© Humane League of Lancaster County

You’ve seen them, or heard about them, or maybe even have one or two of them yourself: state-of-the-art cat rooms filled not with stainless steel cat cages but with free-roaming shelter kitties. The area resembles more of a resort hotel, with cats snoozing on sofas, perching on ledges, or gazing out of windows and into donated fish tanks. In this peaceable kingdom cats hang out, explore, socialize, and snooze—and have plenty of room to move about.

Ask practically anyone who has implemented the concept responsibly, and you’ll hear rave reviews: “The public loves our cat colony room, the cats love our room,” says Misha Goodman, director of Iowa City/Coralville Animal Care and Adoption Center. “We love our room, and would certainly recommend it for anyone.”

And cats aren’t the only ones who can let loose in this free-roaming atmosphere. Potential adopters, once intimidated by large rooms filled with stationary cats in row upon row of cages, can go into colony rooms now and mill around comfortably on the cats’ turf. Introducing group cat housing at the New Hampshire SPCA helped adoptions skyrocket, says Susan Carney, the shelter’s community programs manager. “Allowing the public to roam freely throughout the rooms is a great way [for people] to find out more about a cat,” she says. “Free-roaming cats are more likely to show their true personalities and get adopted much quicker than the cats in traditional cages.”

Carney’s words alone may be enough to make you want to rush out and buy a few of those cool carpeted “cat trees,” throw out all your cat cages, and and set up an upscale kitty abode complete with benches, perches, cozy blankets, and artfully arranged L.L. Bean catalogs. But as tempting as it sounds, the latest thing may not be the greatest thing for your shelter—especially if it’s put together hastily. Poorly planned colony-cat housing can actually put cats at greater risk for stress, behavioral problems, and disease. (For starters, those carpeted trees are hard to wash and disinfect.)

This isn’t meant to dissuade your shelter from setting up group housing areas for cats, just to emphasize the importance of doing it right the first time. By following the steps in the article, you can create cat housing that’s sanitary, low-stress, and more likely to encourage catnaps than cat nips. Even if you already have great colony housing, you may be able to pick up a few new tips from fellow shelter folks.

But Everyone’s Doing It!

Cat-colony housing isn’t a new concept—it’s been used for decades in some shelters. Still, greater numbers of shelters are moving adoptable cats out of the standard stainless steel cages and into bright new colony pens or rooms, furnished not just with perches and toys but with new feline friends. These organizations offer nothing but praise for colony housing, citing everything from happier, less-stressed cats to improved adoptions.

Many scientists and veterinarians tout the benefits as well: “Even though they have evolved from a solitary species, domestic cats are social animals who regularly interact with [other cats],” writes veterinarian Irene Rochlitz in Comfortable Quarters for Cats in Research Institutions. “In most instances, cats will benefit from being housed with others provided there is sufficient space, easy access to feeding and elimination areas, and an adequate number of retreats and rest places.”

© Humane Society at Lollypop Farm Cat colony rooms can contain fun and attractive features while sustaining an environment that is safe and disinfectable; they need to provide “enough room so the cats can get away from each other if they want to,” says Gillian Hargrave, director of shelter services for the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm in Fairport, New York. Perches up to 10 feet high create a kitty playground at Lollypop, and colorful walls and furniture guarantee an inviting atmosphere for potential adopters. “Our customers ... are more likely to adopt from there than from our cages,” says Hargrave.

Cat-colony housing is so popular that those who haven’t implemented it often feel the need to defend their decision. When asked whether her facility groups cats together in colony housing, an employee of a small California shelter instantly apologized, explaining that the shelter was small and could not at this time house cats together. Even the prominent San Francisco SPCA has received letters criticizing its decision to house most of its cats singly, an arrangement that staff believe helps control disease, minimize stress, and showcase individual animals. The organization has also found that single housing allows staff to better observe their cats’ daily routines and behaviors. If you are weighing the decision to introduce colony housing in your shelter, keep in mind that the lives of shelter cats can be enriched through methods other than shared housing.

In fact, what many visitors may find most appealing isn’t the presence of multiple cats in a room, but the room itself—the extra space, perches, windows, and cat trees. However, with the exception of larger, renovated shelters, most shelters just can’t provide each cat or pair of cats with a 4-foot by 6-foot unit that overlooks a beautifully landscaped courtyard. For typical shelters, grouping cats together in a larger area is the only way to provide them with extra space to move around and interact.

Is Colony Housing Right for Your Shelter?

Most animal shelter experts acknowledge that grouping cats together can improve the psychological and physical well-being of the felines in your care—but only if your shelter already has in place strong, written operational protocols and procedures. In other words, if your shelter still struggles with issues like disease control and staff communication, colony housing isn’t going to improve things; it’s going to make them worse.

