Clicker training has the potential to mitigate stress among shelter cats by providing environmental enrichment and human interaction. This study assessed the ability of cats housed in a shelter-like setting to learn new behaviors via clicker training...
Behavior-related factors represent a major cause of cat relinquishment to shelters, highlighting the need for reliable tools to support appropriate matching between cats and adopters. The present study applied the ASPCA® Meet Your Match® Feli...
At any moment, there are millions of cats housed in foster care facilities for abandoned and stray animals for various reasons worldwide. Care, management and regulation among these facilities differ. Moreover, shelters can never substitute the full...
The percentage of adult cats euthanized in animal shelters is greater than that of kittens because adult cats are less likely to be adopted. This study aimed to provide evidence to inform the design of strategies to encourage adult cat adoptions. One...
Although the adoption rate of dogs and cats from animal shelters has increased, a proportion of animals are returned to the shelter after they are adopted. The purpose of this study was to assess the factors informing the return of 102 dogs to an ani...
Consistent inter-individual differences in behaviour have been previously reported in adult shelter cats. In this study, we aimed to assess whether repeatable individual differences in behaviours exhibited by shelter cats in different situations were...
Several factors may influence cats’ length of stay (LoS) within the shelter environment. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential influence that baby schema (characteristic facial features of infants, related to perceived ‘c...
Due to resource limitations, animal shelters in Australia historically have focused on rehoming animals considered ‘highly adoptable’. Increasingly, animal shelters in Australia are rehoming animals with pre-existing medical and/or behavi...
Measures aimed at reducing the length of stay (LOS) of cats in shelters can promote animal welfare and more efficient use of resources. The extent to which variables shown to impact LOS are broadly applicable is unclear. The aim of this study was to...
Cats can experience physiological stress during transitions to unfamiliar environments, such as shelter admission. To enable non-invasive stress assessment in cats, fecal glucocorticoid metabolites were quantified by liquid chromatography–tande...
Upper respiratory tract disease (URTD) is a clinically relevant infectious disease in shelter cats, with individual and population-level welfare implications. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of famciclovir in reducing clin...
Animal welfare organizations routinely accept large numbers of cats with unknown histories, and whose backgrounds vary from well-socialized pets to cats that have had little or no contact with humans. Agencies are challenged with making the determina...
Animal welfare organizations typically take in cats with unknown levels of socialization towards humans, ranging from unsocialized cats well-socialized but lost pets. Agencies typically determine the socialization status and disposition options of ca...
The merits of various housing options for domestic cats in shelters have been debated. However, comparisons are difficult to interpret because cats are typically not able to be randomly assigned to different housing conditions. In the current study,...
This study aimed to evaluate the introduction of Protoparvovirus carnivoran1 (feline panleukopenia virus, FPV/canine parvovirus type 2, CPV-2) and feline coronavirus (FCoV) at admission in a public feline shelter, their molecular epidemiology, and po...
Every year, dogs and cats are relinquished to animal shelters by their owners in large numbers. Reasons for relinquishment of dogs and cats to a large Danish shelter from 1996 to 2017 were obtained and characterised. The reasons were available for 86...
The surrender of cats to animal shelters results in financial, social and moral burdens for the community. Correlations of caretaking and interactions with surrendered cats were calculated, to understand more about humans’ relationships with surrende...
Cats are susceptible to infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Whilst a number of studies have been performed worldwide on owned cats, limited data are available on stray, colony or shelter cats. We investigated...
There is considerable research on why cats are initially relinquished to shelters, but much less attention has been given to returns, despite the significant implications for shelter capacity and cat welfare. Furthermore, the structure of many databa...
Some nonhuman animal shelters have developed rehoming programs for black cats to remedy what they believe are their higher rates of euthanasia and lower rates of adoption. This study reviews humans’ preferences/aversions to cats of various coat...
With advances in veterinary medicine that can increase the lifespan of cats and dogs and the effectiveness of spay/neuter programs in reducing the juvenile population of pets, animal shelters are experiencing an increasing population of older compani...
Many healthy adult cats are euthanised annually in shelters, and novel approaches are required to reduce euthanasia rates. Waiving adoption fees is one such approach. However, concerns that less responsible owners will be attracted to free events per...
Despite high numbers of cats admitted to animal shelters annually, there is surprisingly little information available about the characteristics of these cats. In this study, we examined 195,387 admissions to 33 Australian RSPCA shelters and six frien...
This retrospective study of cat admissions to RSPCA Queensland shelters describes changes associated with improved outcomes ending in live release in 2016 compared to 2011. There were 13,911 cat admissions in 2011 and 13,220 in 2016, with approximate...
The aim of this study was the direct detection of feline coronavirus by real-time PCR and by three different rapid immunochromatographic (RIM) tests detecting antigens in faecal samples of shelter cats. Based on sensitivity and specificity calculated...
