2011 – Care for Cats

From Canada’s International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies…

THE OPPORTUNITY: Care for Cats and the Year of the Cat are the first major initiatives resulting from ideas born at the International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies. This national program will enable all sectors of the companion animal industry to work together to tackle the cat overpopulation crisis while raising the social status and value of cats in our communities.

Care for Cats is a long-term project that will respond to the cat overpopulation crisis by creating and distributing public education programs and support materials, encouraging community collaboration across all industry sectors; providing accurate resources; and collecting and evaluating national metrics to measure success.

We cannot expect to completely solve the cat crisis in a single year. Care for Cats was formed … Year of the Cat is its first project. Launch date: 5th January 2011.

2011 Year of the Cat (YOC) is a Canada-wide initiative orchestrated by Care for Cats that is intended to “get rid of the myths and give the facts!’ This program will bring a national time-line of events such as adopt-a-thons and an identification week. To facilitate the effective delivery of these programs online tool kits will be provided at no cost to community collaborators across Canada.

THE CATALYST: In October 2009, industry thought leaders from across Canada gathered for the 4th Annual International Summit for Urban Animal Strategies (ISUAS) to focus on the issue of cat overpopulation. Dr. Elizabeth O’Brien was invited to showcase a successful education campaign created by the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA in 2008. It was called The Year of the Cat.

Enthused by the support she received at the ISUAS and the Regional Summits, Dr. O’Brien was asked by delegates to become the spokesperson for a national campaign in 2011, which is officially the Vietnamese Year of the Cat. With the support of an impressive team of industry collaborators, Dr. O’Brien has since traveled across Canada championing the initiative.

THE STRATEGY: With the generous support of its sponsors, and the volunteer commitment of dozens of Canada’s most well-respected industry experts, Care for Cats is working collaboratively to:

• Develop a website and online tool kit containing resources to help create awareness by response and education.
• Promote collaboration between the sectors within each community and across the country.
• Encourage communities across Canada to host YOC events and education campaigns.
• Synchronize promotions Animal Health Week, Cat Awareness Week, Cat ID Week and Adopt-a-thon.

YEAR OF THE CAT WILL EDUCATE COMMUNITIES ON:

• The importance of spaying and neutering to curb cat over-population and improve cats’ health and well-being
• Effective methods of delivering spay/neuter financial assistance programs
• Improving existing Trap/Neuter/Release programs and introducing TNR to new communities
• Increasing animal shelter ‘Return-to-Owner’ rates through identification, registration and licensing

However, what makes this Canadian program so much more exciting than anything we’ve seen in Australia, is those things absent from these progressive and outcomes based programs:

• Strategies for getting government to implement mandatory desexing,
• Blaming the community for feral cat numbers,
• Confinement – killing street cats for the greater good,
• How to get those ‘irresponsible’ cat feeders to bring their cats off to the pound to be killed instead.




Australia needs animal welfare leaders to stop championing cat abuse and killing, and start lobbying to implement those programs that are set to solve our cat welfare issues.