Speaker 1: Live.
Speaker 2: This is Pet Life Radio. Let's Talk pets.
Speaker 3: Hello, fee line lovers, Welcome to catatud I'm your show host,
Michelle Byrne.
Speaker 2: So guess what.
Speaker 3: It's kitten season. Actually we're kind of in the middle
of kitten season, so I'm a little late, but I
have a guest with me today that's going to tell
us all about kitten season and more. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone. I'd like to welcome Torrifugate. She is
the director of communications at Shelter Animals count. Welcome Toy.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited
to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to have you. You know, kitten season
is near and dear to my heart, two of my
fur babes, my cats, are from kitten season, and just
in that little rescue I learned so much. But before
we get into kitten season, can you tell us your
background and tell us also what Shelter Animals Count is
all about.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. So, I am relatively new to the Shelter Animals
Count team, and by relatively new, I've been here a
little bit over nine months, But I am not new
to sheltering. So I worked for almost thirteen years for
the Kansas City, Missouri Animal Shelter. It's called Casey Pet Project.
We are a nonprofit that runs the municipal shelter for
the city of Kansas City, Missouri, and started back in
twenty twelve whenever the city put out a bid for
somebody to run the shelter, and it was a really,
really old place, and you know, nobody really wanted to
run it, and this organization stepped up and said, you know,
we can really do this and do this well for
the city of Kansas City, Missouri. So I started really
in its infancy as an organization and saw it grow
from taking in about six thousand animals year in twenty
twenty four, there were about sixteen thousand animals that came
into the shelter, so grown rapidly over the course of
the last twelve thirteen years. Got to be a part
of a brand new shelter that was built in Kansas City,
and got to be part of just this very progressive
organization that did a lot for kittens in our community.
You know, we were averaging about twenty five hundred kittens
in foster every year. It was a hugely robust foster program.
And so I left there at the end of last
year and joined the Shelter Animals Count Team, where I
handle all of the communications, all the marketing for our
very small and mighty team. But we are an organization,
national organization that collects data and analyzes it for shelters
and rescues across the country. We have thousands of animal
shelters that submit data to us, and we are able
to then take that data and analyze it and tell
you what's happening, what are the trends in animal sheltering
that is impact acting our industry today. So we look
at we have two reports that we do each year.
We have our annual report that comes out at the
beginning of every year, and then we are gearing up
for our mid year analysis, so that mid year analysis
does come out after the first six months of the year,
and we're kind of able to tell you, you know, we're
really able to tell you what's happening in animal sheltering
for the first half of the year, kind of what's
to be expected. And you know, another thing that we
offer all of our organizations that submit data to us,
We have these incredible dashboards and portals that organizations can
get into that look at they can look at a
data outlook of like what their data is looking like
for the year, what forecasting is looking like. We're working
on other dashboards as well for our organizations. There's grant
opportunities for those who submit data to us, and really
like we just can't do the work without the organizations
that submit data to us, and we're able to put
this data out there for everybody to look at for
the year.
Speaker 3: Now, that's great, especially the fact that the shelters have
access to a portal and that there's grants that are
available as well.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yep, we offer we do data drives and stuff
throughout the year, so if you submit data to US,
then you automatically qualify for grants, So it's a it's
a huge win win to sign up to submit data
to US, and it's free to submit data as well.
Speaker 3: That makes it even better because there's so many rescues
out there. I'm just curious about this. How many rescues
and shelters would you say there are in the US.
Speaker 5: So we analyze that there were thirteen five hundred and
twenty seven animal sheltering organizations that operated in twenty twenty
four in the United States, so that breaks down to
a little over forty one hundred shelters and about ninety
four hundred rescues. And we collect and analyze data for
both shelters and rescues because it's very important to tell
both both of the stories of what's happening in the
shelters and what's happening in foster based rescues as well.
Speaker 3: Right, and these are only now. There are are other
possible rescues and shelters that are not incorporated.
Speaker 5: So the data that we do collect, we have over
seven thousand organizations that submit data to US, and then
our data team actually built in this scientific estimation model,
so we're able to, with the help of this model,
you know, put together like fill in the gaps of
those organizations that maybe we don't have data from. And
there's a lot of information on our website about what
goes into this model that we do have, but it
really does help us, you know, fill in the gaps.
