The Community Cats Podcast

"Cats aren't spicy. They're not mean. They're just scared." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and Jessica Dolce, Compassion Fatigue + Grief Educator. Berlin Waters grew up in a house full of cats, with a mom who handled TNR for the neighborhood, and she's been a cat lover ever since. That lifelong interest led her to a master's in shelter medicine, where her research focused on handling and socializing fearful and aggressive cats. The result is The Spicy Cat Project, a resource for shelters and caregivers who want a more humane, effective approach to cats with challenging behavior. Berlin is now a third-year vet student with her sights set on shelter medicine and access to care. In this conversation with host Stacy LeBaron, Berlin explains why the cats she works with in shelters are usually owner-surrendered, not feral. They came from homes and they're simply terrified. Rather than leaving hissing cats alone to "decompress" for days or weeks, she argues for early, guided intervention that shows them things are going to be okay. She walks through her slow, step-by-step approach to a cat in a kennel, why she gave up on tools like the fake hand on a stick, and how she uses feral boxes, carriers, and thick folded towels to keep both herself and the cat safe. Stacy and Berlin also dig into some bigger questions in cat welfare. Berlin shares why she thinks we've become over-reliant on gabapentin, which she sees as a useful adjunct but not a substitute for real socialization. Both question the value of behavioral evaluations at intake, comparing them to judging a cat's personality during a vet visit. They also touch on the possible role of pain and stress in aggressive behavior. Berlin's message to adopters and shelters is a cultural shift: a cat that hisses and growls is a scared cat, with a sweet one hiding underneath.[/one_second] [one_second]Press Play Now For: Why most "aggressive" shelter cats are scared house cats, not ferals The case for early intervention instead of leaving fearful cats alone Berlin's step-by-step method for approaching a cat in a kennel Why she stopped using handling tools and relies on towels, carriers, and feral boxes How fearful cats tend to do once they're in foster or adoptive homes Where gabapentin helps, and where over-reliance can fail cats Why behavioral evaluations at intake may not tell you much How pain and stress may factor into challenging behavior Resources & Links The Spicy Cat Project Handling Techniques Feral Cats Adoption Basics The Spicy Cat Project on YouTube

"When we say age is not a disease, we also mean it for the youngest." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and Jessica Dolce, Compassion Fatigue + Grief Educator. Jordyn Purpura started out smuggling orphaned raccoons into his childhood bedroom. Twelve years of neonatal fostering later, he's in his final year of veterinary school, chasing a gap he kept running into from both sides of the exam table: almost nothing in veterinary education begins before eight weeks of age. As a foster parent, that gap sounded like a doctor saying there wasn't much anyone could do. As a shelter worker placing bottle babies, and sometimes being the one present for their euthanasia when no foster could be found, it looked like an entirely preventable loss. For a long time there was a defensible reason not to push harder on kitten medicine: it doesn't matter what a veterinarian is willing to diagnose or prescribe if there's nobody to take that kitten home and feed it every two hours. Jordyn's argument is that this excuse has quietly expired. Foster networks have grown, nurseries have opened, funding has followed. What hasn't caught up is the reflex — too small for blood work, too small for imaging, too small for a medication that was never labeled for a body this size. That reflex has a body count. Kittens remain the animals least likely to leave a shelter alive, not because their medicine is impossible but because almost no one was taught it. Jordyn is teaching it now, to veterinary technicians, to emergency teams, to his own cohort. And he'd like the rest of us to start asking for it out loud.[/one_second] [one_second]Press Play Now For: Why veterinary education effectively starts at eight weeks, and what that costs kittens The emotional weight shelter staff carry when there's no foster available Bringing tube feeding and neonatal husbandry onto hospital nursing teams What the UC Davis famciclovir research showed about recovery times Congenital hypothyroidism as an overlooked cause of "failure to thrive" Getting creative with diagnostics instead of calling a kitten too small for them How fosters and rescues can push their veterinary partners toward more Why generational openness matters more than age when shifting practice Resources & Links Vernau Laboratory at UC Davis UC Davis Feline Pediatrics on Instagram Jordyn Purpura on Instagram — The Vet Med Couple UC Davis Fracture Program for Rescue Animals Orphan Kitten Project at UC Davis Orphan Kitten Club

"Today's inside cat is tomorrow's outside cat." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic. Eve Salimbene spent her career in the legal field before moving into animal welfare 26 years ago — and by her own admission, she was a dog person until she landed in Polk County, Florida. There she found a county with groups working on dogs and essentially nothing for cats: a high shelter kill rate, no low-cost spay/neuter anywhere in the county, and a year-round breeding season with none of the winter respite she'd known up north. She posted a question online asking what was being done. The response pulled her in, and in 2020 a brand-new group of volunteers TNR'd 133 cats. Six years later the count is roughly 6,700 — and the 133 looks like the tip of the iceberg. The complication is that TNR isn't condoned in Polk County. The Board of County Commissioners and the sheriff who runs animal control don't believe it works, which puts Eve's team in a strange middle space: vocal enough that caregivers know they aren't alone, careful enough not to get shut down. Some of the people they've helped won't give testimonials for fear of retribution. Eve and Stacy dig into where the cats actually come from, why Eve believes proactive municipal investment beats two more decades of trap and kill, and what a real pilot project would need to look like. Three smaller municipalities have now approached her about running one — and she's pushing for a five-year window with honest baseline numbers. Press Play Now For: Why running a law firm turns out to be decent preparation for animal advocacy What it's like to lead a TNR organization in a county that officially opposes TNR The 2020 cohort of colonies now reporting zero kittens, years later Where Polk County's community cats actually originate — and why "transient population" is the honest answer The tagline that reframes owned-cat spay/neuter as a community cat issue Municipal spay/neuter funding on the move: New York City, DeKalb County, and a statewide Texas program Eve's proposed funding mechanisms, including a one-cent sales tax and corporate donors in the Tampa–Orlando corridor Stacy's pilot-project challenge: designate the worst zip code, hit the volume, and watch intake drop Why three small municipalities may end up leading where the county won't Resources & Links Street Cat Project of Polk County Coalition for Animal Rights and Education in Polk County (CARE) on Facebook Contact Eve directly: [email protected] Community Cat Program Management Certificate — University of the Pacific, Benerd College (next session begins September 14) Sustainable Solutions Grant Program — United Spay Alliance Making the Case for TNR Certification Workshop - presented by Neighborhood Cats

