Simple Cat Kennel Enrichment Ideas

Photo courtesy of Chris Tanaka

Cats are not meant to be in a shelter environment (dogs for that matter either, but more on that in a later post); even the most well adjusted cat is measurably miserable in a shelter.  Our job as shelter professionals is to minimize their misery while they are in our care.  Below are some simple, and very low cost kennel enrichment ideas for cats:

1.     Old Shoe Boxes: make great hiding spots for shy cats, beds for tired cats, and even a sturdy box turned upside down can be a perch for alert cats.  If you cut one of the short side out of the same sturdy box, you can even create a hide and perch for the cat. 

a.     Cost = FREE!

b.     Easy donation item to collect from volunteers and community supporters.   You may want to consider having a volunteer or staff ask for donations at local shoe stores—most will be happy to save their discarded boxes for you. 

c.      Since the boxes are free and (theoretically) numerous, you can just throw them away if they get soiled or the cat vacates the kennel.

2.     Tissue Paper (or Newspaper): anyone who has lived with a cat for even half a day knows that they will sit on any piece of paper on the floor, and it seems the crinklier, the better.  Wad up the tissue paper into a loose ball and throw it in their cage for maximum efficiency!

a.     Cost = FREE!

b.     Another easy donation item to collect from volunteers and community supporters, especially good way for people to reuse their old holiday gift wrap!

c.      Again, once the tissue is at its end, just throw it away.

3.     Wine Corks and various bottle caps: make wonderful roll and swat toys.  First time I tried this at a shelter I was working for, I had a volunteer distribute a few to each kennel and she reported that the room electrified with cats romping and playing in their kennel!

a.     Cost = FREE!

b.     One more easy donation item for volunteers and community supporters to collect and reuse.

c.      As with the previous examples, dispose of the items when cat vacates the kennel.

d.     **Added bonus of the wine corks: you can poke fun at the volunteer who brings in the most!  At our annual volunteer celebration party, we gave out silly awards one of which was the “Lush” award given to the volunteer who collected the most wine corks.  In reality, he put up a sign and a collection bin in his apartment building so it was not just his wine corks, but still a funny joke nonetheless!!

4.     Straws: Again, make fantastic roll and swat toys.  Even better if the straws bend!

a.     Cost = FREE! or minimal (good dollar store stock up purchase)

b.     Additional straightforward donation item for volunteers and community supporters.

c.      Items are disposable when the cat moves on.

5.     Plastic Easter Eggs: this enrichment item can double as a roll and swat toy or, unscrew one half, smear a small amount of wet food on the inside rim, and they toy is also a treat!

a.     Cost = FREE! or minimal (additional good dollar store stock up purchase)

b.     Ask for volunteers and community supporters to donate, or stock up during the spring when they are readily available in stores.  I would recommend catching the after holiday sales to maximize your money.

c.      Easy to dispose of items when they are used.

These are such simple items, most used or found in our daily life and are a great way to give a second life to items we would probably just throw away in our home.  I have also found that these are great collection items for groups (corporate groups, apartment buildings, school groups) to gather on behalf of the shelter.  Costs little money and the donations go directly to the animals, so will make people feel very good about their donation.  I also know some shelters that send this list home with adopters—it helps to transition the cat into the new home as well as just an easy and inexpensive toy list for the cats!

Intervention Services versus Prevention Services: How Does Your Portfolio Stack Up?

Regardless of the specific mission of a shelter or rescue, I am confident in saying the heart of the majority of animal welfare organizations is to provide either prevention or intervention services (and in most cases, both) for the animals it takes under its wing.  At the most basic level, all shelter services, programs, or departments can be filed into either category (*sometimes they fit into both) and contribute to what the organization offers the community.  But an intelligent organization will intentionally control the percentage of intervention services if offers with that of the prevention services it offers.  In other terms, a clever organization will not put all its eggs in the same proverbial basket. 

First, let’s define what each of these services means.  Intervention services are any service, program, or department dedicated to intercede on behalf of an animal already in the shelter system.  Examples include:

1.     Adoption Programs: focus on permanent placement of homeless animals

2.     Investigations: use the law to adjudicate in support of abused or neglected animals

3.     *Behavior and Training: readies sheltered animals for placement in a permanent home

4.     Volunteers: invites supporters into the organization to contribute to the mission

In contrast, prevention services are any service, program, or department dedicated to averting an animal from entering the shelter system from the start.  Examples include:

1.     Spay/Neuter: prevents future litters

2.     Humane Education: fosters humane attitudes and living harmoniously with animals

3.     Safe Havens: attempts to keep people experiencing personal difficulties with their pets as they navigate towards a solution to their problems

4.     *Behavior and Training: promotes basic obedience and good behavior; well trained animals remain in their homes

5.     Trap-Neuter-Return: prevents further amplification of the feral cat population

6.     Pet Food Pantry: offers free or very low cost food and supplies to struggling families

*Notice that Behavior and Training can fall into both categories.

