Engaging with Socio-Economically Disadvantaged Communities and Their Cats: Human Behaviour Change for Animal and Human Benefit

Situational Analysis of Cat Ownership and Cat Caring Behaviors in a Community with High Shelter Admissions of Cats

Managing stray cats in urban areas is an ongoing challenge, and in Australia, many are euthanized. Most stray cats are from disadvantaged areas and are under 1 year of age. The Australian Pet Welfare Foundation intended to assess the impact of a free cat sterilization program in an area with high shelter intake of cats in the city of Ipswich, Queensland. The aims of this pre-intervention study were to undertake a situational analysis of cat ownership, semi-ownership and cat caring behaviours, and compare those in the same demographic with dog ownership and caring behaviours relating to sterilization rates, to provide a basis against which to assess the program's effectiveness. In a sample of 343 participants from that area, 35% owned cats and 3% fed stray cats. Cats were predominantly obtained from family or friends (31%) and shelters (20%). More respondents owned dogs (53%), which were most often sourced from breeders (36%) and family acquaintances (24%). More owned cats than owned dogs were sterilized (91% versus 78%). However, only 74% of cats aged 4 to <12 months were sterilized. Cat containment practices varied, with 51% of owners containing their cat(s) at all times, and a further 18% doing so at night. These results suggest the need for community-based programs that focus on sterilizing owned and semi-owned cats, and assisting semi-owners in becoming full owners to reduce stray cat populations and associated negative impacts. This includes assistance with cat containment where vulnerable native species are present. Public understanding of the causes and effective solutions for free-roaming cats, alongside legislative changes, are required to facilitate these efforts. Assistive programs aligned with One Welfare principles are expected to benefit the wellbeing of animals, humans and their environments.

Public Attitudes towards and Management Strategies for Community Cats in Urban China

Managing community cats in urban China is a contentious and emerging issue, with debates centering on the most effective and humane approaches. This study aimed to investigate public attitudes towards community cats and various management strategies. A survey was conducted involving 5382 urban residents in China. Their attitudes towards the positive and negative roles of community cats in urban areas and their support for different management methods were examined, including trap-and-kill, taking no action, centralized management, and trap-neuter-return (TNR) and its variations. Results indicated that 63% of participants were willing to coexist with community cats, 71% opposed trap-and-kill, and 61% agreed or strongly agreed with the TNR method and its variations. Older residents or those with higher incomes were more likely to support coexistence with community cats. In contrast, younger or lower-income residents were more likely to support non-coexistence. Residents in first- or second-tier cities (e.g., Beijing, Hangzhou, and Jinan Cities in China) were more inclined to support trap-and-kill and less likely to support coexistence than their counterparts in fourth-tier cities (e.g., county-level cities in China). Moreover, those with lower education or incomes were more supportive of trap-and-kill and taking no action as the methods to manage community cats than those with relatively higher education or incomes. Those with higher incomes held more positive attitudes towards community cats and were more supportive of TNR and its variations than their counterparts with lower incomes. Males were more inclined to support trap-and-kill and taking no action and less inclined to support centralized management and TNR than females. The implications of the findings on TNR with adoption programs in urban China are discussed. These novel findings underscore the need for targeted educational campaigns to promote humane and effective management strategies, addressing public concerns and community cats' welfare. The study's insights are critical for informing policy and improving community cat management in urban China.

Home range size and habitat selection of owned outdoor domestic cats (Felis catus) in urban southwestern Ontario

Domestic cats (Felis catus) play a dual role in society as both companion animals and predators. When provided with unsupervised outdoor access, cats can negatively impact native wildlife and create public health and animal welfare challenges. The effective implementation of management strategies, such as buffer zones or curfews, requires an understanding of home range size, the factors that influence their movement, and the types of habitats they use. Here, we used a community/citizen scientist approach to collect movement and habitat use data using GPS collars on owned outdoor cats in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge-Guelph region, southwestern Ontario, Canada. Mean (± SD) 100% minimum convex polygon home range size was 8 ± 8 ha (range: 0.34-38 ha) and was positively associated with road density but not with intrinsic factors such as boldness, sex, or age. With regards to habitat selection, cats used greenspaces, roads, and agricultural land less often than predicted but strongly selected for impervious surfaces (urban areas other than greenspaces or roads). Our results suggest that wildlife near buildings and residential areas are likely at the greatest risk of cat predation and that a buffer size of 840 m would be needed to restrict cats from entering areas of conservation concern.