And our goal, of course is one hundred percent participation
because without the data, we can't tell the story. And
it's so important that every animal is counted and that
every organization's efforts are amplified.
Speaker 3: Yes it is. Now we're talking about kittencies and we're
going to get into that in a second, but to
also do dogs as well.
Speaker 5: We collect analyzed data for both dogs and cats, but
you can also submit data for really any species that
you're caring for, so horses, we analyze equine data, small animals, livestock,
you know, whatever it is that your organization cares for,
you can submit that data. We also have our community
Services dashboard, so if you are an organization that provides
services to the community, such as giving out pet food supplies,
maybe you're a low cost veterinary clinic, or you're offering
medical services to the community, you can also submit that
data through our Community Services dashboard, So that is another
way that you can submit data to us. And it's
really important to note that data as well, because we
none understand that shelters are really having to provide a
lot more community services such as giving out pet food
and offering those low cost services to the community or
free services. So if you're an organization that provides any
sort of support to your community, you can submit data
through there as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, good to know. Let's talk about kitten season. So
we're recording in July, so kitten season is really April
through October.
Speaker 5: It is. Yeah, we really see. It's really interesting. So
we have these automatic data transfers that we get from
from our shelters that submit data to us. So if
you're an organization that is submitting data to us and
you don't like manual data entry, if you use certain
softwares animal management softwares, you can sign up for what
we call APIs for those automatic data transfers, so that
you don't have to submit that data manually anymore. It
just comes to us automatically. And with that data, we've
been able to really dive into what we call animal
level data. So this is getting down into the nitty
gritty with our data and looking at an animal's journey
from intake through their outcome.
Speaker 3: Just in the information that you sent me and I
just read the basic report, it gets very detailed. Let's
talk about kitten season. What is kitten season because some
of the cat levers listening now and some are like,
I'd never heard of that before.
Speaker 5: Yes, kitten season is the time of year where we
do start to see those underage kittens typically under eight
weeks old, that are coming into the shelters to be
careful coming into rescue groups, and that really rants up.
We see a huge spike in May. So when we
look at it breaking down by region, we can see
it's a little bit varied by region, but my goodness,
when May hits, you just see this massive intake increase.
And really that peaks around Memorial Day holiday is when
we see the most cats coming in to shelters as
around Memorial Day.
Speaker 3: A female cat, they can have kittens all year long,
though correct, yes.
Speaker 5: They can definitely shelters that if you are in a
shelter that experiences four seasons, if you're in a community
that does have four seasons, you may not see as
many kittens coming in. But I live in an area
in Kansas City where we have very very mild winters,
and we would see kittens coming in all year round,
but majority of them were coming in during those spring
and summer months.
Speaker 3: Right, And I live in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale, so
we have no sea. Yeah, so all year long, you.
Speaker 5: Were going to see them the most. And in fact,
when we look at the South Atlantic, that is the
highest region that sees the most kittens coming in.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I was gonna asked this question a little
bit later, but I was surprised to see that the
Pacific Northwest actually had the most kittens.
Speaker 5: Correct, It looks like the majority of the South Atlantic
had the most by regions, so and then the Pacific
was very much up there. So the Pacific region, the
South Atlantic region, and what's South Central also, So any
of those lower lower states in the United States were
seeing majority of the kittens coming in.
Speaker 3: Okay, And why is it that you know, everybody is
just aware of kitten season. Why they don't say, you know,
my regular listeners cat lovers, they love cats. They don't
necessarily work in shelters some do you know or rescues.
But what's so important for people to know about kitten season?
Speaker 5: Oh, there's so many things really to know about kitten season. One,
I think the shelters and rescues have done a really
good job over the last many, you know, ten years
or so of just informing the community how they can
help kittens. And we can always strive to get the
word out even even more so when kitten season is
ramping up, people can use data like what we provide
at shelter Animals Count to really look at Okay, so
this is the time of year that I can expect
to see the most kittens coming in. So how can
I get my community rallied around helping with getting all
these kittens out of the shelter and eventually into new homes.
