CEO Shelter Update
Pictured: Adoptable dog Ellie enjoying a Doggy Day out in downtown Cheyenne.
Gojo the dog, with his wiry face and blue-spotted coat, trotted into the employee parking lot on a Sunday afternoon. The car he was following rolled down their window and explained to another person waiting in the lot that “he’s not our dog,” before driving away again. Luckily that person was a family member of a shelter staffer who had been called in on her day off. Gojo was brought inside, held for three days as a stray, and went up for adoption.
The next day, staffers arrived to open the Shelter and found two dogs tied to a light post in the parking lot. It was later discovered they had been picked up as strays along the highway in NE. Likely, the well-meaning people who picked them up were traveling this direction anyway, and we were the nearest shelters on their already-chosen route. Without any form of ID, the dog’s owners could not be found. They too were adopted out.
Maggie the rat arrived in a blood-stained pillowcase. Her distraught owner explained that while in the process of moving, Maggie had gotten loose in the car and in her attempts to catch her again, the owner accidentally grabbed her tail, causing a graphic degloving injury. Lacking the resources to take her for emergency care, she surrendered the rat to us. Maggie had to have a portion of her tail amputated first, but was adopted again very shortly after.
These are just a few of the many animals who come through our doors each day, and they all arrive under different circumstances with different stories. Each day, our dedicated staff and volunteers take them as they come, each individual, and tend to their needs as best we can. Our goals are always, first and foremost, to reunite pets with their owners when we can. And secondly, to find them new and loving homes when required.
But sometimes a third option is the best option. And that’s the one I want to write about today. Sometimes, getting an animal back to their home requires not that the home come to us, but that we go to the home. I’m talking, of course, about community cats. Those loosely-owned free roaming felines who wander from home to home. They come to us with varying degrees of affinity for people. Some of them are friendly as can be and, most likely, have a home they return to every night, safely curled in a familiar bed with people who love them very much. In other cases, their preference is to keep people at a respectable distance. But even these cats most often have relationships with known people. They have names (sometimes several of them), know all the best neighborhood hangouts, build territories and social relationships, and thrive in their known environments.
Community cat is a catch-all term we use at the Shelter to define any free-roaming cat who lacks identification in the form of a collar and tag or microchip. Other terms you may be more familiar with are feral cat, stray cat, barn cat, or working cat. Whatever you call them, we encourage you to imagine that wherever they are, they are most likely doing just fine. A healthy cat or kitten of good body weight and condition, and absent any obvious signs of injury and disease is already living his or her best life. They don't need to come to the Shelter.
Consider some of the following:
More than 40% of cat owners allow their cats to free-roam outdoors.
Nationally, fewer than 4% of stray cats or kittens entering shelters are reclaimed by their owners. (In our Shelter, that number is actually about 7%).
More than 80% of cats who are returned to the area from which they were picked up will return to known feeding stations (including homes) within a couple of hours.
If 40% of owned cats are roaming outdoors, and only 4% of those brought to the Shelter are ever reclaimed, it no longer makes good management sense to impound these animals.
This is why the Shelter is preparing to launch a new Community Cat Initiative. With the help of Lauren Thomas, a graduate student from CSU who is completing her Master’s program project with us over the summer, we have launched a new section of our website dedicated to providing information and resources to our community about how to live peacefully with these cats. Cheyenne and Laramie County’s cat population is not unique to our community. But the way we choose to manage them can be.
The Community Cat Initiative also includes a commitment to the practice of Return-to-Field. This program is designed to serve those cats who do not need to be separated from their home territory and environment. Stray cats brought to the Shelter, friendly or feral or anything in between, will be spayed or neutered, vaccinated against contagious disease, and microchipped. Depending on the cat’s body condition, age, adoptability, and the current shelter population, these animals may be simply returned to the area from which they originated and set loose again. Cats who are returned-to-field will also be ear-tipped. Already this year, more than 65 cats have been returned to their original location. When done efficiently, return-to-field reduces the chances of in-shelter disease exposure or transmission and helps to focus resources on animals who are not good candidates for the program. It also increases the likelihood of reunification with their families and helps to control the population of free-roaming cats now and in the future in that area.
Other components of the Community Cat Initiative include the continuation of our Community Cat spay and neuter program, which provides for appointment-based low cost spay and neuter for cats trapped by community members or caregivers. Provided trappers are willing to return the cats they trap to the area from which they came, the Shelter will provide affordable and accessible spay and neuter options.
We are also working with the City of Cheyenne to revise existing City ordinances to accommodate these and other best practices. In doing so, we are working to create a better city for pets and their people - codifying these practices to reflect both data-driven decision-making and the values and expectations of our community.
Cats, more than any other domesticated species, live at the edges of our ability to empathize and adapt to their lived experiences. Considered nuisances on one hand and beloved pets on the other, their liminal place has led to long-standing management approaches that are neither humane nor effective. As a result, free-roaming cat populations across the country continue to increase, as do the number of cats and kittens entering our Shelters each year. We simply cannot continue to do as we have always done and expect a different result.
I hope you will be excited to see the work of the Community Cat Initiative moving forward, and to support it with your understanding, donations, and time. For more information on the initiative visit https://www.cheyenneanimalshelter.org/communitycats and sign-up for our e-newsltter to follow along as the program grows.
