Animal Welfare Professionals

Hello All,

I would like to create a good solid Cat Care Training Program for our volunteers and staff. Any suggestions on reference materials? (books, videos, websites).  What does your Cat Care Trainning looks like?  I think our volunteers and staff need training specially on cat behaviour, cat handeling, cat enrichment. How to keep the cats happy and how to help those cats that are scared or stress.

I would love to see what others recommend as well!

Right now we don't have a formal training program for cat volunteers...and we need one!   Would also love to see if anyone has some ideas.

We have an awesome 70-minute online course called "Feline Communication: How to Speak Cat" on our Maddie's Fund website: https://www.maddiesfund.org/feline-communication-how-to-speak-cat.htm. The course focuses on the three forms of feline communication:  vocalization, body language, and scent.  I highly recommend it!

Yes, I know! and I will definitely will include it as part of the training.  Thank you.

Cat Volunteers have to attend out Cat 101 training class before they begin volunteering.  It covers the basics of socialization, controlling spread of illness, some behavior, understanding various signage, etc...  After that, we offer a Cat Behavior class and a class to learn about the ASPCA's Meet Your Match Program (Felineality); we have a lot of volunteer roles for cats and if a volunteer is interested, they either learn "on the job" or meet with me or assigned/trained staff ie: helping care for the cats in the morning, deep cleaning kennels later in the day after cats are adopted, TABBY training (socialization program for cats in the holding area), etc...

Thank you for your answer. Will you be willing to share more information with me? What your Cat 101 class looks like, Class materials?

The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University has  compiled a recommended reading list  on cat behavior that you may find useful.  If you only chose one from the list,  I think their "Managing Cat Aggression" e-book may be a good place to start.  It's a 10-page PDF and is a nice primer on cat body language and cat aggression that and an easy read   I'm also a  fan of cat behaviorist Pam Johnson Bennett, who has 2 books on the list.     

 https://secure.tuftscatnip.com/subscribe/multiproduct.html?ET=tuftscatnip:p2836:2653059a:&st=pmail&s=p_CatWhisperer080218&#books

 Tufts also provides the "Tufts Catnip" e-newsletter, which I highly recommend:  http://www.tuftscatnip.com/

For cat toweling / low stress handling techniques, Dr. Sopfia Yin was a highly respected leader in this area,

- This site has some nice video samples of her techniques: https://lowstresshandling.com/low-stress-handling/video-samples/

- Also, see Sofia Yin's attached  Body Language of Feline Anxiety poster:

Attachment(s)

PostFile-94d6e7ab-7d5e-4e79-9b79-da15570ea36c.pdf   326 KB 1 version

Thank you for the Info!

My pleasure! Training is so important.  

There are also some great free posters on DoggieDrawings.net:  Most are dog related, but there's a  good one on cat body language as well (below): 

 https://www.doggiedrawings.net/freeposters

 -Cat Body Language:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r591fa82pnmm690/AAAsoy9Qdvc5QxfOqLOJMHzRa?dl=0

-Doggie Language:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/lilita/5652847156/sizes/l/

We also used info from Kelly Bolens presentations at ASPCA pro.

Kelley Bollen is outstanding!  I've learned so much about shelter cat behavior - and the importance of enrichment to shelter cats' well being - from Kelley's  ASPCA pro webinars.  Highly recommend Kelley  and ASPCA pro for anyone  working with shelter cats (as well as Maddie's University, of course).