AUSTIN PETS ALIVE

APA! has the largest private nonprofit foster network in the country, which is key to our lifesaving capacity. While our shelter space is limited, APA!’s foster programs have been able to flex to meet whatever need APA! has faced, including during kitten season and even in the face of regional natural disasters. Our programs typically see over 1,000 pets at a time in foster homes and saw nearly 12,000 foster placements in 2024. We are now restructuring our operations to keep the majority of all our pets in foster homes by providing caregivers with more extensive staff support and resources, and thereby significantly reducing the number of pets living in-shelter, where they are more stressed and vulnerable to disease.

APA! specializes in saving pets with challenges, including ill or injured animals, very young pets, seniors, and pets working to overcome behavioral issues, and our adoption program must work especially hard to find them homes. Every APA! pet receives a pre-adoption exam and vet care in our skilled medical clinic, including vaccines, spay/neuter surgery, and a microchip. APA! also assesses each pet’s temperament and provides potential adopters with all possible information about their behavior. We maintain multiple, central adoption centers and convenient adoption hours. All available pets are listed on APA!’s website with biographies, photos, and videos, and they populate our vibrant social media pages. Special webpages are devoted to senior pets, medical needs pets, or those needing specific home environments, and trained matchmakers work to pair pets with potential adopters. In 2024 will have adopted out its 120,000th pet.

Since 2008, PASS has worked to reduce shelter intake by connecting people with resources they need to help them keep their beloved pets, or responsibly rehome them when that is their best option. Through an email/phone hotline, PASS provides advice and information about available community resources to guide families in solving problems. The hotline fields hundreds of inquiries a month and fulfilled needs for 6,827 cases in 2023. When necessary, PASS steps in to raise funds on a family’s behalf for a pet deposit or vet expenses, or to help with temporary boarding. Through its Facebook page, PASS regularly connects people who want to help with those who need help keeping their pets. Clients include people who have experienced a loss of income, illness, domestic violence, military deployment, or death in the family, as well as families forced to move to places that do not allow pets or require a pet deposit the family cannot afford to pay.

American Pets Alive! (AmPA!) is APA!’s national education and outreach division. At its inception, AmPA! organized an annual conference to teach shelter professionals from across the nation how to replicate the uniquely successful lifesaving programs APA! operates in Austin. It has since also become a center for national thought leadership in progressive animal welfare. From a pilot phase in 2016 until the pandemic in 2020, AmPA! was primarily devoted to operating the Maddie’s Lifesaving Academy, which brought nearly 1,000 professionals to Austin from across the U.S. to learn hands-on and in classroom work how to improve shelter lifesaving at home. Since 2020, AmPA! has served as the backbone for the national collaborative Human Animal Support Services project (HASS). The next stage in animal welfare innovation, HASS promises to transform how shelters across the U.S. provide services to people and pets in communities by moving the focus to preserving human-animal bonds.

The Barn Cat Program is an innovative approach to helping both unsocialized cats and the community at large. Unsocialized cats, used to living on their own, unsuited to home environments and ineligible for trap-neuter-return programs, have typically faced euthanasia in shelters, but can thrive when adopted out as "working” cats. APA! partners with area shelters to save hundreds of barn cats a year, including ones with special medical needs and seniors. The cats are sterilized, vaccinated, microchipped, and adopted out to caregivers who offer safe outdoor homes at farms, ranches, stables, warehouses and greenhouses in exchange for natural pest control. In 2023 the program adopted out 180 cats.

APA!’s Feline Leukemia Adoption Center opened its doors in 2011 to provide a safe haven for cats that have been diagnosed with Feline Leukemia (FeLV), with the ultimate goal of finding each a loving home. One of the nation’s few programs adopting out cats with FeLV, the ward also has become a center for groundbreaking vet research. FeLV affects a cat’s immune system and may shorten its lifespan to just 2-4 years after diagnosis, though many of the cats adopted from APA with FeLV have lived much longer. APA! believes FeLV+ cats deserve a chance at life, even if their lives may be shorter and has developed partnerships with area shelters to ensure FeLV+ cats in the Austin region have a place to call home until they can find a forever family. The program in 2023 took in around 400 cats and kittens.

APA!’s ringworm ward now treats around 900 cats and kittens a year and is critical to Austin’s success in saving shelter cats. The ward was started in 2010 to rescue cats at risk of euthanasia for having ringworm at other shelters, treat their skin and mend their spirits, and adopt them into loving homes. Although ringworm is a simple fungus that is non-fatal, can be easily treated, and can be cured within a few months, it is a death sentence in many shelters across the country. By separating cats with ringworm from other animals and providing treatment, APA! is able to contain the fungus and ensure that ringworm kitties have a shot at finding their forever home. APA! collaborates with other shelters to pull cats with ringworm from euthanasia lists, and houses them in a specialized cattery that allows them to be active while undergoing treatment. It is the program’s additional mission to educate adopters and advocate for these underserved cats, reducing the stigma of ringworm.

APA!'s high-volume, low-cost neonatal kitten nursery, the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to take in, bottle-feed and care for 100% of orphaned unweaned kittens in Austin and to help other counties save neonatal kittens turned in to their public shelters. In traditional shelters, such young kittens had been euthanized because of the intensive care they need to survive. Working round the clock, staff, volunteers and fosters treat thousands of tiny 0-6 week-old kittens annually and adopt them out. In 2020, as the pandemic restricted in-shelter care, the nursery quickly established a foster network able to care for its tiny kittens, and succeeded in saving 4,000 kittens. In more normal times now the program treats around 2,600 kittens, including orphans, pregnant mamas and their litters.

The heart and soul of APA!'s local operations is its medical clinic. Each dog and cat taken in by APA! receives a vet exam, routine tests and vaccines, and a microchip on intake. Each not previously sterilized is spay/neutered. The clinic provides routine wellness care for all pets currently in APA!'s care, whether residing in our facilities or in foster care. Most important, the clinic provides last chance, non-routine medical care for seriously ill or injured pets, each of which would have been euthanized at another shelter for lack of the resources there to treat them. A staff of four full-time veterinarians along with a skilled team including veterinary interns, veterinary technicians, surgical and kennel technicians, case managers, clinic services coordinators, and other staff, ensures that all homeless pets in our care with a treatable condition will be saved. Annually, the clinic treats around 8,500 pets.

APA!’s Parvo Puppy ICU officially opened its doors in 2010 as the first of its kind in the nation after an initial pilot stage, 2008-2009. Today, it remains one of the rare dedicated programs in the country set up to treat this deadly but treatable virus in shelter dogs. APA!’s ICU now quarantines and saves around 1,000 puppies yearly through its partnerships with other shelters, whereby they transfer ill puppies to APA!. The program is becoming a center for research into parvo and its treatment that will someday transform veterinary medicine and lead to thousands more puppies saved across the US. Through a sustainable treatment model based on the use of trained volunteers, this program treats puppies at a fraction of the cost typical at a private vet, yet matches or exceeds their survivial rates. Parvo ICUs like APA!'s have begun to be replicated across the country as professionals who have come to APA! to learn how to improve lifesaving practices take home what they learn.