retention. That program includes subsidized spay/neuter, pet food, and strives to educate people and connect them to the resources they need to care for their cats. In Dana’s nearly three years as executive director, she has worked with the board of directors and many volunteers on a strategic plan to help determine the organization’s course for the future. One of the top priorities in that strategic p

Dr. Graham Brayshaw, a 2004 graduate of Texas A&M’s veterinary school, is both the chief veterinarian and the director of animal services for the Animal Humane Society (AHS), an organization based in the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Dr. Brayshaw’s interest in animal welfare and community cats began when he did a rotation through local shelters in vet school, and in 2012, he accepted a role at AHS. AHS took in over 23,000 animals last year, including 11,000 cats (which includes some cats transported from partner agencies). The agency has a 96% placement rate and runs an active community cats program, along with a low-cost veterinary care program. Stacy and Dr. Brayshaw talk about how community cat management differs in a part of the country where frigid winter temperatures make life outside even more difficult for cats, and how this affects programs like return to field (RTF). They also discuss how AHS’s community cat program got started, and how they learned that running a targeted TNR

Sara Kent, the first CEO and paid staff member of Shelter Animals Count (SAC), sits down with Stacy to discuss how SAC came to be, what its mission is, and some of its latest statistics. Sara began her career in animal welfare close to 20 years ago as one of the first people hired at Petfinder, where she ultimately served as the director of shelter outreach and led the creation of Petfinder Pro. You may remember her (in her Petfinder role) from CCP episode #164. Sara is also the founder of Fiver Cats, an online resource dedicated to community cats and FIV+ cats. Shelter Animals Count first started as a concept back in 2011, when a number of leaders in animal welfare were trying to figure out how to come up with a good count of the animals coming into and going out of shelters. At that point, there had never been a full database whose sole purpose was to collect shelter data, so they created this collaborative project whose mission is to “create, share, and steward the national database of sheltered animals th

In this episode, Stacy talks with Larry Shively, owner of ProVetLogic, one of the sponsors of 2019 Online Cat Conference, about controlling the spread of disease among cats, particularly in shelter-type environments. Nine years ago, Larry & his wife Colleen started ProVetLogic after being called in to assist with a “big cat” situation – and by “big cats,” he means lions and tigers! A zoo’s big cats weren’t eating, and with the help of a veterinarian, Larry discovered that the cleaning products the zoo was using were so strong that the cats couldn’t smell their food anymore. Out of that process was born the idea of a trying to create protocols and products that would be effective and safe for both dogs and cats. At the time, most shelter and veterinary clinic cleaning products were geared towards dogs, and were simply too strong to use around cats. So ProVet Logic developed products that are effective, as well as protocols for how to safely use their products around cats. They provide discounted pricing to

Durning the month of December, we’re revisiting some of our favorite, most informative shows. This is a rebroadcast of episode 248 featuring Kim Freeman who, with the help of her trained tracking cat Henry, helps find cats when they've gone missing – enjoy! Kim Freeman turned her lifelong love for cats into a career as a professional missing cat finder. When her own cat Mr. Purr went missing in 2008, Kim realized how little support families with a missing cat receive, and what bad advice they tend to be given. She set out to change this and today has developed a very specific process to help people all over the world find their missing cats. Kim starts by educating the cat’s owners using a downloadable online booklet and videos on her website. She then asks the owners to fill out an extensive cat profile questionnaire so that she can determine a search strategy. Kim tells us that there are eight probabilities of what could have happened to a missing cat, and her questionnaire, which asks about indoor behavio

Durning the month of December, we’re revisiting some of our favorite, most informative shows. This is a rebroadcast of episode 143 featuring the man who has one of the most interesting jobs we've ever heard of, Shaun Sears of Canopy Cat Rescue  – enjoy! You don’t need to call a fireman to rescue your cat from a tree when Shaun Sears is around. Shaun and his partner are certified arborists who have “branched out” (sorry!) into the specialty of rescuing cats from trees. Their firm, Canopy Cat Rescue, has recovered nearly 800 cats from trees over the last two years, and was featured on the Animal Planet program, “Tree Top Cat Rescue.” They operate as a non-profit, relying solely on donations for their work, so that they can rescue any cat regardless of an owner’s ability to pay. Shaun shares the knowledge he’s learned about how to deal with all types of cats —friendly and scared, feral and owned — and busts the myth that a cat will simply climb down when it’s hungry.   To find out more about Cat Canopy Rescue go

Durning the month of December, we’re revisiting some of our favorite, most informative shows. This is a rebroadcast of episode 222featuring The Cat Man of West Oakland, Adam Myatt – enjoy! Cats have been taking over this amazing guy’s life for the last eight years! What started as a small photography hobby has turned into a life-changing endeavor for Adam Myatt, leading the “Cat Man of Oakland” to dive head first into cat rescue and TNR, and to open the first cat cafe in the United States. Before he was the “Cat Man,” Adam was a musician and worked in a recording studio. He had a musician buddy who went on tour and started posting cat photos on Instagram with the hashtag #CatsOnTour. So when Adam himself went on tour, he kept the tradition alive and it just never stopped! Friends were impressed with his cat photos and encouraged him to do something with them, but Adam was determined not to invest what little money had had into cat merchandise. Instead, he decided to start a crowdfunding campaign to get things

Durning the month of December, we're revisiting some of our favorite, most informative shows. This is a rebroadcast of episode 175featuring cat behaviorist and host of Animal Planet's "My Cat From Hell", Jackson Galaxy - enjoy! It’s the Cat Daddy himself in this special episode of the podcast! Stacy has a fascinating conversation with Jackson Galaxy, the once-musician whose special bond with felines catapulted (sorry!) him to fame as a champion for helping people better understand cat behavior and find creative ways to help them. Season Eight of his show, My Cat From Hell, opens in late April with Jackson bringing 50 doomed kittens from Los Angeles on a van ride to Denver, accompanied by Kitten Lady Hannah Shaw. Jackson describes a number of the life-saving initiatives his foundation is piloting throughout the country, and gives a treasure trove of advice about what individuals can do to make a difference:  “Every something that you do will save somebody." For more information visit jacksongalaxyfoundation.or