The Evolving Role of Triage and Appointment-Based Admission to Improve Service, Care and Outcomes in Animal Shelters.

The historical norm for many animal shelters has been to admit animals on an unscheduled basis, without prior assessment of animal or client need or regard to the shelter's ability to deliver humane care or ensure appropriate outcomes. This approach allows little opportunity to provide finders or owners with alternatives to keep pets safe in their homes or community rather than being impounded. In addition to needlessly impounding animals and separating pets from families, unmanaged/unscheduled admission frequently results in animal influx exceeding shelter capacity, leading to crowding, stress, disease, and euthanasia of animals, as well as poor customer experience, compromised staffing efficiency and decreased organizational effectiveness. Many of these harmful consequences disproportionately impact vulnerable community members and their pets. Triage and appointment-based services have been well developed in healthcare and other service sectors allowing organizations to prioritize the most urgent cases, align services with organizational resources and provide situation-specific solutions that may include virtual support or referral as appropriate. This article discusses the trend in animal sheltering toward triage and appointment-based services that parallels the use of these practices in human healthcare. Reported positive results of this approach are detailed including improved staff morale, reduced disease rates and substantially reduced euthanasia. These positive outcomes support the endorsement of triage and appointment-based services by multiple North American animal welfare professional and academic organizations, recognizing that it better realizes the goals of shelters to serve the common good of animals and people in the most humane, equitable and effective possible way.

Rethinking the Animal Shelter's Role in Free-Roaming Cat Management.

Substantial societal investment is made in the management of free-roaming cats by various methods, with goals of such programs commonly including wildlife conservation, public health protection, nuisance abatement, and/or promotion of cat health and welfare. While there has been a degree of controversy over some of the tactics employed, there is widespread agreement that any method must be scientifically based and sufficiently focused, intensive and sustained in order to succeed. The vast majority of free-roaming cat management in communities takes place through local animal shelters. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, this consisted primarily of ad hoc admission of cats captured by members of the public, with euthanasia being the most common outcome. In North America alone, hundreds of millions of cats have been impounded and euthanized and billions of dollars invested in such programs. Given the reliance on this model to achieve important societal goals, it is surprising that there has been an almost complete lack of published research evaluating its success. Wildlife conservation and public health protection will be better served when debate about the merits and pitfalls of methods such as Trap-Neuter-Return is grounded in the context of realistically achievable alternatives. Where no perfect answer exists, an understanding of the potential strengths and shortcomings of each available strategy will support the greatest possible mitigation of harm-the best, if still imperfect, solution. Animal shelter function will also benefit by discontinuing investment in methods that are ineffective as well as potentially ethically problematic. This will allow the redirection of resources to more promising strategies for management of cats as well as investment in other important animal shelter functions. To this end, this article reviews evidence regarding the potential effectiveness of the three possible shelter-based strategies for free-roaming cat management: the traditional approach of ad hoc removal by admission to the shelter; admission to the shelter followed by sterilization and return to the location found; and leaving cats in place with or without referral to mitigation strategies or services provided by other agencies.

Effects of dietary lysine supplementation on upper respiratory and ocular disease and detection of infectious organisms in cats within an animal shelter.

OBJECTIVE: To determine within a cat shelter effects of dietary lysine supplementation on nasal and ocular disease and detection of nucleic acids of Chlamydophila felis, feline calicivirus (FCV), and feline herpesvirus (FHV-1). ANIMALS: 261 adult cats. PROCEDURES: Cats were fed a diet containing 1.7% (basal diet; control cats) or 5.7% (supplemented diet; treated cats) lysine for 4 weeks. Plasma concentrations of lysine and arginine were assessed at the beginning (baseline) and end of the study. Three times a week, cats were assigned a clinical score based on evidence of nasal and ocular disease. Conjunctival and oropharyngeal swab specimens were tested for FHV-1, FCV, and C felis nucleic acids once a week. RESULTS: Data were collected from 123, 74, 59, and 47 cats during study weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. By study end, plasma lysine concentration in treated cats was greater than that in control cats and had increased from baseline. There was no difference between dietary groups in the proportion of cats developing mild disease. However, more treated cats than control cats developed moderate to severe disease during week 4. During week 2, FHV-1 DNA was detected more commonly in swab specimens from treated versus control cats. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Dietary lysine supplementation in the amount used in our study was not a successful means of controlling infectious upper respiratory disease within a cat shelter. Rather, it led to increases in disease severity and the incidence of detection of FHV-1 DNA in oropharyngeal or conjunctival mucosal swab specimens at certain time points.

Cage size, movement in and out of housing during daily care, and other environmental and population health risk factors for feline upper respiratory disease in nine North American animal shelters.

Upper respiratory infection (URI) is not an inevitable consequence of sheltering homeless cats. This study documents variation in risk of URI between nine North American shelters; determines whether this reflects variation in pathogen frequency on intake or differences in transmission and expression of disease; and identifies modifiable environmental and group health factors linked to risk for URI. This study demonstrated that although periodic introduction of pathogens into shelter populations may be inevitable, disease resulting from those pathogens is not. Housing and care of cats, particularly during their first week of stay in an animal shelter environment, significantly affects the rate of upper respiratory infection.