To find a typical distribution of services, I did a brief analysis of 5 shelters in the Chicago area.  Based on the programs and services they advertised on their respective websites, I calculated the percentage of intervention versus prevention services they offered and the following resulted:  

Shelter	Brief Description	Prevention Services	Intervention Services
A	Large, Open Admissions (with a physical location)	44%	50%
B	Medium/Large, No-Kill (with a physical location)	61%	39%
C	Medium, No-Kill (with a physical location)	44%	56%
D	Small, No-Kill Rescue (with a physical location)	10%	90%
E	Very Small, No-Kill Rescue (without a physical location)	33%	66%

Each shelter’s budget, staffing, animal capacity, and mission are (obviously) different, but it’s interesting to see how the smaller organizations—in terms of animal capacity—skew towards intervention whereas the larger shelters balance the two more evenly.    

This investigation is very superficial and should not be used as the sole analysis of determining an appropriate allocation of prevention and intervention services.  What this analysis does not provide is how much (in terms of financial, human, and facility resources) are distributed per capita or as a total percentage of said resources.  From the above, one can make the correlation that the larger the shelter, the more it can provide by way of prevention services, but of course this analysis only examined shelters.  There are organizations out there exclusively dedicated to funding prevention services without actually sheltering animals.  

A strategic planning exercise—either in and of itself or as a subset of the overall strategic planning efforts of the organization—will help a group focus its efforts and resources on the types and general allotment of prevention and intervention programs and services it offers, but an annual detailed analysis of various shelter metrics (intake, live release rate, disease rates) will help guide a group to allot those programs and services to accurately meet the needs of the community it services:

1.     What is being spent on spay neuter services?  Have we noticed a change in our intake, especially kitten litters during “kitten season”?

2.     Since we started investing more time on post adoption follow-up, have we noticed a decrease in our return rates? 

3.     What percentage of adopted dogs enroll in training classes post placement?

4.     What percentage of volunteers donate over 20 hours of service per month? 

By examining the answers to these questions, groups can better understand and adjust their prevention and intervention services division.  Every organization’s distribution will be different depending on their mission and vision, but it does suffice to say that a good game plan includes diversifying your allocations.  Similar to the market, a diverse portfolio of intervention and prevention services will not only help an organization deliver solutions based the needs of a community, but it will also assist it in remaining relevant during a changing environment.  So, how does your portfolio stack up?    

Must Have on the Holiday Wish List for all Shelter Staff and Supporters!

Can’t decide what to get your staff or favorite volunteers this holiday season?  Look no further than the Feral Cat Hat!!!  To the average consumer, this is just another winter hat, but to those of us in the know, this is the most awesome fedora ever!  A perfect and subtle way to promote TNR, animal welfare, feline pride, and a bonus that some of the proceeds from the sales are donated to a local TNR organization.

**If you happen to pick a few up for your friends, please be so kind as to mention that you saw it on the Shelter Report, thanks!

Maintaining a Sustainable Volunteer Program

I have spent most of my animal welfare career managing a volunteer department, and I still remember the comment that was said to me by a board member on the first day I took over the program at the shelter I was working.  When my boss introduced me as the new volunteer coordinator, the board member said, “Oh, you have a tough job, we can’t live with volunteers and we can’t live without them.”  At the time, I had no clue what she was referring to, but in reflection the statement makes sense to me now—a healthy, functioning volunteer program can be a shelter’s greatest asset whereas an ailing, nonfunctioning program can be its worst enemy. 

Regardless of the size and “shape” of an animal shelter, everyone needs a volunteer program.  In some shelters, volunteers add the finishing touches to daily routines, in others they participate in vital operations including cleaning and feeding animals, while in other shelters completely volunteers run the show.   Whatever the case may be at your shelter, the mark of a great volunteer program is the quality of its infrastructure.  In other words, to end up on the “our-volunteer-program-is-one-of-our-greatest-assets” side of the coin, a shelter must provide a solid infrastructure to support a productive volunteer program.    

Ensuring a solid infrastructure is in place

Consider a volunteer’s tenure from beginning to end.  Ideally, you want to have a well oriented and prepared volunteer reporting for duty on day one, so you need to invest in the volunteer as a resource before they ever begin paying out.  I have found the following orientation training model to work well:

Step 1: Attend General New Volunteer Orientation

·      Background/history of organization

·      Current organizational structure including services offered to the public/animals in need

·      Statistics (unfortunately, I have seen a few eyes glaze over while I talk about shelter stats, but in staying true to industry standards of transparency, I still think presenting basic stats is a good idea!)

