The Community Cats Podcast

Durning the month of December, we're revisiting some of our favorite, most informative shows. This is a rebroadcast of episodes 256 and 257 which we dubbed “The Mike & Carmine Show” - enjoy! Stacy speaks with Mike Keiley, the Director of Adoption Centers and Programs at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), and Carmine DiCenso, Executive Director of the Dakin Humane Society in Leverett & Springfield MA in this first part of “The Mike & Carmine Show.” You can check out Mike's first visit to Community Cats Podcast in 2016 in Episode 9 Both Mike & Carmine have been in the animal welfare field as long as Stacy has, and the two of them speak together regularly at conferences and programs. Both recognized as leaders and innovators, they discuss many topics with Stacy in this episode, including the trends and changes they have seen with community cats over the years. When Mike started in animal welfare, there was an overwhelming number of cats. In general, people

After bringing you up to speed on how a "virtual conference" works, they chat about a special returning guest, The Kitten Lady, and the line up of brand new guest speakers and the topics they'll be presenting for attendees at this event that takes place January 25, 26, and 27, 2019. You'll learn what fun community building activities will be returning in the second year of the conference and be introduced to some of the new features that will be included this year. Stacy and Kristen also discuss their scheduled "Best of December". They'll be bringing back some of their favorite, most interesting shows from the past few years! From the launch date of this podcast you only have SIX DAYS to take advantage of early bird pricing for conference registration. Save $25 now by visiting onlinecatconference.comand registering on or before November 30th for just $50. On December 1st, registration will be $75.

Internet sensation Moshow was born and raised in inner city Baltimore, MD. He didn’t grow up with pets, and it wasn’t until he was in college that what he calls “cat fever” took over. Since then, Moshow has combined his passion for cats and rap to defy the odds and build a name for himself as the “Cat Rapper.” About to release his third album in late November 2018, Moshow is on a mission to share his message with the world—and his message includes raising awareness around lots of issues related to cats. Moshow believes in rapping about what he knows, and, as he puts it, “I knew that I loved cats, I knew that I loved cat ladies, I knew that I was about peace, love, and positivity, I knew that I was about getting cats adopted, and I know that I’m just generally a positive person, so I figured that the best thing I could do for myself was to only rap about the life that I actually live.” Moshow’s songs touch on topics like supporting animal shelters, the benefits of not declawing cats, adopting vs. shopping, and

Aaron Hancox and Michael McNamara of Markham Street Films join Stacy in this episode to talk about their documentary,Catwalk: Tales from the Cat Show Circuit, which follows the Canadian competitive cat show world. Aaron is a long-time cat guy whose cat Beau was adopted from a Toronto rescue, but Michael is actually allergic to cats! Aaron stumbled across a local cat show and was surprised and fascinated by how serious and competitive the cat show world was. “If I’m a cat person and I don’t know about this,” he thought, “presumably many people don’t know about this.” And to Aaron, that was the perfect premise for a documentary. During the year-long process, he and Michael followed several cats and their people through the competitive cat show circuit, and learned the complex rules of how cat shows work. In Canada, the cat show season lasts about ten months, and there are shows basically every weekend. Aaron and Michael tell us that cat shows differ from many dog shows in that they are more like beauty pageants

This week our show is a little different. In addition to hosting The Community Cats Podcast, Stacy LeBaron also appears on HubCats TV, a show on Chelsea Cable Access where she and her co-host discuss animal welfare topics with an aim to educate and raise awareness. Pet health, community cats and services available to pet owners and feral cat caretakers are often the focus. This week we're bringing you audio from one of Stacy's favorite episodes featuring an interview with Dr. William Snell of Blue Pearl Pet Hospital in Charlestown, MA. On the show, Dr Snell shares what it is like working for an emergency clinic, some of the everyday stresses veterinarians experience, what an ER visit is like for a pet and their owner, and some information about the specialties Blue Pearl offers. If you'd like to learn more about HubCats and check out HubCats TV visit their website, hubcatschelsea.com. If you'd like more information about 24 Hour Specialty & Emergency Vet Hospital in Charlestown, MA, you can visit their w

