Million Cat Webinars

MOST RECENT WEBINARS
What Home Means for Cats: Working Together to Keep More Cats Alive and Thriving (8/31/21)
This freewheeling conversation between MCC co-founder Dr. Kate Hurley and Maddie’s® Director of Feline Lifesaving Monica Frenden-Tarant explores the nuances of how to determine what's best for cats in the context of shelter and community resources.

Language That Harms Cats (8/18/21)
How we talk about cats can influence public attitudes and behavior, so it is important to consider the words, images and stories we use - particularly when we are trying to change the way the public views and responds to our work.

KITTEN SERIES
In August and early September of 2020, the Million Cat Challenge partnered with Royal Canin to bring you a free five-part webinar series hosted by Maddie's Fund covering all things KITTEN, and we've got the recordings right here!

August 6 - Kitten Intake Decisions in Animal Shelters
August 13 - Support for Kittens in the Field
August 20 - Foster Greatness
August 27 - Kitten Care in the Shelter
September 3 - Going Home

Have you missed any of our previous free webinars? Just want to catch them again, or share with someone else?

We've pulled together all the Million Cat webinars right here. All of them include question & answer periods at the end of varying lengths, but we haven't included those in the timings below. Watch... learn.... share!

SELECTED WEBINARS (full list below)

Kitten Intake Decisions in Animal Shelters (63 minutes plus a great 30 minutes of Q&A)
Found a kitten outdoors? When is your intervention most helpful and what's the best way to help? Dr. Kate Hurley and Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) start off the kitten series with a rousing and thought-provoking presentation on kitten intake and "diversion."

Flattening the Kitten Curve While Spay/Neuter is on Hold (73 minutes, plus 23 minutes of Q&A)
Dr. Julie Levy is joined by Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) and Best Friends Animal Society's Aimee St. Arnaud and Marla Browne to discuss what you can do now to engage your community in lifesaving and to prepare for the eventual resumption of spay/neuter. Recorded April 15, 2020.

Rehoming Programs: Safe Options for Your Staff and Community (20 minutes, plus a half hour of Q&A)
Mandy Evans, Executive Director of Panhandle Animal Shelter and the Home to Home network, talks with Carina DeVera and Keri Fennell of Marin Humane about successful rehoming programs that allow people surrendering pets to find adopters themselves, freeing the shelter to help more animals.

Spay/Neuter in the COVID Era (1 hour, plus 20 minutes of additional Q&A)
Dr. Julie Levy explains why after years of practicing and advocating Spay/Neuter, she is calling on shelters and rescues to suspend S/N on healthy cats in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. Best Friends Director of National Veterinary Programs Aimee St. Arnaud, Metro ACC Nashville Medical Director Staci Cannon, Cleveland APL President and CEO Sharon Harvey, and our own Dr. Kate Hurley share their perspectives. (Note: if you did not pre-register for the webinar, simply fill out the form, click the Register button, and you'll instantly gain access to the recording.)

The Cat Superhighway: Creating a Roadmap for #allthecats (47 mins, but worth staying for the Q&A after)
Dr. Hurley discusses the evolution of Return to Field from a strategy to reduce euthanasia in shelters to a practice whose benefits have turned out to extend well beyond the walls of the shelter. Watch now!

Expand all

Kittens

Kitten Intake Decisions in Animal Shelters (63 minutes plus a great 30 minutes of Q&A)
Found a kitten outdoors? When is your intervention most helpful and what's the best way to help? Dr. Kate Hurley and Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) start off the kitten series with a rousing and thought-provoking presentation on kitten intake and "diversion."

Flattening the Kitten Curve While Spay/Neuter is on Hold (73 minutes, plus 23 minutes of Q&A)
Dr. Julie Levy is joined by Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) and Best Friends Animal Society's Aimee St. Arnaud and Marla Browne to discuss what you can do now to engage your community in lifesaving and to prepare for the eventual resumption of spay/neuter. Recorded April 15, 2020.

