Quantification of a shelter cat population: Trends in intake, length of stay and outcome data of cats in seven Dutch shelters between 2006 and 2021

Shelter metrics can be used by shelters for self-assessment to optimise the health of their animal population and to identify risk factors for disease outbreaks. However, there is a need for a wider scope of these shelter metrics, as evidenced by the interest from shelters in the benchmarking of shelter progress and the development of national best practices. For the first time, Dutch shelter data were used retrospectively to signal trends using potentially reliable metrics for the analysis of shelter data. The aims of this study were to apply relevant metrics describing the different phases of shelter management for shelter cats (i.e., intake, stay and outcome) and a retrospective analysis of shelter data over the period between 2006 and 2021. Seven of the approximately 120 Dutch animal shelters participated in this study. Quantitative data on the intake of more than 74,000 shelter cats (e.g., stray cats, cats surrendered by their owners and cats obtained from other sources) and their outcomes (i.e., cats rehomed, returned to their owners, deceased, or otherwise lost) have been analysed. Metrics such as rehoming rate, return to owner rate, rates for mortality and euthanasia, length of stay and risk-based live release rate were determined. The main findings of the study during this 16-year period were that, over time, the number of cats per 1000 residents admitted to Dutch shelters was reduced by 39%, the number of feline euthanasia cases decreased by approximately 50%, the length of stay showed a reducing trend, while the return to owner and the risk-based live release rate increased. The shelter metrics examined in this study could be helpful in monitoring and evaluating the management, consequent health, and well-being of cats in shelters and eventually measuring progress of shelters both in the Netherlands and at a European level.