Community Engagement and the Effectiveness of Free-Roaming Cat Control Techniques: A Systematic Review

Although free-roaming and feral cat control techniques are often applied in human communities, community engagement is not always considered. A systematic literature review following an update of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) methodology was conducted to evaluate whether community engagement influences the effectiveness of control techniques, excluding culling, in managing cat populations. The degree of community engagement was estimated based on the number of roles reported during the application of the control technique, which included adoption, trapping, care, and/or education. Education followed by adoption was the determining factor in the decreasing cat populations over time. The limited evaluations of control technique effectiveness, narrow geographical scope, and our simple measure of engagement emphasize the need for more detailed studies. These studies should evaluate the effectiveness of control techniques, while considering community engagement more comprehensively.

Solutions-Based Approach to Urban Cat Management-Case Studies of a One Welfare Approach to Urban Cat Management

Urban free-roaming cats create concern about their impacts on wildlife and human health, leading to the use of trap-adopt-kill methods to manage these populations. This method is ineffective at decreasing the free-roaming cat population and has a negative impact on cat caregivers' well-being. Using semi-structured interviews, this study explored the relationship that semi-owners (people who feed cats but do not perceive ownership) and owners of multiple cats have with the cats they care for, and the social and psychological impacts of an alternative assistive-centered approach to urban cat management. This approach to semi-owned and owned cats provided free sterilization and preventative healthcare. Our findings demonstrate that the caregivers had a strong emotional bond with the cats they cared for. The caregivers also experienced a positive impact on their quality of life, and indicated an improvement in the cats' welfare after having the cats sterilized through this program. Additionally, the cat caregivers indicated that they had a negative view of agencies, such as the municipal council. It is recommended that an assistive-centered approach to urban cat management be prioritized by local councils and welfare agencies to improve caregivers' quality of life and psychological well-being, whilst also improving cat welfare. The implementation of this assistive-centered management approach could improve the relationship between communities and the agencies involved, leading to the continuous reporting of free-roaming cats for sterilization. This assistive-centered approach has the potential to reduce the free-roaming cat population, their effects on wildlife, nuisance complaints, and council impoundments, and is aligned with the One Welfare philosophy.

Attitudes and practices toward feral cats of male and female dog or cat owners and non-owners in Seoul, South Korea

The number of pet cats in South Korea has sharply increased since 2010. Problems have arisen with feral or stray cats, creating conflict among residents, to such an extent that the government provides some sites for people to offer feeding stations for the stray cats. This study investigated hypotheses on people's attitudes toward feral cats in Seoul, South Korea: (i) dog and cat owners would show more positive attitudes than non-owners toward feral cats; (ii) females would have more positive attitudes toward feral cats than males; (iii) the number of Seoul-provided feeding stations by district would be correlated with people's positive attitudes toward feral cats. Responses from 7,394 participants were used for the final analyses with 3,179 males, 3,607 females, and 599 others (includes "decline to state"). Cat owners reported more extremely positive attitudes toward feral cats than people who had no cats. Females more often had cats than males, and they were more extremely positive toward pet and feral cats than males, and strongly opposed to culling as a management strategy. The attitudes toward feral cats of people with only dogs were intermediate between people with cats and people without pets, more resembling those of people without pets. There was a correlation between the number of city-provided feeding stations and people's attitudes toward feral cats, but only in the areas with at least 40 feeder stations; having many city-provided feeding stations was associated with very negative attitudes to feral cats. Whether the very large number of feeding stations were provided in the two neighborhoods due to a previously excessive number of feral cats in those neighborhoods, vs. those feeding stations attracting or provisioning an ever-growing number of feral cats, is unknown. These results show sharp differences in attitudes between cat owners and non-owners, and between males and females. Results resemble findings in other studies, perhaps with more extreme differences between sub-groups. The study revealed that attitudes toward pet and feral cats in Seoul were complex and varied with pet ownership, with sex, and with neighborhood context.