Arizona Humane's Don't Kit-nap Kittens Campaign (38 minutes)
Robby Nisenfeld and Kate Mayeski present AZ Humane's wonderful educational campaign to remind Good Samaritans that Mama is the best caregiver for kittens (and she's likely on her way back!). If you're wondering how to get the word out to your community that healthy kittens should remain where they are, watch this webinar! Recorded Sept. 18, 2018.

The Milk Man and Wait Until 8 Programs: Saving Cats and Kittens by Thinking Outside the Box (32 mins.)
What if you could inspire the community to step up and care for the fragile little lives of orphaned kittens until they were 8 weeks old? Find out how to do just that with Chief Veterinarian Dr. Maria Serrano and Director Alex Muñoz of Miami-Dade Animal Services.

One Shelter's Journey to Save More Feline Lives (45 mins.)
What real-world difference can the initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge make in an animal shelter? In this free webinar from the Million Cat Challenge and Maddie’s Fund, Dr. Cristie Kamiya of Humane Society Silicon Valley gives an overview of how implementing those initiatives has grown their life-saving capacity for cats.

How To Turn Orphan Kittens into Senior Cats (35 mins.)
In this free 30-minute webcast, Drs. Jody Gookin and Sandra Strong provide information for veterinarians and medical support staff on survival statistics and novel treatments for orphan kitten diarrhea. The information is based on their recently published study evaluating significant associations between treatment interventions and survival of orphan shelter kittens with diarrhea.

Kitten Series

In this series, we tackled three topics designed to help shelters save the most fragile of lives: kittens.

Outsourcing Neonatal Kitten Rearing for Life-Saving Success (24 mins.)
Katie Ingram, Animal Services Manager, Placer County Animal Services, Auburn, California

Foster Care On-Deck: Strategies to get kittens into foster homes quickly (60 mins.)
Erin Doyle, DVM, DABVP (Shelter Medicine Practice), Senior Director, Shelter Medicine – ASPCA

Fighting Fungus with Facts (47 mins.)
Laura Mullen, Shelter Medicine Outreach Manager, SFSPCA, San Francisco, California
Alternatives to Intake

Kitten Intake Decisions in Animal Shelters (63 minutes plus a great 30 minutes of Q&A)
Found a kitten outdoors? When is your intervention most helpful and what's the best way to help? Dr. Kate Hurley and Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) start off the kitten series with a rousing and thought-provoking presentation on kitten intake and "diversion."

Rehoming Programs: Safe Options for Your Staff and Community
Mandy Evans, Executive Director of Panhandle Animal Shelter and the Home to Home network, talks with Carina DeVera and Keri Fennell of Marin Humane about successful rehoming programs that allow people surrendering pets to find adopters themselves, freeing the shelter to help more animals.

Alternatives to Intake: When the Shelter Isn’t the Answer
What if your city wanted to stop euthanizing community cats in the shelter, and decided to try something bold? And what if all the animal control officers, rescue groups, and community members came together to make it work? Join Wiley Stem III, Assistant City Manager of Waco, Tex., as he shares his community’s inspiring story of collaboration and lifesaving.

How a Telephone Can Keep Cats in Their Homes and Out of Your Shelter (33 mins.)
Cynthia Kopec, Vice President, Marketing and Communications; and Lisa Bassi, Manager and Advocacy Campaigns Specialist, Client Contact Center and Advocacy, for the San Francisco SPCA let you in on the secrets of starting a helpline to keep pets in their homes and out of your shelter, including information for organizations of all sizes -- even just a volunteer and a single phone line!

Turning Your Surrender-ers into Foster Homes (40 mins.)
In this webinar, Sharon Harvey, President and CEO, Cleveland Animal Protective League, is joined by APL Director of Operations Ayse Dunlap to discuss their successful Foster to Surrender program!