Animal protection, which also comprises the subject of abandoned and stray animals, has become a pressing and widely discussed topic. The aim of this study was to compare dogs and cats from two shelters in a selected region of the Czech Republic, bas...
Access to comprehensive municipal pound, animal welfare shelters, and rescue group data for admissions and outcomes for stray and owner-relinquished cats in Australia is currently lacking. This hinders effective assessment of existing management stra...
The COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns that companion animals might be infected with, and could become a reservoir of, SARS-CoV-2. As cats are popular pets and susceptible to Coronavirus, we investigated the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in...
A lack of published information documenting problems with the microchip data for the reclaiming of stray animals entering Australian shelters limits improvement of the current microchipping system. A retrospective study analysing admission data for s...
Enriching cats’ living environment in shelters is crucial in reducing their stress. Easier access to resources allows cats to display natural behavior. This study aimed to assess whether cats staying in an enriched environment would be less str...
Managing stray cats in urban areas is an ongoing challenge, and in Australia, many are euthanized. Most stray cats are from disadvantaged areas and are under 1 year of age. The Australian Pet Welfare Foundation intended to assess the impact of a free...
The process of domestication is likely to have led to the development of adaptive interspecific social abilities in animals. Such abilities are particularly interesting in less gregarious animals, such as cats. One notable social behaviour that cats...
Reading books to shelter animals combining auditory enrichment with human presence is increasingly used although its effects on animal welfare have not yet been investigated. This study compared the behaviour of single-housed shelter dogs and cats du...
Feral cats that are roaming outside can serve as reservoirs for zoonotic pathogens, negatively impacting public health. They may experience high levels of parasitic infection. Some gastrointestinal protozoa and microsporidia possessing zoonotic poten...
It is estimated that 2.5 million cats enter animal shelters in the United States every year and as few as 20% leave the shelter alive. Of those adopted, the greatest risk to post-adoption human animal bond is unrealistic expectations set by the ado...
Feline panleukopenia virus (FPV) causes severe enteric and systemic disease in cats, with particular importance in shelter environments where susceptible kittens, high population turnover, environmental contamination, and variable vaccination histori...
Antimicrobial resistance is a widespread global health problem. The presence of resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes has been demonstrated not only in humans but also in animals, including pets. Stray cats share the urban environment wi...
The number of cats and dogs impounded and euthanized at animal shelters in the USA has declined dramatically in recent decades. The Humane Society of the United States reported that in 1973 an estimated 13.5 million cats and dogs were euthanized nati...
Domestic cats are euthanized at high rates in shelters, and appropriate matching between cats and adopters is believed to improve adoption success and reduce euthanasia rates. The ASPCA’s Meet Your Match® Feline-ality™ program, design...
Millions of pets are abandoned worldwide every year, which is an important animal welfare and financial problem. This paper was divided into three studies. Our first two studies were designed as a national survey of animal shelters to profile the pop...
Available evidence indicates that overall levels of feline intake and euthanasia at U.S. shelters have significantly declined in recent decades. Nevertheless, millions of cats, many of them free-roaming, continue to be admitted to shelters each year....
Shelter organisations take responsibility for the care, assessment and homing of large numbers of domestic cats from diverse backgrounds. However, not all cats that come under shelter care are suited to close human-cohabitation or to certain types of...
Each year, millions of cats enter U.S. animal shelters, where black cats experience lower adoption rates. This study examined whether three factors contribute to this disparity: (1) superstitious beliefs, (2) projected skin-color bias, and (3) diffic...
The prevalence of respiratory nematodes in domestic animals has increased in Europe in recent decades. Aelurostrongylus abstrusus is the most common parasitic nematode of the respiratory tract in felids, and an increase in its prevalence has been sug...
This study was initiated in 2004 because the prevalence of feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) infections in feral cats in San Mateo County (SMC) was not known. The cities attributed to the feral cat population presen...
Reducing stress is important to maintaining the health of shelter cats and decreasing the risk of upper respiratory disease (URD). The aim of this study was to determine if the frequency and/or duration of daily routine handling of shelter cats affec...
Anecdotal reports indicate that many animal shelters experienced increased adoption and foster care rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet peer-reviewed evidence is lacking. In this pilot survey of 14 animal shelters in the Northeastern United State...
The feline leukemia virus (FeLV) belongs to the family Retroviridae; it is the first feline retrovirus discovered and one of the agents that has a great impact on cats’ health and the ecology of the feline population worldwide. It is associated...
Members of the Felidae family are the definitive host of the ubiquitous zoonotic parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Few studies have been conducted to determine the epidemiology of T. gondii in domestic felines within animal shelter populations. The goal of...
Most cats and dogs entering Australian animal shelters and municipal facilities are classed as strays, typically from low socio-economic areas. Contemporary practices increasingly focus on proactively reducing the number of stray animals, which requi...
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