Building Sustainable Habitats for Free-Roaming Cats in Public Spaces: A Systematic Literature Review

This review article examines the possibility of providing a toolkit to prepare habitats for free-roaming cats (FRCs) in public spaces. The toolkit targets local communities, authorities, stakeholders, and advocates in the cities of the Global South, to raise awareness and improve the welfare of FRCs living in urban communities. This article explores a relatively new area in urban studies and veterinary science, and its connection to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A systematic review was conducted using bibliometric analysis, which illustrated how the literature on urban studies ignores the sustainability of public spaces as a living space for FRCs. This study contributes to our understanding of the current situation of FRCs from a theoretical perspective, in relation to the urban transformation of low-income and high-poverty countries. The article concludes with a four-pillar toolkit to help impoverished communities use public spaces as a resource, build sustainable habitats, and provide living spaces for FRCs.

Characteristics of cat semi-owners

OBJECTIVES

Unowned 'stray' domestic cats threaten wildlife, as well as create a community nuisance and contribute to high rates of euthanasia in animal shelters. These cats can experience poor welfare, contribute to the pet cat population and compromise attempts to control feral cats. However, many unowned domestic cats are cared for by semi-owners who do not consider they own these cats; therefore, semi-owners are a potentially important target population for human behaviour change interventions. The present study aimed to describe the characteristics of cat semi-owners and compare these with the general population of cat owners and non-cat owners to inform future cat management interventions.

METHODS

An online questionnaire open to all residents of New South Wales, Australia was developed and advertised. Respondents were asked 'do you care for other free-roaming or stray cats (not including the cats you own)?', whether they owned cats, about characteristics of their home and their agreement with 15 capability, social opportunity and motivation (COM) items relating to cat containment.

RESULTS

Questionnaire responses were received from 8708 people, including 588 semi-owners (7%). Semi-owners were significantly more likely to be female, live in urban areas, live in lower socioeconomic areas and rent their home. Most semi-owners also owned their own cats and owned more cats than non-semi-owners.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

Semi-owners of unowned 'stray' cats are a valuable potential target audience for human behaviour change interventions. Understanding that these semi-owners often have their own cats, might already be overwhelmed with cat-caring responsibilities and are disproportionately from lower socioeconomic backgrounds should guide intervention design. A nuanced approach is needed that prioritises the wellbeing of cats and semi-owners for semi-owners to 'buy in'. Any intervention should also recognise that semi-owners often face multiple, complex barriers to neutering or claiming ownership of the cats they care for, especially cost, and trust in the authorities.

Human influences shape the first spatially explicit national estimate of urban unowned cat abundance

Globally, unowned cats are a common element of urban landscapes, and the focus of diverse fields of study due to welfare, conservation and public health concerns. However, their abundance and distribution are poorly understood at large spatial scales. Here, we use an Integrated Abundance Model to counter biases that are inherent in public records of unowned cat sightings to assess important drivers of their abundance from 162 sites across five urban towns and cities in England. We demonstrate that deprivation indices and human population densities contribute to the number of unowned cats. We provide the first spatially explicit estimates of expected distributions and abundance of unowned cats across a national scale and estimate the total UK urban unowned cat population to be 247,429 (95% credible interval: 157,153 to 365,793). Our results provide a new baseline and approach for studies on unowned cats and links to the importance of human-mediated effects.