The Milk Man and Wait Until 8 Programs: Saving Cats and Kittens by Thinking Outside the Box (32 mins.)
What if you could inspire the community to step up and care for the fragile little lives of orphaned kittens until they were 8 weeks old? Find out how to do just that with Chief Veterinarian Dr. Maria Serrano and Director Alex Muñoz of Miami-Dade Animal Services.

Starting and Running a Shelter Intervention Program (40 mins.)
Each year, Downtown Dog Rescue keeps more than 2,000 cats and dogs out of the Los Angeles Animal Services South LA Shelter through a groundbreaking in-shelter intervention program. Find out what they do, how they do it, and how your shelter can, too, from DDR founder Lori Weise and senior Shelter Intervention Prevention counselor Amanda Casarez.

One Shelter's Journey to Save More Feline Lives (45 mins.)
What real-world difference can the initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge make in an animal shelter? In this free webinar from the Million Cat Challenge and Maddie’s Fund, Dr. Cristie Kamiya of Humane Society Silicon Valley gives an overview of how implementing those initiatives has grown their life-saving capacity for cats.

How Your Animal Shelter Can Save Cats by Helping People (52 mins.)
The Capital Area Humane Society in Hilliard, Ohio, increased its feline lifesaving by 70 percent by implementing a number of innovative programs that allowed each cat in need of help to receive the exact services that individual cat — and that cat’s human caretakers! — needed. This webinar with CAH Executive Director Rachel Finney shares how they did it.

Yes, and…
How an open-admission municipal shelter and a nonprofit veterinary clinic worked together to lower cat intake at the shelter and give the public access to resources by saying, “Yes, and…”
Presenters: Seth Montgomery, Metro Nashville Animal Care and Control, and Natalie Corwin, Pet Community Center, Nashville, Tenn.

Keeping Cats out of Shelters
Learn about how the PASS (Positive Alternatives to Shelter Surrender) diversion program keeps cats from ever entering shelters, and the Cat Behavior Team keeps cats in their homes through free, lifelong behavior support.
Presenter: Monica Frenden, Austin Pets Alive!, Austin, Tex.

‘Care To’ Programs at the Winnipeg Humane Society
Learn how the Care to Adopt (for strays) and Care to Rehome (for owned cats) Programs help get cats into new homes without a shelter stay, and include low cost spay/neuter and vaccinations to those adopters. With Care to Foster, the finder can take supplies and foster a cat while we search for the owner. If no owner is found, the shelter can make a surgery appointment to get the feline into adoptions.
Presenter: Val Poulton, Winnipeg Humane Society, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Outsourcing Neonatal Kitten Rearing for Life-Saving Success (24 mins.)
Katie Ingram, Animal Services Manager, Placer County Animal Services, Auburn, California

Foster Care On-Deck: Strategies to get kittens into foster homes quickly (60 mins.)
Erin Doyle, DVM, DABVP (Shelter Medicine Practice), Senior Director, Shelter Medicine – ASPCA
Managed Admission

Managed Admission: Giving Shelter Cats Their Best Chance at a Great Outcome
Not every cat who is presented to a shelter for relinquishment is in need of immediate admission. In many cases, simply knowing that help is available and the shelter can take the cat in the near future is enough to allow the community member to opt for an appointment down the road, when his or her cat can be better cared-for by the shelter. In some cases, supportive management may buy the owner enough breathing room that the cat ends up being able to remain in the current home after all. Listen as two shelter leaders who have had great success in managed admission approaches.
Barbara Carr, Executive Director of the SPCA Serving Erie County, N.Y., and Kathie Johnson, Senior Operations Manager of the Animal Humane Society in Minneapolis, Minn., as they share what they’ve learned, including what’s worked and what hasn’t.

One Shelter's Journey to Save More Feline Lives (45 mins.)
What real-world difference can the initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge make in an animal shelter? In this free webinar from the Million Cat Challenge and Maddie’s Fund, Dr. Cristie Kamiya of Humane Society Silicon Valley gives an overview of how implementing those initiatives has grown their life-saving capacity for cats.

