Capacity for Care

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, although developed by the Farm Animal Welfare Council for livestock in an agricultural context, provide a simple and compelling framework to define the minimum level of care expected for any animal in confinement. Few would argue that we should not provide these for every homeless pet in a shelter’s care:

Sometimes the barrier to meeting the Five Freedoms is obvious: if there isn’t enough money to purchase wholesome, appropriate food, then the very first freedom cannot be met.

However, sometimes obstacles to meeting the freedoms can be more subtle. If cat housing is so small that litter routinely contaminates food and cats refuse to eat, freedom from hunger and thirst is not assured in spite of ample feeding.

If a high quality disinfectant is available but staff members simply don’t have time to keep up with cleaning, reasonable protection from disease cannot be provided. Thus meeting each freedom requires elements of facility/housing and staffing as well as financial resources.

Clearly, one solution to solving issues with capacity is to reduce the number of cats in the shelter’s care at any one time. Most organizations have the ability to meet the Five Freedoms for one or a few cats. And yet, many shelters are overwhelmed with far more cats than they can comfortably care for. Why is this?

There is one freedom that isn’t listed in the five above, and this underlies the tendency for many shelters to find their capacity chronically overwhelmed. That is the freedom from euthanasia for cats that are neither suffering irremediably nor dangerous to the community.

Because they were developed in the context of animals raised for food, it’s not surprising that this is not addressed in the Five Freedoms. However, in a shelter context, it would be unthinkable to ensure the first five freedoms at the expense of the sixth. Providing for the health and well-being of cats cannot come at the expense of their very lives.

Fortunately, we now understand that far from being in conflict, the first five freedoms are synergistic with the sixth. Providing humane care, keeping cats healthy and comfortable, and allowing staff the time to do their jobs well, isn’t only good for cats. It also provides a more welcoming environment for volunteers, adopters and supporters. Healthy, happy cats move through the shelter to live outcomes more quickly, further reducing the number requiring care at any one time.

Ultimately, by keeping the number of cats within the shelter’s limit for daily capacity, flow-through capacity can not only be maintained, but increased. More lives can be saved over time while costs for daily care are reduced. Most importantly, cats receive the care they deserve each day as well as receiving the very best chance at life we can possibly provide.

A disparity between the available daily capacity for care and the number of cats actually in the shelter’s care, whether related to facility, staffing or finances, can be remedied in three ways: Intake can be decreased, capacity can be expanded, or length of stay can be reduced.

Reduction in intake, while a worthwhile and attainable goal, should be realized through providing positive alternatives to shelter admission, keeping pets in their homes, and reducing the number of unwanted animals in the community. This requires an active investment of shelter resources. Expanding physical and staffing capacity likewise requires additional investment, sometimes on an ongoing basis.

These investments are well worth it, especially where the alternative is operating chronically beyond capacity with all the attendant compromises to feline (as well as staff and volunteer) welfare. However, finding the resources to make such changes can be challenging when the shelter is already crowded beyond capacity for care. This quote from a shelter director will resonate with many in the sheltering profession:

Fortunately, reducing length of stay (LOS) provides a third route to bring C4C into balance with the number of cats cared for daily. Simple changes can reduce length of stay at little or no cost, and bring a host of benefits in addition to achieving daily C4C.

Reducing length of stay without compromising live outcomes requires a combination of appropriate housing and active management of each cat’s pathway through the shelter.

For many, it seems intuitive that giving every cat more time in the shelter would equate to providing the best chance for a live outcome. However, not only is this not necessarily the case, the opposite is often true.

Multiple studies have demonstrated that length of stay is the single greatest risk factor for upper respiratory infection in shelter cats.[1, 2] At best, illness means a stint in treatment, a compromise to welfare (nobody likes to be sick), and a yet-longer stay in the shelter. Longer stays in turn increase the risk for confinement-related stress and behavioral issues.

While the risks of prolonged LOS can be overcome with excellent housing and attentive enrichment, such care becomes ever harder to provide as the shelter becomes more crowded. One of the saddest sights in a shelter is that of a cat who has just given up.

Conversely, if a healthy cat can be admitted, examined, receive any needed care, and sent to a good home within a few days, everybody wins. The risk of illness and confinement related stress disorders is dramatically reduced. Time and space that would have been given to that cat can be reallocated to other cats in need of more extensive care.

Resources conserved by preventing, rather than treating, illness can be better spent on programs to further the shelter’s overall life-saving mission. Here’s the rest of the quote from the shelter director referenced above, after implementing capacity for care:

Want to learn more? You can read about strategies to reduce length of stay here. You can also delve into the details of Fast Tracking, a key program to reduce length of stay, by viewing this ASPCAPro webinar. Or, if you’re more a reader than a viewer, check out this article on fast track from Animal Sheltering magazine.