Counting Cats: The integration of expert and citizen science data for unbiased inference of population abundance

Free-roaming animal populations are hard to count, and professional experts are a limited resource. There is vast untapped potential in the data collected by nonprofessional scientists who volunteer their time to population monitoring, but citizen science (CS) raises concerns around data quality and biases. A particular concern in abundance modeling is the presence of false positives that can occur due to misidentification of nontarget species. Here, we introduce Integrated Abundance Models (IAMs) that integrate citizen and expert data to allow robust inference of population abundance meanwhile accounting for biases caused by misidentification. We used simulation experiments to confirm that IAMs successfully remove the inflation of abundance estimates caused by false-positive detections and can provide accurate estimates of both bias and abundance. We illustrate the approach with a case study on unowned domestic cats, which are commonly confused with owned, and infer their abundance by analyzing a combination of CS data and expert data. Our case study finds that relying on CS data alone, either through simple summation or via traditional modeling approaches, can vastly inflate abundance estimates. IAMs provide an adaptable framework, increasing the opportunity for further development of the approach, tailoring to specific systems and robust use of CS data.

Public opinions on seven different stray cat population management scenarios in Flanders, Belgium

Stray cat population management is an important worldwide issue. Understanding citizen attitudes towards stray cat control options is vital to the success of controlling stray cat numbers, as public perception affects the acceptance of, support for and collaboration in stray cat management policies. Audience segmentation, as to enable each group to be engaged in the stray cat management policy, is important for the success of the interventions. Therefore a web-based survey was conducted among Flemish citizens in order to examine differences in acceptance towards seven management scenarios: household cat neutering with financial support for the owner, household cat neutering without financial support for the owner, encouraging responsible household cat ownership, trapping stray cats and taking them to a shelter, trapping and neutering stray cats for release into a managed "cat colony" (composed by so called "community cats"), trapping and killing of stray cats, and undertaking no action. A total of 4059 valid responses were collected and the proportions of agreement were compared across the different management scenarios using the two-sample z-test. Interactions among factors that influenced each management scenario were investigated using the CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection) analysis and visualized on a tree. Our results showed that fostering responsible household cat ownership (89.9%) and conversion of stray cats to "community cats" (76.3%) were most supported by respondents in our sample (which consisted mainly of females, cat-lovers, and families without children). Least supported were the killing of stray cats (7.7%) and undertaking no action (3.3%). The demographic analyses revealed that for the acceptance of management scenarios there were three important factors (attitude towards cats, area of residence, and gender), two weaker factors (education and having children) and two which had almost no impact (age and cat ownership). We propose that future studies should focus on the effect of 'area of residence', 'having children' and 'education'. In conclusion, our research confirms that management of and communication on stray cat strategies should not be developed with a one-size-fits-all approach. Efforts should be tailored to each audience segment, thus adapted to the area of residence and human characteristics.

Human Behaviour Change Interventions in Animal Care and Interactive Settings: A Review and Framework for Design and Evaluation

Simple Summary

In many cases, to improve animal welfare, we must change the behaviour of the people who manage them, care for them, and interact with them. This can be achieved through behaviour change interventions. In this review, we aimed to explore the current state of the behaviour change literature in animal care and interactive settings. We identified significant deficiencies in the design, evaluation, and reporting of these interventions. It was often unclear what behaviours were targeted, how the intervention was designed to work, what was in it, and how it was delivered. Without this information, interventions cannot be rigorously evaluated, built upon by others, or implemented in other settings. Transparent reporting and a structured approach to the design and evaluation of interventions is now required to help the field move forward in a more consistent and robust way. We present such a framework, the “Ten-Task” guide, based on the intervention mapping framework, and demonstrate how its adoption would help progress this field substantially.