"It's okay to be small and grassroots." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic. Robyn Alcock and Jen Scott joined host Stacy LeBaron to talk about Feral Fixers TNR Club, the Jersey City nonprofit they co-founded in 2024 alongside Kathryn Parker after years of trapping independently. In just two years, the all-volunteer group — who all keep full-time jobs — has helped more than 375 cats through TNR, rescue, and medical care. Much of the conversation centered on the realities of running a small "operational board" nonprofit: the governance lessons that shaped their early structure, why they held off on setting formal growth metrics in year one, and how nearly half of the cats they trap turn out to be friendly, adoptable animals rather than TNR candidates — a shift driven largely by the lack of low-cost spay/neuter access in Jersey City. Stacy, Robyn, and Jen also dug into practical solutions: MASH-style pop-up clinic models from groups like Animal Balance and Slomba Shelter Solutions as ways to bring high-volume spay/neuter directly into underserved neighborhoods, and the fundraising path that took Feral Fixers from small individual donors to their first Mission Meow grant and a matching grant from United Spay Alliance's Community Cats Grants program at their two-year mark. It's a useful blueprint for any small, grassroots group trying to prove — as Robyn puts it — that it's okay to be small. Press Play Now For: How a pandemic-era trapping experience and a childhood spent bottle-feeding strays led Robyn and Jen to co-found a Jersey City nonprofit Practical governance lessons for small, "operational board" nonprofits — board size, conflicts of interest, and keeping personal and organizational finances separate Why nearly half of Feral Fixers' TNR trapping efforts turn into friendly-cat rescues, and how that's reshaping their workload The transportation and appointment-access barriers keeping Jersey City residents from affordable spay/neuter MASH-style clinic models, including Animal Balance, as an option for bringing spay/neuter directly into underserved communities How Feral Fixers built its funding base through small donors, a Mission Meow grant, and a United Spay Alliance matching grant Stacy's framework for identifying and cultivating leadership-level donors as an organization grows Why "altered at intake" numbers matter for understanding a community's real spay/neuter gap Resources & Links Feral Fixers TNR Club: https://feralfixersclub.org/ Feral Fixers TNR Club on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feralfixersclub/ United Spay Alliance Community Cats Grants: https://www.unitedspayalliance.org/community-cats-grants/ Animal Balance: https://www.animalbalance.org/ Slomba Shelter Solutions: https://slombasheltersolutions.com/

"It's about knowing your limits, knowing where you are energy-wise, time-wise, resource-wise, and just doing what you can — and knowing that is enough, and that is making a difference." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and Neighborhood Cats TNR Certification Workshop. Jen Blough returns to the podcast after nearly a decade away — she was featured in the show's first fifty episodes — to talk about the work she's built in the years since: helping animal welfare professionals name and navigate the emotional toll of the field. A licensed professional counselor, former shelter worker and animal control officer, and lifelong animal advocate, Jen didn't set out to specialize in compassion fatigue. She backed into it in grad school, when a professor described the symptoms of secondary traumatic stress and she realized he was describing her own life. Much of the conversation is spent untangling terms that get used interchangeably but aren't the same thing. Jen breaks down compassion fatigue as the combination of burnout (which comes from your environment — under-resourced organizations, systemic failures, day-to-day friction) and secondary traumatic stress (which comes from absorbing someone else's trauma, human or animal). She walks through how moral distress and moral injury fit in — the no-good-options decisions that TNR caregivers and shelter workers face constantly — and why none of these, despite how real they feel, show up in the DSM. The back half of the conversation turns to grief, and this is where the discussion gets specific to community cat work. Jen introduces two concepts: disenfranchised grief (loss that society doesn't validate, which often includes animal loss) and ambiguous loss (grief without closure — not knowing what happened to a cat who stops showing up at a colony). Stacy and Jen talk through the real tension caregivers face around outdoor cats aging out of a colony, and how organizations can handle transparency with volunteers about euthanasia and loss without either traumatizing them or leaving them in the dark. Jen closes with practical advice on knowing your limits and recognizing that showing up in smaller ways — a donation, a shared post, a bag of food — still counts as meaningful advocacy. Press Play Now For: The real difference between burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, moral distress, and moral injury Why compassion fatigue isn't a diagnosable condition, and how it can fluctuate day to day Disenfranchised grief and why animal loss so often gets dismissed by people outside the field Ambiguous loss — the particular grief of not knowing what happened to a cat who never returns to the feeding station How organizations can navigate telling (or not telling) volunteers about euthanasia and cat loss Jen's advice for recognizing your capacity and letting "not right now" be an acceptable answer A first look at Jen's forthcoming book and new certification program for animal welfare professionals Resources & Links Jen Blough's website Beyond Compassion Fatigue: Trauma, Resilience, and Recovery in Animal Care and Advocacy — pre-order To Save a Starfish: A Compassion Fatigue Workbook for the Animal Welfare Warrior Beyond Compassion Fatigue podcast