Animal Welfare Professionals

Does anyone have a fairly simple form that our volunteers could use to assess the behavior/personality of a cat that is new to the rescue? The cat will have already been deemed friendly by our vet tech, but we are wanting to provide the adoption counselors with a better understanding of the cat's behavior after it gets into one of the adult adoption rooms to help them match up cats to adopters. I searched the resource library but did not come up with anything. Thanks!

ASPCA has a great resource called "Felineality", I've created a more simple form if you are a little short on time based off of how many you may intake.

This is a google form, and google sheet that can help you with what we do for that. Feel free to mess around with that as you'd like, or if you have a technology person they can give it a spin. If you are able to spend more time with cats, roughly 20 minutes or more with a cat/kitten this is the ASPCA's version.

Couldn't see the form as it indicated I needed access. I clicked to request access. You will see my email beginning with jcgc50. Thanks.

It looks like it's not going to let me share it because it's in a "Shared Drive", but here is a copy of it, sorry!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YxhSvTX4L98MymhTMTu7PZpVq0kGOmfx?usp=sharing

Got it, thanks!

Is there an estimate on how long the Feline-ality program takes in shelters? I read through the ASPCA guide for it and didn't see a mention of how long the assessment took on average. I'd be interested to hear from people who use this guide or some version of it to assess cat personalities!

I spoke to a shelter that used the ASPCA's feline-ality, they said it took roughly 20 minutes per cat, but in their opinion it was worth it.

We have just a little likes/dislikes form we use and ask the volunteers to fill out as we get to know the cat. Hoping it attached okay here! 

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PostFile-ee1acc76-cdf4-4d1f-bb65-30a1c0289408.pdf   78 KB 1 version

We find that the cat may exhibit different  many behaviors in the home than when they are in the shelter - so I am hesitant to label the cat for the purposes of adoption. I try to focus the assessment for the purpose of volunteer interaction. That being said, there is some important information that the previous owner or foster can provide that gives us a better personality profile for the cat. I like the likes/not a fan of form that ChiAnmResCats provided.

When I was writing bios for a rescue I created a questionnaire that I sent to fosters, I will have to see if I can find it. It was mostly just off-the-wall questions as if you were interviewing the dog and the dog was answering. It was totally silly, but helped get good material that I then worked into fun and compelling stories and bios. I got some really humorous responses too.

I don't know how well it would suit your needs or work for cats, but would be happy to send it if I can find it.

We have daily observation sheets in each animal's file that we use and can make notes on.

However, if you want a more direct, standardized way of evaluating animals we also use Meet Your Match which is a personality evaluation created by the ASPCA. There is an animal version which volunteers can be trained to do evaluations on, and then there is a person side of it that potential adopters can take to see which animal personality type would be the best fit for their lifestyle.