Assessing Cat Welfare In Shelters Using Simple Indicators

Assessing the welfare of animals in shelters is a vital but complicated practice: using electronic surveillance may give us a partial picture, but doing assessments in person may be difficult as well, as human resources are limited, even at the best of times. Because of this reality, researchers are pushing to develop welfare parameters that “are feasible in a surveillance setting, show stability over time on a ‘shelter level’ and can be used by different raters with acceptable reliability.” In other words, welfare assessments need to be quick, consistent, and standardized in a way that the results can be trusted.

In this study, researchers wanted to look at cat-based parameters, specifically looking at the relationship between housing conditions and cats’ physical conditions. To do this, they visited 30 different animal shelters, with a median of 105 animals (and 63 cats), with cats generally group housed with a median group size of 6. For the purposes of this study, the researchers wanted to test physical conditions of the cats – likely the quickest way to assess welfare through visual means – so they tested body condition, eye discharge (if any) as well as coat condition. To test and retest the reliability of the parameters, they visited 10 of the shelters twice and to test reliability between raters, 36 housing units were evaluated by two different assessors.

What they found was that, as they suspected, housing conditions were indeed related to physical condition: an increase in the “%verythin” parameter was related to housing units with less than one lying space per cat, and fewer units with hiding opportunities. Meanwhile, an increase in the “%poorcoat” parameter was related to a longer length of stay, fewer litter boxes per cat, and unpleasant odour.

The researchers note that their study and methods prove that “simple cat-based parameters can give an indication of how well cats cope with their environment, and such parameters can benefit cat welfare.” For companion animal advocates, the brief and exploratory study should encourage further exploration.