The 2006 American Association of Feline Practitioners Feline Vaccine Advisory Panel report.

Vaccination is a medical procedure, and the decision to vaccinate should be based on a risk-based assessment for each cat and each vaccine.

2006 AAHA canine vaccine guidelines.

In 2005, AAHA's Canine Vaccine Task Force met to reexamine and revise guidelines on the use of vaccines in dogs. The results of the Task Force's work are summarized and tabulated in this article and are published in their entirety on the AAHA website (www.aahanet.org). The 2006 AAHA Canine Vaccine Guidelines contain information on new technological developments in vaccines, an introduction to conditionally licensed vaccines, and detailed recommendations on the use of available vaccines. Perhaps the most noteworthy addition to the guidelines is a separate set of recommendations created for shelter facilities. Vaccines are classified as core (universally recommended), noncore (optional), or not recommended. The Task Force recognizes that vaccination decisions must always be made on an individual basis, based on risk and lifestyle factors.

Feline infectious disease control in shelters.

No single factor determines whether a population remains healthy or disease rages out of control. All host and environmental factors taken together provide a number of tools to protect the vulnerable feline shelter population,however. A well-conceived infectious disease control program contributes to improved public perception, increased adoptions, and a healthier feline population within the shelter and in the community in general.

Update on feline calicivirus: new trends.

In addition to being important upper respiratory tract pathogens of cats, FCVs are increasingly reported as a cause of a highly contagious febrile hemorrhagic syndrome. Strains causing this syndrome are genetically different from the vaccine strain and other nonhemorrhagic FCV isolates. They apparently differ from one outbreak to another. The syndrome is characterized variably by fever; cutaneous edema and ulcerative dermatitis; upper respiratory tract signs; anorexia; occasionally icterus, vomiting, and diarrhea; and a mortality that approaches 50%. Adult cats tend to be more severely affected than kittens, and vaccination does not appear to have a significant protective effect. Rapid recognition of the disease through identification of clinical signs and appropriate testing, followed by strict institution of disinfection, isolation, and quarantine measures, are essential to prevent widespread mortality resulting from the infection.

2013 AAFP Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel Report.

RATIONALE: This Report was developed by the Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel of the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) to provide practical recommendations to help clinicians select appropriate vaccination schedules for their feline patients based on risk assessment. The recommendations rely on published data as much as possible, as well as consensus of a multidisciplinary panel of experts in immunology, infectious disease, internal medicine and clinical practice.

Associations among weight loss, stress, and upper respiratory tract infection in shelter cats.

OBJECTIVE: To identify associations among change in body weight, behavioral stress score, food intake score, and development of upper respiratory tract infection (URI) among cats admitted to an animal shelter. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. Animals-60 adult cats admitted to an animal shelter. PROCEDURES: Body weight was measured on days 0 (intake), 7, 14, and 21. Behavioral stress and food intake were scored daily for the first 7 days; cats were monitored daily for URI. RESULTS: 49 of the 60 (82%) cats lost weight during at least 1 week while in the shelter. Fifteen (25%) cats lost ≥ 10% of their body weight while in the shelter. Thirty-five of the 60 (58%) cats developed URI prior to exiting the shelter, and only 4 cats remained at least 21 days without developing URI. Cats with high stress scores during the first week were 5.6 times as likely to develop URI as were cats with low stress scores. Food intake and stress scores were negatively correlated (r = -0.98). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Results indicated that cats admitted to an animal shelter were likely to lose weight while in the shelter and likely to develop URI, and that cats that had high stress scores were more likely to develop URI.

Relationship between clinical manifestations and pulsed-field gel profiles of Streptococcus canis isolates from dogs and cats.

Little is known regarding the degree of genotypic relatedness between Streptococcus canis isolates from dogs and cats. The purpose of this study was to determine whether correlations existed between the genotypes of canine and feline S. canis isolates as determined using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and different clinical manifestations of disease. Eighty-two isolates of S. canis were examined that had been collected from dogs and cats presenting to the University of California, Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital (VMTH) between 1998 and 2005. Associated clinical manifestations included sepsis, otitis, pyometra, skin infections, necrotizing fasciitis, respiratory disease, and urinary tract infections. In addition, 9 feline isolates from a southern California shelter that experienced an outbreak of S. canis infection manifesting as necrotizing fasciitis and death were examined. Bacterial isolates were characterized by PFGE analysis using the restriction enzyme SmaI. The relationships between banding patterns were analyzed using gel analysis software combined with visual interpretation. The feline shelter isolates of S. canis were 99% similar in bacterial PFGE profile. The remainder of samples had less than 80% similarity in PFGE banding patterns. The relatedness of the PFGE profile in the feline shelter isolates suggested a clonal origin. In the isolates from the VMTH population, there was no relationship between specific disease manifestations and PFGE profile. PFGE typing does not appear to be useful for identifying isolates associated with specific disease presentations; however may be more useful to identify outbreaks of S. canis infections or to detect clonal populations in outbreaks.