Alley Cat Advocates has been recognized as a national model for developing best practices and successful programs to:
- Implement Trap-Neuter-Return and key programs to reduce community cat over-population.
- Improve the health and safety of community cats by providing a gold-standard of medical care to community cats.
- Improve outcomes for community cats that end up in a local shelters.
In 2012, Alley Cat Advocates, Louisville Metro Animal Services and The Kentucky Humane Society were selected for the ASPCA Community Partner program. The program was an intensive five year program in which the ASPCA worked with Alley Cat Advocates, Louisville Metro Animal Services and The Kentucky Humane Society to provide support, training, financial resources and tools to help partner agencies work together to achieve their shared goals to reduce intake and increase live outcomes. Although the formal partnership ended some years ago, an informal partnership remains and the training and tools provided through the ASPCA Community Partner program continue to be used even today.
Alley Cat Advocates started receiving grant support from Best Friends Animal Society in 2014. The grant funding received over the years has been used to save more of the most at-risk pets in our local shelter, specifically, in our case, community cats.
The Foundation has provided funds to Alley Cat Advocates to support our work in most years since 2005. For a short period, our Executive Director provided mentoring services for the Foundation.
The Bissell Pet Foundation has supported Alley Cat Advocates in our efforts to spay and neuter and to decrease pet overpopulation in our community.
Alley Cat Advocates’ Executive Director Karen Little has been invited by the HSUS to speak to animal welfare professionals on Trap-Neuter-Return best practices on multiple occasions over the past decade.
Alley Cat Advocates is grateful for the support provided by the Foundation in support of our outreach to neighboring shelters. Through this work, neighboring shelters now participate in the shelter version of Trap-Neuter-Return and save countless stray cats from euthanasia each day.
Alley Cat Advocates team members served as mentors to other communities implementing Trap-Neuter-Return programs via the MRFRS Mentoring Program. Although the program is no longer active, the impact of the Mentoring Program continues to be felt across all organizations assisted.
The Petco Foundation has provided funding to Alley Cat Advocates many times since first funding the group in 2003. Funding from Petco, now Petco Love, provides Alley Cat Advocates to continue to offer no and low cost spay/neuter surgeries as well as to provide vaccinations at no cost.
PetSmart Charities supported Alley Cat Advocates’ targeted work on our city’s zip codes starting in 2010. Alley Cat Advocates’ initial funding from PetSmart Charities allowed Alley Cat Advocates to target those zip codes with high rates of stray cat intake into Metro Animal Services. This targeted neighborhood approach was wildly successful. In 2014, the program was expanded to include 10 zip codes in our community. In 2019, PetSmart Charities provided significant funding for our new Community Cat Complex.