United States: Five Years to Save One Million Cats in Shelters

Last year, two American universities launched the Million Cat Challenge* to reduce euthanasia rates and the number of cats ending up in shelters across North America. Their joint program aims to save one million of these animals over the next five years, through 2018. This campaign to rescue shelter cats is a joint project of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program at the University of California and Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. Its organizers hope to expand the challenge to include municipal animal pounds and private shelters of all sizes. According to figures from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), there are more than 13,600 animal shelters in the United States, which take in approximately 7.6 million pets each year. Of these, 3.4 million are cats, and 1.4 million cats in shelters are euthanized each year. The goal of the Million Cat Challenge is to reduce these disheartening statistics by helping animal shelters implement one or more of the five proposed solutions:

• seek and find alternatives to shelters for rehoming cats;
• manage intake based on the shelter’s capacity to provide appropriate care for each individual;
• align the number of cats in a shelter with its capacity to ensure animal welfare;
• increase adoptions by removing barriers (cost, medical treatments);
• sterilize and vaccinate healthy stray cats before releasing them back to where they were found, as an alternative to euthanasia.

Since early 2014, some 119,380 lives have already been saved thanks to this challenge launched to all participating shelters, veterinarians, and numerous national and regional animal welfare organizations. An initiative supported by the AVMA.   * http://www.millioncatchallenge.org