Speaker 1: Hey, this is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: It's Oh Behaved with Arden More, this show that teaches
you how to have harmony in the household with your pets.
Join Ardna. She travels coast to coast to help millions
better understand why cats and dogs do what they do.
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Garner great pet tips and have a dog one fer
flying fun time. So get ready for the paws and
applause as we unleaseh your Oh Behave hosts America's pet
edutainer Arden Moore.
Speaker 3: Buther up pet pals.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the Old Behave show on Pet Life Radio.
I'm your host, Arden Moore, one of the world's top
champions for cats, especially those with holmes. It's our special
guest today. She unifies cat advocates, works with shelters, and
develops technology to truly make this a twenty first century
pursuit of bringing out the best in cats. Yes, I
did say persuits.
Speaker 3: Come on, guys, you know me.
Speaker 4: Please welcome back to our show and proudly sporting the
title of headcat for Community Cats Central Stacy Leberon Welcome, Welcome, Stacy.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Arden. It's always a pleasure to chat
with you. It's fun, not just a pleasure, but fun too.
Speaker 4: Well, you got some big muse Yes, I'm just full
of puns today. Big news. For many, many years, people
know have been following you as the Community Cats Podcast,
and it's amazing, over five hundred episodes, great topics, great guests,
but you have expanded your goals. Please tell us what
does it mean now that it's called Community Cats Central? Right?
Speaker 3: I am so excited to share that we are now
called Community Cat Central, which does not mean the podcast
is going away. We have over now over six hundred
episodes of the podcast and we're going to keep We're
going to keep going, going going, as long as there's stories,
as you know from the news world, as long as
there's stories, we're going to still have a podcast. And
so I have all confidence that the stories are going
to continue and folks are going to continue to turn
their passion for cats into action. But we really felt
over the years that we needed Community Cats Central something
more than a podcast, because we'd become more than a podcast.
We were doing over thirty online events, and we wanted
to be able to also provide some online education. So
we've crafted this whole e learning center at Community Cats Central,
which has memberships, it has access to all of our events,
that has online and on demand events. It's all virtual.
I want to be able to have education for someone
in Ireland. We have a person in Ireland that is
a Community Cat passholder. We want to be global. Cats
are everywhere. If cats are everywhere, we should be everywhere, right,
and so we want it to be accessible, affordable, be
able to touch anyone who's out there who wants to
turn that passion for cats into action, you know, including
you Arden. We're collaborating with you on a great projects.
And you've been a long time attendee and speaker at
our Online Behavior Day. So yeah, and we're gonna do
some consulting. We got some.
Speaker 4: Really fun things going on down the road.
Speaker 3: But anyway, it's not great. I am so jazzed. Come on,
this is like global.
Speaker 4: You know, we're gonna dive into this a little bit more.
We got to take a quick break, so you guys
know the drill. We got to sit per We'll be
right back.
Speaker 3: Time for a pause for very ones.
Speaker 2: Actually sit and stay all behave. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Let's talk pets on Petlifradio dot com. All behaves back
with more tail wagging ways to achieve harmony of old
with your pets, Now back to your fetching host, America's
pet edutainer, art and more.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the.
Speaker 4: Old Behave show on pet Life Radio. I'm your host,
Arden Moore. Got a great gal here. Her name is
Stacy Leberon and she has a global group that is
helping cats all over and it used to be just
simply called Community Cats Podcast, but it was always more
than just the podcast. It's online learning, as you said,
and then you have been quiet. You've been very quiet
for anybody on some things and behind the scenes, and
it's because you can let the big news out of
the bag. I don't want to put a cat in
a bag. Let's just put big news in the bag
and take it out. And the Community Cats Central, So
we're going to dive into more because you do online conferences,
you do online e learning, but you know, I think
people now want to be able to learn anywhere on
their own preference, right, So the secret to e learning
and how does that apply to helping us help cats?
