See, Told Ya Cats Were Sweet

If you want to know the truth about the mysterious ways of felines, ask your cat. Cat won’t talk to you? Well, neither will ours. We had to settle for getting some info from the second-best source—their human roommates.

Last month, in order to complement the launch of Feline-ality™, the kitty component of the ASPCA®’s Meet Your Match™ shelter adoptions program, we invited cat lovers across the country to take a fun online survey detailing adventures in life and love with their kitties.
Nearly 12,000 people responded, and get this— when 50 percent of pet parents called their cat’s name, rather than yawning, their kitty’s response was akin to: “Here I am, bright-eyed and bushy tailed!”

Harumph. And cats get a bad rep for being aloof. Way to show ‘em, kitties. By the way, it’s much more rewarding when your cat comes running to you than when a dog does. Most dogs will run to anyone, but with a cat—you’ve gotta earn it.


Check out more of our surprising and funny survey findings.

Kitty’s Turn to Find Real Love!

Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Find me a find
Fetch me a fetch

We at the ASPCA are enjoying the success of our Meet Your Match™ Canine-ality™ program, which has spread to over 100 animal shelters nationwide. This program, which matches an animal’s personality to an adopter’s lifestyle and preferences, has resulted in fewer people returning their dogs.

Now, we’ll be launching the same program for cats and cat lovers, affectionately called: Meet Your Match™ Feline-ality™

Sharon L. Peters of USA Today reported this morning:

"Science is much better than emotion" in guiding a person to the perfect-for-you dog, says Emily Weiss, a certified applied animal behaviorist. She developed the two-pronged tool that assesses and classifies canines according to their personalities and likely post-adoption behavior and also quizzes would-be adopters.

The program was created to deal with the reality that as many as 20 of every 100 dogs adopted from some shelters are soon returned, many of them because of the dog's energy level or other personality traits.

The way Meet Your Match works: Shelter personnel conduct an assessment with each dog to determine its friendliness, playfulness, energy level and motivation or drive. Each dog is scored and placed into one of three color-coded maintenance categories: easy (purple), average (orange) or high (green). And within each of those three categories there are three descriptors, such as "life of the party," "wallflower" and "couch potato," all with details about specific behaviors that can be anticipated.

Humans, meanwhile, complete a five-minute, 18-question survey that provides insights into their expectations, previous dog-care experience, lifestyle and home environment. The questionnaire is scored, and the person is assigned a color that correlates with the type of dog or puppy that best fits.


Then an easy stroll through the facility quickly identifies, through the colored cards on each kennel, which dogs are the best fit for that.

As for creating a similar tool for cats, Weiss had to start back at square one. "Cats are a whole different animal," she says, laughing.

Beta testing in five facilities has shown the Feline-ality Meet Your Match program to be highly effective. Feline-ality™ is even helping them succeed in an area shelters struggle with: getting new homes for older cats.

Read the full article in USA Today!