How Your Animal Shelter Can Save Cats by Helping People (52 mins.)
The Capital Area Humane Society in Hilliard, Ohio, increased its feline lifesaving by 70 percent by implementing a number of innovative programs that allowed each cat in need of help to receive the exact services that individual cat — and that cat’s human caretakers! — needed. This webinar with CAH Executive Director Rachel Finney shares how they did it.

Small Changes, Big Results for Cats (47 mins.)
Director Mike Keiley of the Noble Family Animal Care and Adoption Center MSPCA at Nevins Farm and Bryn Conklin Rogers, program manager for the MSPCA Boston Adoption Center, share what big wins happened when they introduced seemingly small changes at the shelters.

How Shelters Can Get More Lost Cats Home (54 mins.)
If you want to know what your shelter, your community, and people who have lost their cats can do to get those MIA felines back to their families, we only have one thing to say: Here, kitty, kitty! In this free webinar, Brigid Wasson of Missing Pet Partnership examines why fewer than 2 percent of lost pet cats who enter shelters will ever see home again - and how to beat those odds.

Managed Intake and Restructuring the Budget (15 mins.)
Mandy Evans will cover two topics: A panleukopenia outbreak, and how managed intake, housing changes, and partnering with the community made all the difference; how a few changes to the shelter’s budget helped them reduce their daily cat population by 50 percent and help 112 percent more cats.
Presenter: Mandy Evans, Panhandle Animal Shelter, Sandpoint, Id.

Helping vs Enabling: Knowing the Difference Made All the Difference! (15 mins.)
The programs and initiatives to save the lives of more cats at Greenville County Animal Care are not much different than those we hear about all of the time: surrender prevention, managed intake, community cat diversion and others. But the results they have achieved in such a short time has been astounding. Learn how, despite being the largest open-admission shelter in South Carolina serving two of the largest counties in the state, they decreased cat intake in their shelter by nearly 60 percent and increased the feline save rate from 30 percent to over 80 percent in less than three years!
Presenter: Shelly Simmons, Greenville County Animal Care, Greenville, S.C.
Return to Field

Kitten Intake Decisions in Animal Shelters (63 minutes plus a great 30 minutes of Q&A)
Found a kitten outdoors? When is your intervention most helpful and what's the best way to help? Dr. Kate Hurley and Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) start off the kitten series with a rousing and thought-provoking presentation on kitten intake and "diversion."

The Cat Superhighway: Creating a Roadmap for #allthecats (47 mins, but worth staying for the Q&A after)
Dr. Hurley discusses the evolution of Return to Field from a strategy to reduce euthanasia in shelters to a practice whose benefits have turned out to extend well beyond the walls of the shelter.

Return to Field: Animal Shelters and a New Approach to Healthy Unowned Cats (33 mins.)
What can animal shelters do about healthy unowned cats in their community? One new concept increasingly gaining ground is that, as long as the cats are thriving, the most compassionate, lifesaving approach is to sterilize them, vaccinate them, ear-tip them and return them where they were found. This webinar features Scott Trebatoski, Director of the Pet Resources Division of Hillsborough County, Fla.

Return to Field you say? Tell that to my community/commissioners! (60 mins.)
Dr. Kate Hurley talks about the evolution of her views on the best ways for shelters to protect cats, wildlife, and people. Then a panel of experts including MCC co-founder Dr. Julie Levy engage with viewers in a lively Q&A session.

Return-to-Field from an Animal Control Officer's Perspective (23 mins.)
In Return-to-Field programs, healthy neighborhood cats are sterilized, vaccinated, and returned to the location of origin as an alternative to euthanasia. RTF has been a powerful force for feline lifesaving in communities all across the country. Shelters have seen dramatic decreases in feline intake and equally dramatic increases in live release rates. Find out how it worked in Huntsville, Alabama, with Animal Services Officer Tim Reeder.