Speaker 3: So yeah, we have all of these certification programs. So
we have partnered with organizations like Neighborhood Cats and the
National Kit and Coalition on a series of certification programs,
especially Neighborhood Cats. We've been running these TNR TRAP New
Return certification workshops. It's about a three hour session. You
take a test at the end and people get their certificate.
They show it to their local veterinarian to show that
they know what a cat trap is and they're not
trying to just take a feral cat and shove it
in a carrier or try and you know, carry it
in in a towel or whatever. You know, we know
how to handle those cats that really need a different
approach with regards to how to be brought into a
veterinarian and trying to have it be this collaborative community solution.
It's TNR or tn VR if you prefer to put
that v in there with just vaccinate t n VR culture.
Everyone individuals know what an ear tip is. You were
talking earlier before we started about an ear tip and
you know what that means, but not many people know
what that means. And well, so here you are, you're
on all behaved, let it out. So if you see
a cat with an ear tip on the left ear,
a little flat cut, it means a cat has been
spade or neutered and probably has at least one rabi's
vaccine and maybe a distemper vaccine and its arsenal of
health services carrying going with that cat. If you're in
California or Oregon or the state of Washington, that ear
tip will be on the right hand side. I didn't
know that, and so you'll have the ear tip on
the right hand side. But if it's a little flat cut,
if it doesn't look like the cat's been on a
fight and it's an ear, you know when ear, you know,
or cauliflower ears. If you have frostbite, they get those
little cauliflower ears. But if it's a flat cut, it
means that cat it's probably spader neutered and has had
some level of vaccine. So there is what's called TNR
or TNVR in some parts of the country. I want
to create TNR culture that we have in our community.
Our veterinarians know what TNR is. Our veterinarians know how
to handle community cats that are coming in from outside
in traps. So my dream is that you know, everybody
just knows that this is what we do to help
cats that are outside, and we know how to identify
a cat that's not a cat that's meant to go
back out there.
Speaker 4: I like that, you know, you do offer these workshops
and do have any stats about where you people have
come to take these online and how many you've you've
actually taught.
Speaker 3: So we have over five thousand certified TNR folks. Many
of them come from New York City as well as
Michigan because with the Neighborhood Cats Partnership along with All
About Animal Rescue in Michigan, you get benefits. So if
you are T and R certified, you get access to
more affordable space hooter services as well as getting access
to free trap rentals, so you'll get access to that equipment.
There are some other pockets out there. We have some
groups in California, another group in Hawaii, and so we
have what are called group partners so you can actually
go into this new site and purchase a group package
for your volunteers to become educated and TNR certified, so
that then they can decide, you know, do they want
a volunteer. Some people don't even know, like sometimes when
you trap a cat, it'll flip out right, it'll get
a little bit agitated in the trap and you need
to cover it. Some people don't know that, and it's
really not their cup of tea. It's okay. That's what
the T and R workshops are all about.
Speaker 4: Well, it sounds like people start with the premise of
having a good heart. They want to help. They think
a cat in trouble. They don't know is this a someone's.
Speaker 3: Cat that got out, or is this a cat that.
Speaker 4: Lives in the community. And then you've mentioned about the
ear tipping, so people need to know what is a
community cat? No, I live in Dallas. I feed three
on the front porch and one in the backyard. And
they do keep me to a ritual for feeding. They
let me know, but tell us about what is a
community cat. I'm going to turn this question back to
you Arden. Oh, so do you know do you know
if anyone else feeds your community cats? Yes, because we
have a little network in our little Forest Hill community
in Dallas, and people let people know when they're feeding.
I personally know of three other neighbors that are feeding
the cats, and we kind of talk together. So there's
programs like next door and local communities. That's the way
I know it. Also, I walk my dogs and I
see my community cats chowing down three doors down two
waving at me saying delicious.
Speaker 3: I get double helpings.
Speaker 4: So did I answer your question? You did?
