MHS is excited to be joining animal welfare organizations across the country in the Million Cat Challenge.

The Million Cat Challenge is a shelter-based campaign to save the lives of one million cats in North America over the next five years. The core strategy of the campaign will focus on five key initiatives that offer every shelter, in every community, practical choices to reduce euthanasia and increase live outcomes for shelter cats.

This life-saving campaign is a joint project of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida, led by Drs. Kate Hurley and Julie Levy. Click here for more.

Shelters that are qualified for the Million Cat Challenge are participating in at least one of these five key initiative “to balance intake, humane capacity within the shelter, and live release.”

Alternatives to intake: Provide positive alternatives to keep cats in the home or community when admission to a shelter is not the best choice.
Managed admission: Schedule intake of cats to match the shelter’s ability to assure humane care and safe movement through the shelter system to an appropriate outcome for every cat.
Capacity for care: Match the number of cats cared for at any one time with the capacity required to assure the Five Freedoms of animal welfare for all cats in the shelter.
Removing barriers to adoption: Expand the pool of adopters by removing barriers to adoption such as cost, process, or location.
Return-to-field: Sterilize, vaccinate, and return healthy un-owned shelter cats to the location of origin as an alternative to euthanasia.

MHS is committed to saving the lives of more cats in many ways. You can read a little more about some of the challenges we face in sheltering cats in this blog by our President and CEO Matthew Pepper. Right now we are in the process of giving away 2,000 free feline microchips to our veterinary clients!

We are excited to be a part of this focused commitment to saving more cat lives.