And even if your shelter starts from a solid operational foundation, maybe the time isn’t right. Perhaps your shelter has just recovered from a devastating battle with a deadly disease like panleukopenia and doesn’t want to risk putting multiple cats together. Or maybe recent board and staff turnovers make embarking on any “optional” new project too difficult right now. If you’re not sure where your shelter stands, the following checklist may help you decide.

Cat-Colony Readiness Checklist

• Does your shelter have the time and staff commitment to research, plan, and implement communal housing?
• Does your shelter have a proven disease control program?
• Is sterilizing each cat prior to admittance to a colony a viable option for your organization?
• Can your shelter provide the necessary and extensive variety of tests and vaccines for all cat-colony candidates? (See Maintaining Peace, Love, and Good Health in the Commune for recommendations.
• Does your shelter have well-developed, written protocols (for initial exams, quarantine procedures, cleaning, etc.)? Can these be readily adapted for colony housing?
• Does your shelter have access to a veterinarian, either on staff or in private practice, who will help develop new procedures and oversee their implementation?
• Does your shelter have space and resources for buying large caging or renovating a room suitable for housing a colony of cats?
• Are your shelter staff and volunteers trained to evaluate cats for signs of behavior problems and illness?
• Does your shelter have ample staff and/or volunteers to frequently monitor cats (for aggression, fear, stress, and illness)?
• Does your shelter have the ability to hold cats beyond a specified time period?

If you decide not to pursue colony housing now, you can still give your shelter cats some of the benefits that colony cats enjoy. See Little Things Make A Big Difference for some simple ways to enrich the lives of shelter cats.

Get Ready, Get Set, Stop

© Gastineau Humane Society Cage banks or individual cat cages are an important component of successful and versatile cat colony rooms like this one at the Gastineau Humane Society in Alaska.They can provide places for recently introduced cats who still need to get used to their surroundings and new roommates; areas for staff to keep kitties during cleaning; and sleeping quarters for cats in shelters that prefer to keep animals separated at night.

If you feel prepared to invest in new real estate for your cats, now’s the time to consider their tastes. Are they the types to enjoy a mock Tudor mansion? A sprawling split-level? A chic studio apartment? It’s time to do some house-hunting, and the best way to start is to cruise the good neighborhoods: other cat colonies that seem to be working well.

Just as you wouldn’t buy a house unseen, you shouldn’t create colony housing before you see it at work. It might be helpful to take a mini-tour of several shelters that already have such arrangements, as Goodman did when she started on her mission to implement colony housing at her Iowa animal control facility.

Even if you don’t find the setup that’s right for your facility, you’ll probably get some great ideas. For example, you might learn how an organization like the Potter League for Animals in Rhode Island converted former dog runs into attractive housing for groups of cats. Or if you visited the Riverside Humane Society Pet Adoption Center in California, you could see how two large colony pens have been comfortably furnished. A tour of a larger, renovated shelter like the Greenhill Humane Society/SPCA in Oregon would lead you into a palatial room with floor-to-ceiling window views enjoyed by one large colony. Visits to other shelters might reveal creative, customized colony housing—like the “Kitty Kat Kondos” at the Houston Humane Society. Made of steel and Plexiglas, the smaller Kondos can hold a pair or trio of kitties; the larger ones can hold up to seven.

Of course, the ultimate test isn’t the type of room or pen but the lifestyle of the colony inside. Do the cats look happy? Do you see any aggressive cats? Petrified cats? Does the housing look clean? How does the room smell? Does the environment appeal to adopters? Are adopters monitored, or do they come and go as they please? How are animals identified? Do they wear collars and tags?

This isn’t a solo mission, so be sure planning includes your staff, board, consulting veterinarian, and, ideally, outside experts like an architect and animal behavior specialist. At their weekly staff meetings, Houston Humane Society executive director Sherry Ferguson and her staff talked about new ideas for housing cats, discussing everything from keeping cats healthy to ease of cleaning. Ferguson and the shelter director then brought other staff into the process: “Our maintenance guy, [Fabian], is a retired welder, and we talked to him about [new housing] and came up with the ‘Kondo’ concept,” says Ferguson. “The staff tore out the cages, painted the room, and Fabian then built the enclosures.” The result is an open look and feel in controlled environments that are accessible only to staff, says Ferguson. “[The cats] can jump, stretch, and lay on different levels, and play with toys while they wait for adoptions,” she says. “The public can view and watch them without touching and cross-contaminating.”