Speaker 3: You did?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: The definition of community cat is really, I mean, their
origin story really is with Adam and Eve. Oh you know,
so Adam, and we're cool on biblical folks. I know,
Adam and Eve were two cats that you know, lived
in two different houses. Cats have been domesticated and they
were living in houses and for whatever reason they got
released out into the wild, whether it's abandonment or getting
lost or you know, many folks have indoor outdoor cats
and things happen, and if they were not spade or neutered,
there's a farther range that they go, and so, you know,
some of those cats, then if they have kittens, they'd
become what we used to think of as feral kittens
born in the wild. Yes, and so they're basically these
cats that have grown up and they have no designated
owner and they haven't known a home to be an
indoor environment. They've known their home to be only outdoors
and that's what they're comfortable with. And many people feed
community cats. Sixty percent of people say they feed cats,
but they don't know who owns the cats. And so
the thing that we want to ensure is that community
cats are those that were born out there that are
comfortable being out there. It's their environment. And it could
be a cat that was born in a house that's
out there. You know, maybe they're comfortable having five different homes,
you know, to feed from, and so you know, it's
this very gray area in determining what's right. So I
define a community cat as four paws on the ground outside.
Oh there you go. It's a cat that's outside and
it's like a free for all. Right, So we know
that many people have indoor outdoor cats. Well, you know,
when they're outside, we don't have control over what those
cats are doing. So they become part of that outdoor community.
And so I'm sure they're being fed by somebody else
down the street even though they have an owner. They
have you know, sub owners too, and they're community connectors.
Our cats are community connectors. You know, your neighbors because
of those cats. That's a good point. You're not borrowing
sugar from your neighbors anymore because Amazon can deliver it
to you in two hours, right, But you are connecting
with them because of the cats. And so they are
bringing us back to this roots of getting to know
our neighbors. And I really feel that that's one of
the key things that we need to celebrate about community
cats is it's bringing us back together as human beings.
We're not talking to each other through our chat. We're
talking to each other human to human. If something happens
to that cat, you've got a network of four people
to say, hey, we've got a broken leg. We've got
to fix you know, can we all pitch in and
make this, you know possible because ve care is super
expensive Arden. Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: In fact, we have a neighbor Ray, and for a
couple of years, this cat would come out of the bushes,
this black and white cat and walk with our dogs
and found out that Ray we were calling him Baxter.
And then we had a very cold weather coming and
we like, this cat can't make it, and he's very friendly,
lets us touch him. His ear was tipped and we
put him in the bathroom the night before a big
storm here in Dallas, and we were thoroughly expecting that
to be a disaster zone. When we opened the door
in the morning and he had used the litter box,
he was sitting happy in a bed and purring, And yes,
we ended up adopting him. He wanted to be inside,
but we have another cat outside named Blaze right now,
and he wants to get within a foot of us.
But he's like, don't touch me. I would love to
live in. Please keep things well. And you're Petio. We
opened it up for him and he loves our dogs.
He's not scared of the dogs. They've actually touched noses,
but he does not want to come in. So I
guess the question is we really have to pay attention
to the cues that cat has given us. What makes
them more comfortable?
Speaker 3: Right? You got to be the what is it you say,
the pet detective, So I'll say the cat cat detective,
which is we have to pick up on their signals.
You know, what is it that it seems to be
working for them, and you know, develop a plan for them.
And maybe right now the way that that cat is
behaving is what he wants now. Two years from now
maybe not as he gets older, right, and then they
want to go in have a retirement situation. So you know,
we have to just keep our eyes and ears. But
it's hard. It's hard because he goes off and you
don't know where he's going, but you know, hopefully he
comes back. But if he doesn't come back for a
few days, that's I think that's the hardest part of
this whole business.
Speaker 4: That's a good point. Yeah, letting them go.
Speaker 3: How thought you liked me? You don't like me anymore? Right,
You gotta like realize it's okay. Yeah, he seems to
like being in it. We have a big backyard.