Liz Illig, owner of Puff & Fluff Grooming & Pet Sitting, located in Phoenix, Arizona, joins Stacy to talk about cat grooming, and about how Puff & Fluff helps area rescue groups. Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Liz has always had a strong connection to animals. During her college years in Arizona, she began taking on pet sitting clients, and after graduation, she decided she wanted to find a business that would be complementary to that work. She purchased a grooming business from its retiring owner, and she now has four shops in the greater Phoenix area, plus she has added pet sitting to the company’s services. Liz serves as a consultant to other area businesses, and as a board member at Gabriel’s Angels, an organization that assists local at-risk children by using therapy animals to help them work through issues they are experiencing. Liz is currently working on a large, day-long event with Puff & Fluff during which a number of area rescue organizations will be able to bring foster animals—part

Gary Willoughby, the President and CEO of the SPCA Serving Erie County in West Seneca, New York, joins Stacy to talk about what’s going on at the nation’s second oldest humane society. A passionate life-long learner, Gary joined the SPCA in 2016, after several animal welfare roles, as well as several roles in other fields. Among other topics, Gary talks with Stacy about the SPCA’s full-service wildlife clinic, and how having that clinic alongside a more traditional animal shelter has informed both the SPCA’s work with and data collection around cats and trap-neuter-vaccinate-return programs. Over the years, Gary tells us, they have been able to measure the successful impact of local TNVR programs through decreased intakes into the shelter, as well as through a decrease in the number of wild animals brought into the wildlife clinic with cat-related injuries. The SPCA Serving Erie County is big on education, including helping folks understand why just feeding stray or feral cats is only the first step (and then

Kelly Duer, Foster Program Consultant for Maddie’s Fund, has worked with many organizations over the years, including such big names as FEMA and Best Friends Animal Society. The goal of her work is to help groups increase live outcomes for animals through the implementation of robust foster programs. Kelly came to this role after working on foster programs for children from Eastern Europe. A life-long cat lover, she got involved in animal welfare when her daughter became interested in working with animals and they decided to volunteer at an animal shelter together. They soon began fostering animals, and before long, the shelter staff asked Kelly to coordinate a foster care study that Maddie’s Fund wanted to run on their program. In her interview with Stacy, Kelly, who is very passionate about behavioral foster care for cats, answers Stacy’s tough foster care questions, including: How do you choose who to focus on when your foster care resources are limited?; What is your gold standard of a foster care program

Those of you who have been CCP fans for a long time may remember hearing Stacy chat with Julie Jacobson before in Episodes 2and 92. Julie runs Spay Tennessee, but is also the CCP grants coordinator. If you don’t know about the CCP grant program, here’s how it works, in a nutshell: small organizations apply to the program for a matching grant. If their application is approved, they get a period of time (usually about three months) in which to conduct a new fundraiser. Once they do, CCP will match up to $1,000 raised. It’s that simple! But what about the details? In this episode, Julie & Stacy talk about the nitty-gritty of the CCP grant program, including what size groups can apply, whether you need to have a TNR program in placebeforeapplying (yes!), what the money can be used for (hint: it starts with “spay” and ends with “neuter”), what some of the pitfalls are, and what exactly qualifies as a new fundraiser (this one’s easy: it can be anything, big or small, as long as your organization has never trie

In Part II of this two-part episode, Stacy continues her conversation with Anne Lindsay, the founder & president of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition (MAC). Anne talks about what she feels MAC’s greatest achievements – and greatest challenges – have been over the organization’s history. (It turns out they are one and the same: getting so many different people with different opinions together into one organization!) Anne tells us about MAC’s three annual educational meetings: All About Dogs, Whole Cat Workshop, and “Hot Topics,” a meeting that covers both cat and dog issues. This year, MAC is adding a fourth meeting about the business of running an animal welfare organization as well. MAC has lots of advice available for other folks who are thinking about setting up a coalition organization in their area, and they are happy to walk other groups through the process they went through. “It’s not about making a clone of MAC,” Anne says. “It’s more about what is it that your area needs and how can we help you

