Our next member teleseminar is with Becky Robinson, the president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies. It will be Tuesday September 23 at 1 pm (Pacific time).
Becky will be giving a presentation called "How Shelters Can Respond to the Special Needs of Cats." We also have a PDF loaded in the member area of the Web site, so you can view the presentation along with Becky's talk as an illustration.
Becky will be talking about feral cats and how we can work together to educate communities on the best practices for outdoor cats. With Trap-Neuter-Return, cats are humanely trapped, taken to a veterinarian for spay or neuter, vaccinated for rabies, eartipped and returned to their colony where volunteers provide food, water, and shelter. With understanding of best practices for feral cats and Trap-Neuter-Return, we can offer more feline-friendly shelter practices and help others understand the benefits of more humane policies regarding ferals.
Many of you may already be familiar with Alley Cat Allies. After discovering and caring for a colony of 54 feral cats in Washington, D.C. in 1990, Becky Robinson became an expert on a program known as Trap-Neuter-Return, which is used widely in Europe for feral cat populations but was virtually unknown within the U.S. Alley Cat Allies is national nonprofit advocacy group, which began as an all-volunteer organization in the basement of Robinson's home and today is headquartered in Washington, D.C. with a full-time staff of 25 professionals.
Under Becky Robinson's leadership, Alley Cat Allies has become widely recognized as the foremost authority Trap-Neuter-Return and humane care for feral cats. Through its extensive network of nearly 170,000 caregivers, animal friends, and activists, Alley Cat Allies has helped tens of thousands of individuals improve the lives of outdoor cats and has motivated and has helped hundreds of grassroots activists with founding local, volunteer feral-cat organizations. Alley Cat Allies has also helped communities across the United States implement municipally based Trap-Neuter-Return programs as a replacement for failed animal control policies that rely on “catch and kill.”