Speaker 4: It's fenced, and we have places under my I have
an ardstend my portable office where I'm recording the show
right now. Plus we have pretty big indoor outdoor petio,
so this cat has a big safety area that he
can keep from other critters. Hey, folks, we're talking with
Stacy LeBaron. We're talking about the new launch of the
community Cats Central, which is a whole bunch of great
things for cats. We're going to dive in a little
bit more about some of the ways we can get
some online classes globally. After we take this quick break,
so suit per, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Time for a walk on the red carpet of course,
all behave. We'll be back and off last right after
these messages.
Speaker 1: Thank you to hear more of your favorite show.
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Speaker 3: Hi, this is Joyce Witt.
Speaker 6: You may remember me from Freeze Company, inviting you to
have that good sense to tune in to the adorable,
amazing Arden more on Oh Behave on pet Live Radio.
Speaker 2: We're back from a lot. Just check the paper and
we had our record showing at the the letterbox. That
is now back to Oh Behave.
Speaker 4: Here's Harden, Welcome back to the old Behaved show on
pet Life Radio. I'm your host, Arden Moore. Got one
of my favorite people, and that is Stacy Lebern. I
love your title headcat of Community cats Central. Now that's
a pretty cool title.
Speaker 3: Oh I love it. I love it, and that's great.
I think other people love it. And then we have
Kristin Petrie who's been yeah for ten years, who's our
technical tabby. And so if you check out that website,
our new website at Community Cat Central, I will say
it is Kristen's labor of love. So she was the designer,
she was the implementer. So a huge shout out to Kristin,
who's been my partner over the last ten years, and
there would have been no podcast without Kristen, So just
want to put a little two cents out there for her. Sheildlaz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we go to Community Cats Central now and
I wanted to ask you because you know, people are
using platforms now and teaching courses that are self paced,
so people can learn anytime, anywhere, but you have backups
to verify that they actually didn't just turn it on
and go watch you know, stranger things. So there's got
to be some things in place because people want education
and organizations want people volunteers and staff that verify that
they're learning from a great, reputable company like you. So
can you talk about this launch because that that's a
pretty big deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we have in the Community Cat Central space,
we have on demand learning, we have live sessions. It's
all on a think Ethic platform, so everybody will have
their own educational student portal, so when you've taken one
of our sessions, it will be saved under the student's name,
so it really is like you're part of a Community
Cat university when you log in for the first time. Okay, cool,
and we want everything, so you know, anything that any
person could think about there that they needed help with
with regards to the topic of cat, especially with a
focus on community cats. But I feel that that can
cover everybody. Almost We wanted to be there for them.
If I don't want somebody to say I didn't do
this because I couldn't find a resource to help me, right,
So I'm here to serve the needs educationally for anybody
that really wants to do anything for cats, you know,
including you know Arden your You have experience in the
online learning space too. You are like the CPR pro
out there for cats and dogs and you know, and
again we're collaborating together on that, getting those experts in
each category and topic to present on all things cats.
Speaker 4: Did you sleep? You didn't get any catnaps last year?
Speaker 3: Did you?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 3: And Kristin now christ we started this journey back in July.
We actually started made this decision back in July, and
that the journey has been going since then. And I
would say Kristen's the one who's had less sleep than
I have. But but it's really amazing and I just
fully believe that if we can give folks the toolkit
of the things that they need, that they're going to
be able to just blossom. That's what we are. We're
sprouters arden, We're blossomers. You know. We play at the seeds,
but then we let them grow, right, We let the
garden grow, you know, we launch the grasshoppers right out there,
and that's what we want. You know, cats and kittens.
Cats can have a lot of kittens. They're scalable, right,
They have so many kittens out there, So I need
as many community cat passionate people as there are kittens.
Maybe that's the ratio we should be looking at, you know,
number of cats to passionate cat people one to one
and then we'll be all fine.