Anne Lindsay, the founder & president of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition (MAC), has been an animal advocate for over 30 years. Founded in 2000, MAC was one of the country’s first state-wide coalitions for animal welfare professionals and volunteers. In her role at MAC, Anne works with other groups, states, and communities on setting up coalitions, and she also works with organizations on board development. In 2010, Anne earned her master’s degree in counseling psychology, and she uses that training to help people and organizations work on compassion fatigue issues. While MAC was initially started in order to approach Maddie’s Fund for grant money (which they never did!), Anne and others involved in the group early on quickly realized how valuable the coalition could be in and of itself. The group realized that many of the animal welfare groups in Massachusetts weren’t getting along well at the time, and that in order to do the best possible work for animals, groups needed to work on getting along bette

Darlene Duggan, the Director of Operations at Tree House Humane Society in Chicago, holds a master’s degree in public health and epidemiology. Darlene originally planned to be a doctor, but just as she getting ready to go to medical school, she realized that the thing she enjoyed the most in her life was volunteering at an animal shelter. She decided to apply her knowledge and talents to the animal welfare field, and the rest is history—nearly fifteen years of history at various animal welfare organizations in the Chicago area. Darlene’s current organization was founded in 1971, and at the time, it was one of just a few cat-only shelters in the country, and one of an ever fewer number of cageless ones. Tree House has always been progressive in their thinking and structure, and they are well known on a national level for the work they do. In the early 2000s, Tree House ramped up their community cat efforts when they realized that too many shelters were having to choose between euthanizing feral cats and attemp

Olivia Westley, a former teacher who discovered her true passion for helping cats when she started volunteering in a Forgotten Cats pet store adoption center, now serves as the group’s Development Director. Forgotten Cats is a nonprofit organization with the mission of preventing the birth and suffering of unwanted kittens by controlling the free-roaming cat pop through TNVR. They provide free or low-cost sterilization for pet and free-roaming cats in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and they have sterilized over 110,000 cats since they were founded in 2003. The organization began as a “one-woman show,” with the founder, Felicia Cross, trapping and transporting feral cats herself, and holding them in her garage until surgery spaces were available. Felicia found that her biggest challenge was the availability of surgery slots, and so she decided to start her own group to tackle the problem. Today, Forgotten Cats has three clinic facilities (two in Pennsylvania, and a new one in Delaware), as w

Jim Tedford, President & CEO of The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement (formerly SAWA), who previously appeared on Community Cats Podcast episode #199, joins Stacy again to discuss his organization’s new name, their rebranding, and their new commitment to making educational opportunities available to even more folks in the animal welfare world. Formerly SAWA (Society of Animal Welfare Administrators), Jim’s organization is now known as The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement or simply “The Association.” The group has been around for nearly 50 years, and as that milestone approached, they felt it was time for them to evolve—just as the animal welfare industry itself has evolved and changed over the past 50 years. As a professional association of leaders in animal welfare and animal care and control, The Association wanted their new name to reflect the fact that they have something to offer toanyonewho aspires to lead in this field—not just executives from large organizations. The Association

Karen Kraus and Bob Sallinger’s organizations, the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon and the Audubon Society of Portland, have formed what may seem to some to be a most unlikely partnership between “cat people” and “bird people.” But the truth, Karen and Bob have found, is that animal welfare and wildlife conservation have a lot more in common than people might think. Karen’s group, the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon, is a high-volume spay/neuter program in Portland that offers TNR services for feral and stray cats and low-cost spay/neuter for owned cats. Since its founding in 1995, the group has altered over 92,000 cats. They are focused on trying reduce the numbers of stray and feral cats on the streets, but in addition to spay/neuter, they do a lot of education—part of which happens through their partnership with the Portland Audubon Society. Portland Audubon Society (Bob’s group and the largest chapter of the National Audubon Society), has a state-wide focus on protecting birds and other wildlife and their hab