Although there are many elements to providing C4C and managing LOS, housing plays a pivotal role.

Single compartment housing and cages or condos with less than around 9 square feet of floor space have been linked to an increased risk of upper respiratory infection (URI) in shelter cats. Illness, in turn, means an even longer time in the shelter.

Both single and group housing quality has also been closely tied to stress levels in confined cats.[3-8] As with the risk for URI in singly housed cats, size does matter. Specifically, floor space of less than 18 square feet per cat has been linked to higher stress levels in group housed cats.

Most adopters prefer friendly, outgoing cats, and behavior is the single most important factor when choosing a shelter cat, so high stress levels can translate into longer stays to adoption as well as greater risk for illness. A vicious cycle can quickly ensue.

On the other hand, better housing can easily reverse this cycle by decreasing illness and stress, and therefore reducing length of stay. Reduced length of stay, in turn, makes great housing possible; healthy, happy cats staying half the time can each be given twice the space.

Cats with more space stay healthier and happier, and the opposite of a vicious cycle takes hold. This ‘un-vicious cycle’ was captured beautifully in this awesome infographic from Treehouse Humane Society, a cat shelter in Chicago:

Because of the tight relationship between housing, stress, illness and length of stay, it makes sense to start with housing when working towards C4C. Although there are many nuances to excellent housing  for shelter cats, the floor space requirements for single and group housed cats are a great place to begin: at least around 9 square feet of space for singly-housed cats, and at least 18 square feet of floor space for cats in group housing.

Double compartment housing also greatly benefits cats by keeping food, bed and litter separate and allowing cleaning and daily care with minimum disruption.

New cages or condos that meet both floor space and double compartment housing guidelines are available for purchase in a variety of materials. One of our favorite designs is compartments at least 30” inches wide in a 4 by 4 configuration with portals side to side as well as up and down.

With this set-up, four compartments can be joined into one large unit for a single cat or bonded pair whose length of stay is expected to be a little longer, or during a mega-adoption event the compartments can be divided into four singles for the day, each housing a few kittens. Alternately, existing housing can be converted into this or other flexible configurations with the installation of portals or email sheltermedicine@ucdavis.edu for information on portals for purchase.

How do you know how much excellent housing, or what level of staffing, will be enough to serve the incoming population of cats? Put simply, the required C4C is equal to the daily average intake of animals, times the ideal length of stay. Minimizing length of stay through attentive population management and high quality housing is the most humane and effective way to achieve C4C.

Even when length of stay is at its most efficient, however, there will be a minimum number of animals that will need housing and care in order to accommodate daily intake. Length of stay should never be decreased so drastically it impedes the ability to provide care or achieve live outcomes. If there is insufficient staffing or housing to safely hold even this minimum number, additional capacity needs to be developed.

There is also a maximum number of animals beyond which additional holding can actually be counterproductive, even if ample space and staffing exists. The number of animals in the shelter can, in itself, be the strongest driver of length of stay.

This is most evident in adoptions. For a given rate of daily adoptions, more animals awaiting adoption will mean a longer average LOS to adoption.

For example, if one animal is adopted per day, and 10 are housed in adoption, the average LOS to adoption will be 10 days. If 20 more animals are added (for a total of 30), and average daily adoptions stay steady at one per day, the average LOS will automatically increase to 30 days.

The simplest way to decrease LOS in this context is one time to adopt out more cats than are admitted. Once a new steady state is reached, it will be self-sustaining. Ideally, each shelter will maintain the number of cats for adoption at a self-sustaining level that maximizes adoptions while minimizing length of stay to adoption. When this number is exceeded, short term adoption specials or intake management can bring it back into balance.

It’s not always necessary to delve deeply into capacity calculations to find the sweet spot between minimum and maximum. Some shelters have simply taken the plunge by improving housing and found the resultant decreased length of stay made up for any loss of physical holding capacity.

However, for shelters where the length of stay is already very short, shelters with special considerations (such as routine adoption mega-events or infrequent but substantial transport opportunities), or considering major investments in remodeling or building a new facility, it makes sense to dig deeper.

More detailed instructions on calculating the ideal number of animals awaiting adoption can be found here. Or if you’d rather watch than read, or do a bit of both, you can find a webinar on calculating capacity here.

Whichever way you choose, good luck and please let us know how it goes by emailing info@millioncatchallenge.org.