So it's through fostering, asking for support, Through fostering, asking
for donations. Kittens require a lot of very specific types
of donations like warming blankets and disks and kitchen scales.
I mean, there's so many interesting things that the community
can help with and provide support for. Just volunteering maybe
the kittens are coming in volunteering to help clean kennels,
you know, just there's so so many ways that you
can help, And so shelters and rescues always can really
inform their community about how they can help move these
kittens into new homes.
Speaker 3: What about the age of adoption. So the people that
work at the shelters and rescue are pros. They can
pretty much gauge the age of the kitten.
Speaker 5: Yes, the kittens that come in. There's so many great
resources out there for aging kittens and how to wean
them if they come in without a mom, how to
wean them into solid food. There's so many great resources
out there for shelters and rescues to follow in. Around
eight weeks is typically the time where we see kittens
that are going into homes. They're at least eight weeks old.
Speaker 3: My next question about how old? I know what you mean?
Why am I cats?
Speaker 5: Molly?
Speaker 3: Her mom gave birth to her and my doorstep along
with two others and kittens. They take a lot of
work and they were all healthy and fine. But then
when they start moving around, that's a challenge.
Speaker 5: Yes, they become very active. Let's say, what can we do.
Speaker 3: I had neighbors calling because where I lived there's raccoons
in the back. So neighbors calling I had. I had
to figure out a way to keep the raccoons and
put non toxic of course, And I had a neighbor
write me a letter saying, somebody put something very smelly.
There was something you could do with hot pepper and
something else. It wasn't toxic to any animal, but it
would keep the raccoons away. I had to put this
smelly rag all over my property and a neighbor called
and said, who did that? This was like, sorry, hello
is me. I didn't want the raccoons to get the kittens.
You know.
Speaker 5: I always loved like whenever we had kittens coming in
in the shelter, like every day, multiple litters of kittens.
We had so many families that fostered together, like if
it was really fun that we would see like kids
that were naming all of the kittens. They would have
just the most ridiculous set of names. But they were
always so so cute, And I think really another good
thing for people to understand is what kittens need to
come into the shelters and what kittens perhaps are being
cared for by a mom. And again there's great resources
out there if kittens are you know, being taken care
of by a mom. Then there's an alternate path that
you can take to potentially not have those kittens come
into the shelters. But for those of them that do
need to come in and get that medical support and
everything that they need, the shelters are great resources for that.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to talk more about that as soon
as we come back. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone. We're talking to Toy Pugay. She is
the director of communications at Shelter Animals Count and we're
talking about kitten season. We're talking right before the break
about the age of kittens, because not everybody knows this.
What is the highest population of kittens at risk?
Speaker 5: Well, definitely the highest. The most vulnerable population of kittens
that are at risk are those under four week old.
Kittens and the four to eight week old kittens. So
when we look at we break down our non live
outcomes by age group and we look at it. In
twenty twenty four, thirty five percent of non live outcomes,
which means they had to be euthanized or dieting care,
we're under four weeks old, so those kittens are incredibly
vulnerable when come in. And then again those four to
eight weeks old was about thirty eight percent of all
the non live outcomes. And kittens and fostering kittens can
sometimes be a heartbreaking situation. Like you can you can
have kittens that maybe die and care or have to
be euthanized, and they're very very they're very vulnerable population,
and I think that it's so important, you know, for
shelters and rescues to be very transparent about you know,
what could happen when people are fostering kittens. It can
be one of the most rewarding experiences that you'll ever
have in your life of taking care of kittens. But
this is a very tiny and vulnerable population, and sometimes
there is heartbreak associated with this, and I think it's
just important to look at the data and understand that
these are vulnerable populations and then work towards how do
we continue to strive to towards those live outcomes.
Speaker 3: So we talked a little bit again before the break
about the data and how it helps shelters. How can
the data and helping shelters to help the people that
are just cat levers that are listening. Does it help
the cat lever to just know when to adopt kittens
or what they can how they can support the shelters
or yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think you really hit the nail on the head. It's
how you can lean in and support shelters. Chances are
there is a shelter or rescue near you that would
love to have your help, whether it's through fostering, whether
it's through donations of time or monetary gifts, supplies, whatever is.