Abstract

Behaviour change interventions may be one of the most promising avenues to improve animal welfare. Yet there has been limited systematic research involving them in animal-related settings. We searched three major databases for studies involving an intervention to change interactive or care-related behaviours in any animal-related setting. Forty-seven papers were included in the review and each paper was coded for specific design and evaluation elements. We found a series of limitations in the quality and consistency of intervention design, evaluation, and reporting. Hence, we present a framework, the “Ten-Task” guide, based on the intervention mapping framework, to guide future work in this field. Adopting this structured approach will improve the quality and efficacy of behaviour change interventions for animal welfare and allow for the field to progress in a harmonious way.

Come for the looks, stay for the personality? A mixed methods investigation of reacquisition and owner recommendation of Bulldogs, French Bulldogs and Pugs

Brachycephalic breeds are proliferating internationally, with dramatic rises in popularity juxtaposed with common and severe breed-related health problems. Physical appearance is as a dominant factor attracting owners to brachycephalic breeds; however, whether these owners will choose their current breed for future ownership and develop ‘breed-loyalty’ in the face of health problems is not yet known. The aims of this study were (1) to quantify levels of, and explore factors associated with, brachycephalic dog owners’ intentions to: (i) reacquire and/or (ii) recommend their current breed to potential first-time dog owners, and (2) to use qualitative methods to explore why brachycephalic dog owners would or would not recommend their current breed. This large mixed methods study reports on 2168 owners of brachycephalic breeds (Pugs: n = 789; French Bulldog: n = 741; Bulldogs: n = 638). Owners were highly likely to want to own their breed again in the future (93.0%) and recommend their breed to other owners (65.5%). Statistical modelling identified that first-time ownership and increased strength of the dog-owner relationship increased the likelihood of reacquisition and/or recommendation. In contrast, an increased number of health problems, positive perception of their dog’s health compared with the rest of their breed, and dog behaviour being worse than expected decreased the likelihood of reacquisition and/or recommendation. Thematic analyses constructed three themes describing why owners recommend their breed: positive behavioural attributes for a companion dog, breed suited to a sedentary lifestyle with limited space, and suitability for households with children. Five themes described why owners recommended against their breed: high prevalence of health problems, expense of ownership, ethical and welfare issues associated with breeding brachycephalic dogs, negative effects upon owner lifestyle and negative behavioural attributes. Understanding how breed-loyalty develops, and whether it can be attenuated, will be key to controlling the current population boom in brachycephalic breeds in the long-term.

The Importance of the Social Sciences in Reducing Tail Biting Prevalence in Pigs

Simple Summary

Tail lesions are a major welfare concern within pig farming. Tail lesions result from biting and chewing of the tail of one pig by another and can indicate boredom and frustration within the herd. While extensive research has been carried out to understand and eliminate tail biting in pigs, findings from scientific studies have often not been applied in practice. This may be due, in part, to a failure to consider the role of farmer behaviour in improving animal welfare. If farmer behaviour does not change, it is unlikely that tail lesion prevalence will change from current levels. In this paper, the shortcomings of traditional behaviour change theories were discussed and a guide for designing human behaviour change interventions for pig farmers was provided. It is essential that collaborations between social scientists and animal welfare scientists occur if research findings are to be put into practice on farms.

Abstract

Tail biting in pigs has been recognised as a welfare problem for several decades, being referred to in scientific literature as far back as the 1940s. Today, animal welfare scientists have a solid understanding of the aetiology of tail biting. Despite this, there has been a major failure in applying research findings on commercial farms. Consequently, tail biting remains a significant problem in modern intensive pig farming. Of all farming industry stakeholders, farmers have the greatest influence over the welfare of their animals. Despite this, little animal welfare research has focused on changing farmer behaviour. Understanding the reasons why farmers act or fail to act to improve animal welfare is key if research findings are to be translated into practical on-farm change. Adopting the principles of behavioural science, this review discussed theory-based methods of identifying barriers to effective tail biting management. A guide was provided for designing behaviour change interventions for farmers using The Behaviour Change Wheel, a systematic framework that links the source of behaviour to suitable interventions. It was concluded that the social sciences are of great importance to ensuring that theory is put into practice.