As Ferguson and others have discovered, it’s not an either/or situation—you don’t have to choose between having a whole colony room or no group housing at all. Instead of investing time and resources into creating a huge colony room decorated with murals, sofas, and fish tanks, try a smaller version first—perhaps by introducing several cats to a large pen. “I believe that anyone thinking of colony rooms needs to try it first on a small scale,” says Becky Hinman of the Gastineau Humane Society in Juneau, Alaska. “There is a lot to consider when creating colony rooms, and it’s better to work out the major kinks before rather than later. We adapted what we had to suit our immediate needs. This works well with some creative thinking, some staff adjustments, and minimal cost.”

Space to Call Home

No matter what kind of model home you use, the recommended amenities are workable in many settings.

Key to a successful colony is space: cats need plenty of room to move about and plenty of places to dive for cover. Too many cats in too little space can make a friendly cat reclusive and a healthy cat sick. Colony housing typically lacks the physical boundaries of cages, so devise clear policies specifying the maximum number of cats per pen or room and stick to those policies. Bending the rules a few times to add “just one more cat” can create a serious crowding problem that threatens the very goal group housing is intended to accomplish: improving cat welfare. Descriptions of colony housing on one group’s website state that dozens of cats live cage-free in the basement of a converted home; accompanying descriptions suggest that several of these cats are aggressive, scared, and unsociable. While the cats in this situation may indeed be physically healthy and attended to by caring volunteers, it’s easy to see how a lack of clear boundaries can, in extreme situations, turn animal-colony housing into an animal-hoarding situation.

© Hawaiian Humane Society Fresh air is the ultimate ventilation system, but if you’re not lucky enough to be in a tropical climate like the one enjoyed by the Hawaiian Humane Society, you need to install a system that encourages air exchange. Each cat area should be connected to its own ventilation system.

The HSUS recommends that cats have at least as much space in the colony as they do in cages, plus plenty of perches for extra room. In its 6-by-12-foot colony room, the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm in Fairport, New York, provides each of the (up to) eight cats with at least two perches and one litter box per cat. Other organizations share similar recommendations: The United Kingdom’s Feline Advisory Bureau, which advances the health and welfare of cats through educational materials and conferences, states that “group housed cats (maximum number six) require a minimum of 1.85 by 1.85 m [or 6.1 by 6.1 feet] for sleeping area and 3.65 by 3.05 m [or 12 by 10 feet] for exercise area.”

But that doesn’t mean a room twice that size could accommodate twice that number—more space doesn’t necessarily mean more cats. The HSUS recommends that you keep no more than 10 cats in a 10-by-15-foot room. And even if you have an enormous room, it’s better to keep the number down. Many shelters have discovered through trial and error that extra felines don’t translate into extra fun, but instead into extra stress, extra odors, and extra illness. “We noticed marked behavior changes when we increased the number of cats above ten,” says Carney at the New Hampshire SPCA, where cat-colony rooms measure 13 feet by 16 feet and 13 feet by 11 feet—and were designed to hold 12 cats. “Often [more] cats seemed to promote someone to the ‘boss’ role, [but] ten cats seemed to provide for more harmony.”

© Hawaiian Humane Society The “Cat House” at the Hawaiian Humane Society consists of four rooms named “cat” in different languages common to Hawaii. In addition to the “Kitty” room, there is the Chinese “Mao” room, the Hawaiian “Popoki” room, and the Japanese “Neko” room. Cats often form friendships during their stay in the cozy atmosphere, allowing staff to easily assist customers who are trying to adopt more than one cat.

When creating your housing, keep in mind that just because a space is available doesn’t mean it’s a good place for communal housing. For example, that 8-by-10-foot room at the back of the shelter may seem an ideal place to put ten cats, but it’s not if its thin walls can’t block the stress-inducing barking from the neighboring kennels. Colony housing should be away from dogs and other loud noises and have excellent ventilation. “It’s important to design the [colony] rooms so that they facilitate airflow,” says Zibby Wilder, Cat City supervisor for the Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in Seattle, Washington. “Housing cats together can sometimes lead to a smell situation, but air flow also helps reduce the transmission of common airborne infections such as upper respiratory infection.”

Richard Bacon, AIA, president and principal architect with Bacon Group, Inc., recommends shelters consider the following elements when constructing colony housing:

• impervious surfaces that will stand up to cleaning and sanitizing
• sealed or seamless floors that can be cleaned easily and drained properly
• plumbing that can handle waste, food, and hair
• dedicated HVAC systems for cats (ideally with 100-percent fresh air); and
• HVAC systems that prevent cross-contamination.