There are a lot of kittens out there still that
do need support and help, and there are a lot
of groups out there that would love to have that support.
And when we look at this data, we can really
look at you by region, by age, group, whatever it is.
We can look at it and say, okay, so in
may I know that the kittens are going to come
in big time, and so I can really ramp up
my efforts and help them by signing up to be
a foster advanced of that, or you know, maybe it's
doing a supply drive like a kitten shower. I love
kitten showers. I think they're the cutest thing ever, like
having a baby shower, but for kittens. Wow, We're where
you just get with your group of friends and say,
here's the wish list for this organization, bring supplies. We
used to host them in breweries. I always thought that
was so fun, Like we had a brewery that would
host a kitten shower and people would come and drink
beer and bring supplies for the shelter. It was always
a good time.
Speaker 3: Hey, that is a great idea, you know, having or
if someone's even having a party, don't bring anything, bring
something for kittens.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Oh. We always had like the cutest kids that
did birthday parties for the kittens. Instead of asking for
birthday gifts, they asked for items from the wish list.
Like just the cutest thing ever and the best kids ever.
It was just adorable. So there's so many ways to help,
and really just looking at the data, you can really
see that timeline of when most help is needed.
Speaker 3: So the most help is needed May through.
Speaker 5: So underage kittens that are under eight weeks old peak
in May, but they come in pretty much all summer.
Then we start to see the eight week old to
five month olds. They come in June, and July is
when they peek coming in. So the kittens that are
born in the spring that end up coming in just
a little bit older. So it really just goes on.
I mean the whole year you do see kittens coming in,
but May through you know, July August is when we
see the peak times of kittens coming in.
Speaker 3: Okay, And then one of my peeves is people from
times forget that kittens become cats, so you know, when
you're making the commitment. They're cute little fluffballs when they're little,
but they become cats and they're part of your family
while they're a kitten, wather juvenile kitten while they're a cat.
So I think too many people forget about that. And
they're cute kittens, Let me have them around and when
they become cats and more mischievous. Okay, let me get
rid of the cat. Dennis. My first cat was rescue.
He was just in the streets dumped. So what do
you have to say about people that are thinking about
and I know you work for a research place, but
you have enough experience with shelters. But think of people
that are like, it's kitten season, I want to go
get a kitten, but am I ready or not? What
would you tell them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think really just look at your lifestyle, like,
you know, do you have kids, how often are you home.
The good news about just cat adoptions overall is that
cats are still having are definitely having a moment in
animal sheltering. Cat adoptions have just increased and the time
that they're spending in shelters, the amount of days has
decreased over the past five years. So cats are getting
adopted at a pretty significantly fast rate versus their counterpart
with dogs. So we are seeing cats that are getting
adopted faster than dogs, and I think a lot of
that does have to do with lifestyle changes. You know,
the cost of care is going up for pets. People
maybe think that cats are, you know, more affordable to adopt.
So cats are definitely continuing to have a really really
good moment. We still see, of course, a lot of
senior pets coming into the shelter that need homes. And
there are some amazing people out there that just love
to adopt senior or special needs cats. So no matter
you know what type of animal you're looking for, what
type of cat you're looking for, just kind of look
at your lifestyle of coft and your home thinking about,
you know, what would fit best with your family if
you have other pets, all of that factors need to
go into when you make a decision to adopt.
Speaker 3: Those your good point. I also want to add, if
you have super super fancy furniture, probably cats not for you.
Speaker 5: Well, they make all sorts of fun things like cat tees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. I was actually I had Jennifer Conrad
from American Cats The Good Bad Cudley about did you
see that movie?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: I didn't, really good check it out.
Speaker 3: Pagonist is a British woman who's pregnant, and she was funny,
it's not the typical kind of like a documentary that
you'd see, it's wonderful. And so I mentioned that and
she said, you're you're wrong, because she has a lot
of clients, you know, fancy Beverly Hills and fancy areas
of California that have gorgeous sofas, And I said, you're right,
you know, there are deterrens. There are plenty of deterrence.
And if you get a good scratcher.