Cats, Birds, and Animal Shelters: Seeking Common Ground (62 mins.)
In this presentation, Dr. Kate Hurley explored the real-life implications of various policies proposed to resolve this conflict. She looked at the experience of those on the front lines of cat management, investigated the science and research, and examined the role of "catch and kill," eradication, TNR, return to field, confinement, and other approaches to community cat management and the welfare of birds and other wild animals.

Albuquerque Case Studies: Going Big With Community Cat Programs (15 mins.)
In 2012, New Mexico’s largest municipal animal shelter, the Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department partnered with Petsmart Charities and Best Friends Animal Society on a three-year grant to combine Return-to-Field (RTF), TNR and community outreach. Since then, Albuquerque has been able to drastically reduce euthanasia and intake of cats and kittens coming into the shelter. Learn more about how the program works and how you can replicate it in your community.
Presenter: Desiree Triste-Aragon, Best Friends Animal Society

Caw! Caw! Don't Mix with that Lady Anymore! (12 mins.)
In this brief video, aka "The Tale of the 'Orphan Crow,'" aka "Embarrassing Adventures in Learning My Own Lessons," Dr. Kate Hurley describes what happened when she tried to "rescue" a baby crow.
Capacity for Care (C4C)

Capacity for Care: When Less Adds Up to a Whole Lot More for Shelter Cats (23 mins.)
How can your shelter save more cats? Take in fewer of them at a time, give each cat more room and care for them better. That concept seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but even those who understand that "less is more” when it comes to moving cats out into new homes struggle to understand the math. Find out how it works from Ollie Davidson, Director of Programs at Tree House Animal Shelter in Chicago, and Kathleen Olson, Executive Director of the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County in Washington State.

One Shelter's Journey to Save More Feline Lives (45 mins.)
What real-world difference can the initiatives of the Million Cat Challenge make in an animal shelter? In this free webinar from the Million Cat Challenge and Maddie’s Fund, Dr. Cristie Kamiya of Humane Society Silicon Valley gives an overview of how implementing those initiatives has grown their life-saving capacity for cats.

House Fewer Cats, Save More Lives, Make Everyone Happy! (54 mins.)
Few things seem less intuitive than the idea that shelters can house fewer cats at any one time while saving more cats over the course of a year — and yet, it’s true. This intriguing initiative, known as Capacity for Care, gets a real-life overview in this webinar from Karen Green, executive director of the Cat Adoption Team (CAT).

URI in Shelter Cats: It's SNOT Inevitable! (51 mins.)
Feline URI has been among the most ubiquitous and frustrating diseases in animal shelters. But there’s some good news: Research tells us there’s a secret solution to preventing URI in shelter cats, and every shelter has it! In this webinar, UW/UC Davis Shelter Medicine Fellow and shelter veterinarian Dr. Ann Enright and Dr. Cynthia Karsten of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program share the secret to reducing feline respiratory disease dramatically while simultaneously improving cat well-being, reducing costs, and making cat care easier and more enjoyable.

Cat Portals: A Tale of Two Shelters (46 mins.)
Portals have saved the lives of many shelter cats. Learn from Kootenai Humane Society and Humane Society Silicon Valley, two shelters who converted their cat cages into two-room compartments. Find out how they financed portal installation, how they communicated the innovative upgrade to their staff, volunteers and community, all the logistics of preparing for installation, and everything that happened after they installed the portals. You’ll find out the impact on length of stay, budget and resources, adoptions and disease transmission.

The Hole Truth: Your 30-Minute Guide to Getting Cats Portalized (32 mins.)
In this Million Cat webinar, Dr. Denae Wagner of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and Challenge co-founder Dr. Kate Hurley will show you why portalizing your feline housing will be your cats’ biggest win in 2018 -- then get out their power tools and portalize right in front of your eyes!
Removing Barriers to Adoption

Removing Barriers to Adoption: How Evidence, Innovation and Compassion Grow Pet Adoptions (34 mins.)
A growing body of research is suggesting adoptions done with less intrusive methods of pet-adopter matchmaking are just as effective as, and even more successful than, those with lots of hoops to jump through. Hear Dr. Cynthia D. Delany and Kelly Lee, from one private and one municipal shelter in Yolo County, Calif., respectively, as they share their community’s experience with removing barriers to adoption.

