The Community Cats Podcast

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