Animal Welfare Professionals

I work at a small county shelter, very old building, we recently got a grant for remodeling the catroom, any suggestions, currenty i am working at making my intake room larger then it is , and seperating the cats from the kittens on the main adoption floor. we will also be expanding outwards so everything will be slightly bigger, and we are working on having our own air. currently we have a large adoption floor, hallway for euthanasia, tiny iso room of 5 cages and a 10 cage intake room, adoption floor hold combo of cat/kitten total of during busy season approx. 38-45 if crammmed, any ideas or suggestions would be very helptful

Are you able to take a picture of your caging and cat adoption room? I do better with suggestions when I can see what I'm working with. Congratulations on your grant!!

the only photos is of the main adoption room, we have a virtual tour on our website, prcspca.org. once thrue the adoption room there is 2- 7ft X 7ft rooms, one for intake the other for my office with 5 cages 5 cages for overflow, then a 14 X 5 ft hallway for storage and euthanasia. and so much storage everywhere. and I don't want to lose my catio, but to get to intake or euthanasia you have to go thrue the adoption floor. thanks for taking an interest in your suggestions

What an awesome catio- I'm very envious of it! From the looks of the caging- I would see if you could get additional cages similar to the ones in pictures 38-39. They look to be the roomiest for pairs of teenage cats or groups of adult cats.

Depending on how wide you are able to expand, I've seen some shelters use cages similar to the ones in 38 and create a 'U' shape bank of cages for their adoptables. It allows for the interior to be an exercise area for volunteers/staff if you leave the cages as is with the doors on the outside. I've also seen some shelters switch the doors around on the caging so that they are on the inside of the "U" and then the backs of the cages are replaced with a plexiglass so visitors can see all the cats but can't put fingers in cages. Does that make sense? I'm trying to find some pictures from other shelters.

Do you have a separate outside door to get to intake? That would be a nice addition if you didn't. From a disease management stand point, that's a great way to minimize disease/stress or upset the adoption floor if you have a cat coming through that doesn't want to be at the shelter. It also would allow for some privacy if you are doing euthanasia for the public

i am looking at a separate euthanasia room, we will be expanding approx., 10ft out the length of the room, but its cinder block so no walls are coming down, I've thought of a Forer, entering the cat room then you go to intake or the adoption floor 2- separate doors, moving the catio to be in-between the cat and kitten room with a narrow hallway in-between catio and wall to go to the rooms, and doggy doors on either side to give the adult and kittens access to it while rotating if that makes sense, room wont be wide enough to do any U cages, they will have to be lined on the walls, but thanks for the advice, I will share will fellow employees 

Yes, use the walls for space, put shelves everywhere you can on the walls of your main adoption room.  If you can put shelves on all 4 walls the cats will enjoy going from shelf to shelf as they go around the room.  Also, what we found when we put up shelves in one of our bigger adoption rooms was the cats that were interested in a certain adopter would go to them, other cats, that did not want to engage at certain times and with certain people (when there were children - and I mean no disrespect to children) would stay up on the shelf away from the kids.   That was an indicator for us that particular kitty would not do well around kids.

same here the cats who don't care for little people tend to get out of the way, thanks for the advice, will do