Small Changes, Big Results for Cats (47 mins.)
Director Mike Keiley of the Noble Family Animal Care and Adoption Center MSPCA at Nevins Farm and Bryn Conklin Rogers, program manager for the MSPCA Boston Adoption Center, share what big wins happened when they introduced seemingly small changes at the shelters.

Saving Lives and Reducing Expenses Through Low- and No-Fee Cat Adoptions (28 mins.)
In just one year, Iowa’s Dubuque Regional Humane Society decreased cat euthanasia by 82 percent, increased the cat adoption rate by 40 percent, and cut cat care costs by over $100,000 by implementing a permanent decrease in cat adoption fees. Maria Benham and Aimee Heinrich of the Dubuque Regional Humane Society tell the story!

Is Your Adoption Process Really Working? (45 mins.)
Susan Cosby, Director of Lifesaving Programs and Partnerships at the Petco Foundation, will help your shelter increase adoptions by refining your adoption process, improving the adoption counseling experience for both your staff and applicants, and creating a customer-friendly adopter experience.
#allthecats

Flattening the Kitten Curve While Spay/Neuter is on Hold (73 minutes, plus 23 minutes of Q&A)
Dr. Julie Levy is joined by Hannah Shaw (aka the Kitten Lady) and Best Friends Animal Society's Aimee St. Arnaud and Marla Browne to discuss what you can do now to engage your community in lifesaving and to prepare for the eventual resumption of spay/neuter. Recorded April 15, 2020.

Spay/Neuter in the COVID Era (1 hour, plus 20 minutes of additional Q&A)
Dr. Julie Levy explains why after years of practicing and advocating Spay/Neuter, she is calling on shelters and rescues to suspend S/N on healthy cats in order to slow the spread of COVID-19. Best Friends Director of National Veterinary Programs Aimee St. Arnaud, Metro ACC Nashville Medical Director Staci Cannon, Cleveland APL President and CEO Sharon Harvey, and our own Dr. Kate Hurley share their perspectives. (Note: if you did not pre-register for the webinar, simply fill out the form, click the Register button, and you'll instantly gain access to the recording.)

Reunited: How owners of missing pets, finders, and shelters can work together to maximize cat reclaims (54 mins.)
In this free webinar, Brigid Wasson of Missing Pet Partnership examines why fewer than 2 percent of lost pet cats who enter shelters will ever see home again - and how to beat those odds.
MCC Organizational Updates

Saving and Making Money Using the Million Cat Challenge Five Initiatives (52 mins.)
Watch this free webinar with Barbara Carr, Executive Director of the SPCA Serving Erie County, New York, and learn how this revolution in shelter cat lifesaving can work financially for your shelter.

What Your Animal Shelter Needs to Know About the Million Cat Challenge (42 mins.)
Have questions about the Million Cat Challenge, aren't sure how to sign up, don't know what's involved, or wonder how this will help your shelter? Challenge co-founders Dr. Julie Levy of the Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida and Dr. Kate Hurley of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program will cover your questions in this webinar.
Saving Cats: What Comes after a Million? (60 mins.)
Lessons learned from the first million, discover how you can be part of locking in and perfecting the methods that work to help cats, the people who care for them, and the communities you serve in the next chapter of the Million Cat Challenge.

Introducing the Million Cat Challenge (93 mins.)
Every cat counts. That's the premise of the Million Cat Challenge, a joint campaign of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program and the Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. Dr. Julie Levy and Dr. Kate Hurley, co-founders of the Million Cat Challenge, introduced the Challenge to the world in this webinar presented by Maddie's Fund^®.

Million Cat Webinars

Kitten Series