Speaker 4: So who are some of your cat heroes? We mentioned Kristen,
but it does take a colony. I didn't say a village,
a colony to help cats. But who have been some
of your personal heroes? Yeah, well of course. Well I
think I'm on the board of the United Stpay Alliance.
And I don't know if you've heard about Line fixed
by five, but in February it'll be its ten year
anniversary of the Feline Fixed by five campaign, And so
if every veterinarian out there just moved the date for
Spain Hooter from six months down to five months. We
would be eliminating the kitten over population situation in shelters,
which has been a hot topic this year. That fifty
percent of the cats that are euthanized in shelters are
under the age of six months, and so it's the kittens,
the neonatals, the ones that really need emergency care that
are ending up being euthanized. So how do we really
prevent those from being born?
Speaker 3: So Esther Meckler is a hero of mine for starting
United Spa Alliance and Feline Fixed by five, as well
as Peter marsh who really helped me think through the
cativer population situation. So I can go into a community
and help consult with them and we'll do a little
cat math. I have a four hour cat math course.
I do no, no, not cat geometry, no, and well
in four hours it's strategic planning for three to five
five years and four hours, you know, I'll get them
on a plan. Within three to five years, they will
be at a balanced level for their cat population in
the community and they're not going to be like freaking
out and overwhelmed with cats. Will give me a little
cat math stat nya cat math set. Well, so I
would say in general, I can give you a light.
We have a calculator. We have a community Cat calculator
on our website along with the Community Cat Pyramid, which
talks about the strategy, the overall strategy that really we
need to look at owned cats. We need to do
more spay neoter for owned cats. We need to increase
our spae neuter capacity. So in a community of like
one hundred and twenty five thousand people population based, you
most likely on an annual basis to get ahead of
the game, will need to spay neuter or anywhere from
fifteen hundred to two thousand cats a year. And so yeah,
so that's just giving you a sort of a ballpark figure.
But you do a community cat's needs assessment and it'll
help you really be able to determine the needs of
your munity depending on what you've already got. Some places
are considered spain nooter deserts. I don't know if you've
heard that term. What is it? So a spein nooter
desert is an area where there's very obvious limited veterinary
care in that community. So there's a map out there,
veterinary access map that identifies parts of the country that
are really short handed with regards to veterinarians. The rural
areas are extremely compromised at this point in time. Finding
veterinarians to work in rural areas is really hard, and
so that becomes really hard for folks to be able
to get their pets the veteran care they need as
well as you know, spader neutered, which creates oops litters.
And then we're down that vicious road again. Wow wow,
So hats off the United spae Alliance.
Speaker 4: Any other heroes. I don't know your mom, I don't
know somebody that really inspired you to get into the
field of helping cats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So these journeys are so funny because I started
it out by just walking up the stairs of a
small little shelter with my pound bag of cat litter
and my twenty pound bag of dry cat food, and
I thought, oh, this will take care of them for
a week. Right, you know, I'm walking in there and
they had just taken in a hoarding situation. So they
had like one room with like sixty cats on top
of two filing cabinets, and it was like the cat
pyramid of cats, right, And I'm like, oh wow, so
this is just not my you know, I just didn't
know what I was doing right, this is crazy. They're
my heroes, They're my leaders.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The more people I meet on this journey, I'm like,
I want to help you. I walked in, I was like, Okay,
this is just you know, what can I do to help?
I don't like needles, so I'm not in that space,
but it's like, how can I help? So I guess
I would say, you know, I have a hero on
my journey each way, because then I'm like, oh, I
need to help you and need to assist you. So
I really just think everybody out there on the front
line the two am in the morning, trapping the two
am in the morning, feeding the bottle babies.
Speaker 4: Boy, that's a job I don't want, all right, And
just for fun, what did you want to be when
you were growing up? And where was childhood and what
was the thought process of a young Stacy?
