Frequently Asked Questions

The Million Cat Challenge is open to all North American animal shelters that are making progress in their work to save the lives of cats. Whether your shelter is working to reduce euthanasia, increase the number of cats released alive, improve the conditions within your shelter, or a combination of all three, the Million Cat Challenge is for you! Just go to this link to get started!

Absolutely! One reason the Million Cat Challenge encompasses multiple strategies is that not every initiative will make sense for every shelter. For some shelters, legislative obstacles or lack of resources will pose barriers to implementation. For others, one or another of the initiatives may not feel consistent with the shelter's mission or beliefs.

In some cases, there may simply be no need for some of the initiatives. For instance, a shelter that has ample resources to care for all cats coming their way may not need to worry about managing admission, but relies upon robust adoption and/or return-to-field programs to keep cats moving safely along. A shelter that serves primarily as a sanctuary may not be concerned about removing barriers to adoption, but could still benefit greatly from Capacity for Care.

Fortunately, the initiatives can work well singly as well as in concert. Starting with even one initiative can improve operations and build resources to expand live saving efforts. For example, portalizing cages to bring a shelter within Capacity for Care can improve cat health and drop length of stay, freeing up time, money and medical team focus for other programs.

Alternatives to Intake and/or Managing Admission can stem the tide of cats entering the shelter, while Removing Barriers to Adoption and/or Return-to-Field can speed cats to an appropriate outcome instead of languishing in the system. In turn, any of these strategies can open up space to make Capacity for Care possible.

Although humane care and life-saving programs will always remain guiding priorities, the best means for each organization to get there will doubtless shift over time as communities, shelters and our own knowledge and understanding evolve. Whether using one initiative or all five, the Million Cat Challenge is an inclusive campaign which celebrates the efforts of all shelters to save more lives.

Current approaches to un-owned cats across the country have not resulted in communities free of roaming cats. Rather, the scale of the intake and euthanasia is far too small to actually impact the overall population. Shelters, for example those in California, only deal with around 5 percent of the estimated un-owned cat population in a given year, while studies have shown that over 50 percent of the population must be removed year after year, in order to have a sustained decrease in overall numbers. No community would support such a massive increase in euthanasia.

Despite wishes to the contrary, un-owned cats are living in our communities all over the country. We can decide to manage them effectively or not. By rethinking our approach and putting time, energy and other resources into proactive approaches, we can have a far greater impact on cat populations, wildlife predation and community safety. Read more about the synergy between the Million Cat Challenge and programs to reduce the number of free-roaming cats in communities here.

Absolutely! If live release is on the rise compared to baseline 2012, we will count that number towards the Million Cat Count. If intake and therefore live release are going down while euthanasia stays steady at a minimum level, you are still welcome.  Although we will not add your data to the count, each participant through their experience and expertise helps the whole group move forward toward our lifesaving goal. Learn more here about our methodology.

Absolutely! Contact us and we will provide you with full access to all the resources of the Million Cat Challenge website. We can also provide tailored advice on how the Five Initiatives can help in your shelter’s specific situation and put you in touch with participating shelters that have faced similar challenges. As soon as your shelter is able to euthanize even one less cat, or release one more alive, compared to your baseline year (2012 for the original Challengers, the previous calendar year for new Challengers), you are welcome to enroll as a full participant and start contributing data towards the Million Cat Count.

While we are glad that rescue groups and individuals want to support this movement, the Million Cat Challenge is specifically designed for shelter participation. If your group partners with a specific shelter to help them save cats, consider registering for the Million Cat Challenge as a partnership. If your group doesn’t partner with a particular shelter, you can help the Challenge by forwarding information about it to any shelters with which you work and supporting them in their lifesaving efforts for cats. Individuals are also invited to sign up for our email updates, and if you would like to make a contribution to fund our work, we ‘d welcome that support, too!

Spay/neuter support services are a vital component of lifesaving for cats. You can participate by encouraging your local shelter to enroll in the Million Cat Challenge and by helping them maximize the use of spay/neuter to save cats. Cats transferred from the shelter to your clinic would be reported in the shelter’s outcome statistics for the Challenge; your clinic would not enroll itself in the Challenge. We want to make sure we don’t count the same cats twice!

We also welcome collaborative partnerships in the Challenge, so if your spay-neuter group wants to partner with the shelter you work with, you can enroll that way.

If the shelters in your community aren’t participating, let them know about the Challenge and its five initiatives. We’d be glad to welcome them! Individuals are also invited to sign up for our email updates, and if you would like to make a contribution to fund our work, we’d welcome that support, too! You can find out more here.

We’d love to discuss working with you. Please visit this link, and let’s talk!

Because the precursor to the Million Cat Challenge was issued in late 2012 and again in early 2013, the million cats are counted based on intake and outcome data at the original participating shelters compared to 2012. We use the calendar year prior to registration as the basis for calculating the contributions of post-2014 sign-ups.

Data collected to document lifesaving success are feline intake, euthanasia, and live outcome for the baseline year and each calendar year of participation. The National Federation of Humane Societies’ definitions will be used for each of these terms. Learn more here about our methodology.