Speaker 5: Yep, a good scratcher or the little kitten claw covers,
you know, the cat claw covers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for myself, I get the furniture that's universal because
it never fails. There's going to be one of them,
you know that's gonna claw. The part of my couch
that has a few claw marks, there's two scratchers right
in front of it. So wow. You know, kittens are
smart and they're cunning and if they want to, you know,
get into some mischiff, they will. And to me, I think,
just be prepared, you know.
Speaker 5: Yes. And here's another tip too, that we always acourage
people if they were interested in adopting a kitten to
consider two, adopting two at once and getting a buddy
from the same litter potentially, or that way that they
have each other to play with and cause mischief with
that they're playing with each other. And so we had
great success of finding homes that were people wanted to
adopt two kittens and then they grew up together.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is a great idea. Actually, my mother in law.
When her two cats passed, she adopted two together, and
they just they're the best of friends. They keep each
other busy and they're all good. I think it's better
to have two together at once rather than have one
because their cats are territorial, then add another one. So
that's what happened to me, and that was a challenge.
We worked through it, but that was definitely a challenge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, good for you. Yeah, it's uh, you know. We
would do even buy one, get one discounts and things
like that. So it was always always very successful and
it was really just so keeps see two kittens going
home with a family.
Speaker 3: I heard it from Venarians and so so much that
if you're going to adopt, adopt to it doesn't cost
that much more. They don't eat a lot, and this way,
don't keep each other company, and you don't don't have
to worry as much when you're at work or out
of the house.
Speaker 5: One hundred percent. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: We'll see as trends in the near future for shelters.
Speaker 5: That is a great question. It's really interesting when we
look at your overyear data because we're kind of seeing
we've been comparing to pre pandemic levels of like what
the animal welfare landscape and shelters and rescues look like
before the pandemic, and we've kind of established this new norm.
We continue to hear about shelters that are in crisis,
that shelters that are full, dogs are staying in shelters longer,
causing capacity capacity strains, and we're continuing to see this
sort of new normal with the data, and we're going
to continue in like analyzing it that's year over year analysis,
so that we can look for any sort of varying trends,
especially with our mid year analysis coming up. Compare it
to last year, see how things are looking. But it's
really exciting with this data that we've been releasing, like
our kitten level analysis animal level analysis, because this has
never been done before, so we're looking at brand new
data for our industry. And because of this, we're able
to look at what potential trends we can, you know,
have for next year. We can say, Okay, this is
what the datas looked like for the last two years
for kittens coming into the shelters. We can expect this
same you know, data for or at least very very
close to it. For the following years, and so it's
really being able to provide this level of analysis to
our industry that's never been done before and just informing
trends for the future.
Speaker 3: Right, it's like forecasting for the forecast.
Speaker 5: Yes, and we do have forecasting dashboards for shelters too,
so they can look and see, Okay, this is what
my year has looked like so far, So this is
what can I can expect for the rest of the year.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's wonderful. Where can our listeners find out more
about Shelter Animals Count and about kitten season.
Speaker 5: You can go to shelteranimalscount dot org. We are on there.
We have publicly available dashboards, so you can see national
trends as well as state level data. So if you're
curious of what your data is looking like in the
state where you live and comparing it to those around you,
you can see that. We also offer a lot of
webinars and blog content that do feature information about data standardization.
A lot of these deep dives into the analysis, such
as the kitten data, and that's all on our blog.
And so there's a lot of really exciting things that
we have coming up for the rest of the year
as well as looking towards next year and just offering
more and more resources for our shelters or rescues and
the animal welfare industry as a whole.
Speaker 3: Well, that's wonderful, Toy. Thank you so much for all
you do for the kitten and the cat.
Speaker 5: Yes, of course, thank you so much. You can follow
us on social media as well, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and substuck.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks so much. I hope all of you enjoyed
the show. I want to thank Torri Fugate, the director
of communications for Shelter Animals COUNT, for coming on Catitude.
Thanks so much to my loyal listeners of Catitude, I
appreciate you so much. Thanks to my rescue cats Dennis,
Charlotte and Molly, my wonderful cat crew, and of course,
this show would not be the same without the magic
of my producer, Mark Winter. Thank you so much, Mark
for all you do and remember, lose to Attitude, Have Catitude.
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