Speaker 3: Well, I grew up in Massachusetts and I had a
cat that was seven years older than me that was
kind of on the grumpy side. So she definitely taught
me very early on about respecting personal space. What was
her name? Dumpcan because when my parents got her as
a kit and they were told that it was a
boy cat, and then they brought her to the vet
and they discovered she was a girl cat back then,
I mean that was in nineteen sixty one, and they
got her spade before six months of age, so that
was kind of cool. So I always thought you got
your cats fixed. I never thought that that wouldn't happen.
So that was in my DNA. And I wanted to
be an architect, an architect.
Speaker 4: Okay, is there anybody in your family that was an
architect or were you just a whiz at legos?
Speaker 3: I mean what, yeah, no, My well, my mom really
loved art. She was an artist, a painter as a hobby,
and I just we both love driving around town and
looking at architecture. We thought it was so interesting learning
about the different architects out there. Frank Lloyd Wright especially
was one of our favorites. Well, I grew up near Chicago,
so he was big there for sure, definitely. And then
I ended up graduating with a degree in urban studies
and I also had nonprofit management, public policy, and urban
planning in my sort of my toolkit. And then what
I use is the cat as like that avenue for
sort of looking at our urban welfare and societal welfare.
So you know, an example is adult girl or you know,
early twenties girls throws kitten down the stairs. Right, seven
year old boy picks up kitten, brings kitten over to
the volunteers you're feeding those cats at the feeding station
to say, can you help get help for this kitten?
And of course they say yes. And he said, you know,
because you're here, I know I can ask for help.
And so maybe then if something else is happening in
his household that's problematic, he will know to trust others
to ask for help. So I think of our cats
as this sort of gluing tool with society to help
us rebuild trust.
Speaker 4: I love that. I love that we always ask our guests.
And you get this question, what is some attribute, some traits,
some characteristic of a cat you wish you had? And
why characteristic of a cat that I think I can do?
Speaker 3: God? Agility? Ooh, okay, I play tennis. I play tennis
and I love sports, and so the things that I
see that cats can do, if I could leap and
jump and fly, my serve would be so good. Bolton
I would be at Wimbledon right exactly, so I think
I'd have to say agility.
Speaker 4: All right. We want people to know how to get
their pause on more information about you, Stacy Leberon and
Community Cats Central tell us how they can do that.
Speaker 3: The best place to go is just to our website
is at Community Cat Central communitycats central dot com. I
don't worry if you forget the s it'll still find
us anyway. But Communitycatscentral dot com. We're also on Facebook
and Instagram. We're still at Community Cats Podcast on the
social media links and I am Stacy at Communitycatcentral dot com.
Is my email and we are very responsive. I do
not want to let anyone feel like they've been left behind,
so please, I think of myself as the cat Connector,
and if you've got a question and you're not getting
an answer, feel free to reach out to me, because
I'm pretty stubborn about that. I will help find you
a solution.
Speaker 4: All right. We salute all that you and the team
are doing for cats, Stacy Leberon. At this time, also,
I want to do a shout out to my producer,
Mark Winter. He produces all the shows on the largest
pet network, pet Life Radio. And humbly you're listening to
obehave voted the best podcasts and the winner of the
President's Award by the Cat Writers Association, So that's a
big deal. And as Stacy alluded to, my whatever superpower,
my drive is to help keep cats and dogs safe.
So I hope you check out pet First Date for
you because they feature real dog and a real cat,
Kna and Casey, and we now have a dog in
training Nova six toest so we are trying to do
everything we can to help pet safe. Everything is veterinary approved,
So until next time, this is your a flea free
host are more delivering just two words to all you
two three and four layers out there.
Speaker 2: All behave coast to coast and around the world. It's
all behaved with art and more. Find out why cats
and dogs do the things they do, and you get
the latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and Tails and rent
ten tinsel Town from famous pet experts and best selling
authors to television and movie stars. You'll get great tail
wagging pet tips and have our furn flying fun time,
all behaved with America's Pet Entertainer.
Speaker 1: Are you More?
Speaker 2: Every week on demand only on Petlife radio dot com,