Danielle Bays, the new Director of Cat Protection and Policy at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), plays “Cat Protection and Policy Jeopardy!” with Stacy in this episode. Danielle is responsible for staying on top of cat policy issues all over the country, and she fills us in on current cat legislation and issues in various states around the nation, including Delaware, where a community cat bill is currently on the governor’s desk, awaiting his signature; Rhode Island, where a TNR bill got some not-so-useful things added to it along the way and didn’t make it through the legislature before it went on summer break; Wisconsin, where much discussion is happening among all the stakeholders involved in community cat issues; and Hawaii, always a hot-bed for TNR issues, where the idea of a pet food surcharge to help raise funds for spay/neuter has been put forth. In spite of all the legislative action in these states, as well as other spay/neuter funding initiatives in Idaho and New Mexico) and declawin

Erin Robinson admits that once upon a time, she simply didn’t know that community cats existed, let alone what you were supposed to do about them. That all began to change when she started volunteering in a county animal services facility during college in North Carolina, and when she went on to work for a high-volume spay/neuter clinic connected to Operation Catnip in Gainsville, Florida. Erin hasn’t stopped working with community cats since, and she worked with Alley Cat Allies before landing her current role as Community Cats Program Manager at Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, D.C. Over the past decade, Humane Rescue Alliance’s community cat programs have gone from being a small, grassroots, volunteer-based part of the organization to becoming truly mission-critical. The program offers free TNR for cats within Washington, D.C., including spay/neuter surgery, distemper and rabies vaccinations, topical treatment for parasites, and microchipping as part of their TNR packages. Erin feels that it’s importa

Pamela Merritt — better known as “Dear Pammy” through her cat advice blog — didn’t become a cat fan until she married one. At the time, she says, cats were really still second-class citizens in this country. There weren’t any no-kill shelters, and she and her first husband rescued many cats themselves. Pam learned how to be a “cat appreciator” from her first husband, and she came to realize that cats are our equals, and that our relationships with them work best if we don’t think in terms of a master-owner mindset. Pam did cat rescue for many years, and has now written a book, The Way of Cats, subtitled “How to use their instincts to train, understand, and love them.” The book is currently available only in Kindle format, but a paperback version is in the works, as is a video channel. In the meantime, Pam also continues her cat advice blog on her website, where she tackles such topics as keeping cats off the kitchen counters. Pam feels that most “training” of cats happens naturally when we appreciate and care

John Boone’s professional track has been that of a wildlife biologist, but he also serves as a consultant with Humane Society International, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and several other national and international organizations. He specializes in program metrics, statistical analysis, and population biology, and he has worked on many programs around the world designed to improve the welfare of free-roaming dogs and cats. John has volunteered at his local SPCA, and has fostered many special needs animals. His professional work in population biology and his personal love for companion animals collided when Maddie’s Fund got involved in humane work in Nevada. John has been involved in several projects trying to delve into whether TNR is an effective way to manage large numbers of cats. In looking at these issues, John believes that it is helpful to have an awareness of the bigger issues surrounding any TNR project, as well as the individual welfare issues connected to each cat that is affected. O

Tune in to the second part of “The Mike and Carmine Show,” with Mike Keiley of the MSPCA and Carmine DiCenso of Dakin Humane, as they continue their conversation with Stacy. In this episode, Mike & Carmine offer their tips for people who feel like they are hitting a brick wall around their efforts at advocating for change. Carmine suggests that people begin by looking at themselves and their approach, focusing on what they can change —and that they guard against focusing solely on the desired outcome, and instead try to break the issue up into a step-by-step process. Mike notes that we sometimes tend to lose our cool in animal welfare, and that we just need to think about adjusting our approach and trying to hit the smaller, more achievable goals, rather than trying to do everything at once Mike, Carmine & Stacy go on to discuss transport programs, including the fact that Dakin imports animals, while MSPCA generally does not. Carmine feels it’s important to continue to fulfill the traditional shelter