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. 2018 Feb 7;8(2):23.
doi: 10.3390/ani8020023.

Surrenderers' Relationships with Cats Admitted to four Australian Animal Shelters

Sarah Zito  1 , Mandy Paterson  2 , John Morton  3 , Di Vanken  4 , Pauleen Bennett  5 , Jacquie Rand  6   7 , Clive J C Phillips  8
Affiliations

Surrenderers' Relationships with Cats Admitted to four Australian Animal Shelters

Sarah Zito et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

The surrender of cats to animal shelters results in financial, social and moral burdens for the community. Correlations of caretaking and interactions with surrendered cats were calculated, to understand more about humans' relationships with surrendered cats and the contribution of semi-owned cats to shelter intakes. A questionnaire was used to collect detailed information about 100 surrenderers' relationships with cats they surrendered to four animal shelters in Australia, with each surrenderer classifying themselves as being either the owner or a non-owner of the surrendered cat (ownership perception). Method of acquisition of the cat, association time, closeness of the relationship with the cat and degree of responsibility for the cat's care were all associated with ownership perception. Many non-owners (59%) fed and interacted with the cat they surrendered but rarely displayed other caretaking behaviours. However, most surrenderers of owned and unowned cats were attached to and felt responsible for the cat. Based on these results and other evidence, a causal model of ownership perception was proposed to provide a better understanding of factors influencing ownership perception. This model consisted of a set of variables proposed as directly or indirectly influencing ownership perception, with connecting arrows to indicate proposed causal relationships. Understanding ownership perception and the contribution of semi-owned cats to shelter intake is important as these can inform the development of more targeted and effective intervention strategies to reduce numbers of unwanted cats.

Keywords: animal shelter; animal welfare; cat relinquishment; cat semi-ownership; cat surrender; shelter medicine; unwanted cat.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Proposed model of causes of surrenderer’s perceived ownership of passively acquired cats at the time the cat was surrendered; cat acquisition method is included to indicate the strong association between this variable and ownership perception (relationship R).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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