·      Specific volunteer programs/jobs—present in detail the various volunteer opportunities

·      Tour of facility (if you have one)

·      Animal handling and animal body language presentation—general concepts.  There are many free online sources for this, but if you are lucky enough to have a behavior department or CPDT (or the like), get them involved in the presentation

Step 2: In-Shelter Small Group Training

·      Once a volunteer is assigned (or chooses) a program he or she would like to work in, connect them with a trained and experienced volunteer to show them the details of the program

·      Detailed training in animal handling and body language

Step 3: Volunteering with a Mentor

·      Volunteer is on his or her own, but scheduled at the same time as an experienced volunteer.  This allows for an easy question/answer flow when things come up and also a confidence booster for the new volunteer.

Once a volunteer is working within your organization, the next challenge is to keep them working within your organization.  There is a certain percentage of volunteers that will be a revolving door no matter how fantastic your program is: people will always move, get a job, have a baby, etc (In fact, the average national volunteer retention rate is 64.5%).  The contest now becomes engaging your volunteers to keep coming back.  Here are some key ideas to achieve this:

1.     Define a commitment for the volunteers: ten hours of volunteering each month, five community events each year, foster 8 animals in a year, etc.

2.     Provide periodic continuing education and training refresher courses—especially helpful for volunteers that lapse in their commitment and then return to duty.

3.     Offer multiple volunteer programs or opportunities to appeal to a wider range of people and levels of commitment.

4.     Define a volunteer coordinator and make this one person the volunteer’s point of contact for everything. 

5.     Host regular volunteer meetings to allow for volunteer ideas and concerns to be addressed.  Volunteers are important stakeholders, so make them feel as such.   

6.     Recognize volunteering milestones—these can be defined to suit your organization, but it is important to acknowledge a volunteer’s anniversary, consistency, job well done, continued commitment, etc. 

Let’s Roll With It: Calculating Live Release Rates

The live release rate is a very telling metric in measuring a shelter’s progress towards improving dispositions for the animals in its care.  Literally translated, a live release is any animal that leaves your shelter alive.  Options for live release include:

(1)  adoptions

(2)  return to owner (RTO)

(3)  transfers

(4)  TNR—or feral colony placement

Simply calculated, the Live Release Rate (LRR) is the sum of all the live outcomes for a period of time divided by the total intake numbers for that same period of time. 

Let us consider some faux data from Shelter XYZ:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Total Adoptions	97	88	99	100	78	84	94	99	102	87	85	105
Total  Transfers	12	13	8	5	11	10	12	9	4	11	5	6
Total RTO	5	19	3	10	2	4	2	15	18	1	11	2
Total Intake	250	249	234	112	276	270	265	245	235	241	223	256

Calculating the LRR for January: (97+12+5)/(250) = 45.6%

LRR for February: (88+13+19)/(249) = 48.1%

LRR for March: (99+8+3)/234 = 47%

The astute reader will wonder what is going to happen with April’s calculation?  Well, let’s see:

LRR for April: (100+5+10)/(112)= 100.2%

What?!?!  How is it possible to have more animals leave the building alive than what we took in that month?  The math does not make sense.  Enter the Rolling Live Release Rate (RLRR).  The RLRR allows the user to adjust for a holding or starting population of animals that carry over from month to month. 

Let’s consider our data from above with additional rows of information:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Total Adoptions	97	88	99	100	78	84	94	99	102	87	85	105
Total  Transfers	12	13	8	5	11	10	12	9	4	11	5	6
Total RTO	5	19	3	10	2	4	2	15	18	1	11	2
Total Holding	45	30	42	32	29	28	29	25	46	44	41	39
Total Intake	250	249	234	112	276	270	265	245	235	241	223	256

Now, calculating a RLRR for January: (97+12+5)/(45+250) = 38.6%

RLRR for February: (88+13+19)/(30+249) = 43%

RLRR for March: (99+8+3)/(42+234) = 39.8%

Now, let’s examine the calculation for the odd month of April:

RLRR for April: (110+5+10)/(32+112) = 79.8%

Here is how the numbers compare:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr
Live Release Rate	45.6%	48.1%	47.0%	100.2%
Rolling Live Release Rate	38.6%	43.0%	39.8%	79.8%

Why would I want to produce RLRR when they make my data look worse?  Because you must account for the carry over population for each time point (monthly, annual data, etc).  I have yet to encounter a shelter or rescue that can disposition all of its animals immediately; inevitably there is some carry over population of animals no matter how talented and speedy the shelter is in live release placements.  In a rolling live release the denominator is the sum of all animals that have the potential to be outcomed, so one must incorporate the holding population in the computation.  And, as is the general rule for most statistical markers, it’s the trend that matters, not the absolute numbers themselves.

RLRR can also be calculated for subpopulations within your shelter: cats and dogs, puppies/kittens and adults, male and female, and so on.  In these calculations, you would only sum the total live outcomes for the subgroup under investigation (puppies, kittens, etc) divided by the total potential for outcome in that subgroup.  In order to not underestimate the RLRR, always remember to divide by the subgroup, not total intake—in this example, all dogs and cats, etc).