Cat Compassion Community Circles
Cat Compassion Community Circles (CCCC) are small groups of citizens who work together to be a first point of contact in a neighbourhood for cats in need or in trouble. The cat may be any cat in any predicament, for example:
- An abandoned pet
- A lost cat
- A migratory undesexed male cat causing disturbance
- An unowned cat who has had kittens in someone’s garden
- An emerging colony of urban unmanaged free-roaming cats
- One or more kittens found without their mother cat
- An owned cat with a clear welfare need for advocacy.
Like other prevention and early intervention programs (eg Neighborhood Watch for crime prevention) community cat compassion circles provide a way of organising EARLY for feline welfare. They provide a contact person or group in neighborhoods for local people to ban together cooperatively to ‘step up for cats’. They manage a situation which if left without a compassion circle, would result in a major animal welfare problem emerging. Community cat compassion circles achieve the following outcomes:
- Identify local people who are willing to work together as early intervention to manage unowned, lost or abandoned cats or kittens.
- Prevent new colonies of unowned cats emerging.
- Attend in a timely way to solo animals needing assistance.
- Achieve neighbourhood resourcing for cat welfare eg host garage sales to pay to desex a cat or kitten or to support feeders of cats.
- Maintain contact with WLPA or other nominated cat charity acting as a lead agency for the Compassion Circle for equipment, rehoming help and access to discounted veterinary care.
- A suburb by suburb organised response for any other cat need.
Over time circles of compassion will educate the community toward sustainable shared care of cats in need and more responsible pet ownership. This will in turn, reduce the current very significant burden on cat welfare charities working with thousands of abandoned cats each year.