Solid-surface ceilings are also important, says Kate Pullen, director of Animal Sheltering Issues for The HSUS. And Bacon recommends providing as much natural lighting as possible. In his design concept for Pinellas County Animal Services in Florida, Bacon created “indoor/outdoor” areas for the cat colony condos, providing “a continuous translucent skylight which acts as a roof” for the outside portion. “This area has natural ventilation which is much healthier for the cats,” he says.

Even if your shelter doesn’t have funding for substantial remodeling, whenever possible, you should try to provide natural light; a window allows cats to gaze at outdoor wonders. Although not essential, a room that gives cats access to a secured outdoor area can provide them with enjoyment and the room with extra ventilation.

Controlled access to a secure outdoor area is great, but be careful of what else your cats can access. At the Humane Society of Chittenden County in Burlington, Vermont, staff were surprised to discover that several cats had climbed up into the drop ceiling of the shelter’s “Kitty Clubhouse.” “The first week or two in the new clubhouse went smoothly,” says Susan O’Kane, executive director. “Then one mischievous, one-eared cat named Van Gogh started pushing on one of the drop-ceiling tiles. We made an effort to secure that tile and didn’t really give it much more thought. Then, on a Friday night, I was at the movies when my cell phone rang. My evening staff was calling to let me know that the ceiling tiles had been conquered, and 12 cats were in the ceiling.”

It took, ladders, stinky tuna, and the pleas of patient staff to lure most of the cats back down to solid ground; one was so terrified by the ordeal that staff were unable to reach her for a couple of days, discovering on the third day that she had fallen through the ceiling into a vacant dog kennel. “She was none the worse for wear,” says O’Kane, “and spent the rest of her time with us securely out at our PETsMART adoption center.”

The moral of the story: When creating the space, consider what might happen at night, when no one is around to monitor and protect the cats’ welfare. Even when the shelter’s doors are closed to traffic, the mission of providing safe harbor continues—and colony housing has to coincide with that mission.

Adorning the Abode

© Houston Humane Society The Houston Humane Society’s Kitty Kat Kondos allow resident felines to play freely and explore different levels of the enclosures—while permitting shelter visitors to watch them through Plexiglas without the risk of cross-contamination. “The good thing about creating your own is that you can transform nooks and crannies that are being wasted into spacious Kitty Kondos,” says executive director Sherry Ferguson.

What you put into the housing may seem like little “extras,” but they’re really necessities. “Having things for the cats to do matters greatly,” says Carney. “[It’s important to have] windows, things to climb, toys, and places to hide. Our rooms have all of these, including different levels. Without these, our staff is certain that the rooms would not work.”

Though they are still too often considered luxuries in single-cat housing, perches and shelves are nothing short of critical when cats are housed together. Not only do shelves increase the size of the room or pen through “vertical space,” but they also enable cats to escape from an aggressive fellow resident or take a breather from an overdose of human attention. Other essential furnishings include places for cats to hide, such as disposable paper bags and boxes. “The more shelves, beds, boxes you put in, the less cats are in each other’s faces—and conflict is at a minimum,” says Joan Phillips, director of the Animal Lovers Shelter in Glen Cove, New York.

Just make sure these getaway places are accessible to staff. “You don’t want [to have] sick cats hiding in there and not be able to get them,” says Randi Golub, CVT, animal care coordinator for the Greenhill Humane Society/SPCA in Eugene, Oregon.

Of course, you’ll also want to make sure cats have plenty of soft, cushy, washable things to rest on; fleece donut beds on the floors and atop easily disinfected bench, chair, and ledge surfaces are ideal. Carpeted cat trees are both visually appealing to visitors and fun for cats, but they’re also potential disease transmitters—a problem that has prompted PAWS to replace its carpeted cat trees with disinfectable wall-mounted cat cubbies, shelves, and walkways.

And last but definitely not least are the all-important elimination stations. The HSUS recommends that you have one litter box for each cat. This may sound excessive, but many cats refuse to share a litter box with another cat, and will likely find other spots to relieve themselves—like the towel in the corner. Considering that “eliminates outside the litter box” is a chief reason many cats are relinquished, you may find it more than worthwhile to be attentive to feline bathroom habits. After all, a main goal of most shelters is to try to keep the animals as adoptable and behaviorally sound as they were when they first entered the facility; helping cats mind communal toilet etiquette is key to helping them become well-adjusted members of new families.

Once the home is all set up, you’ve got another important decision to make: Who’s going to live there?

Selecting the Residents

You can put any cat in a cage, but you can’t put any cat in a colony. Some of the qualifications for kitty communal living are obvious: don’t put aggressive cats in a colony. Don’t place sick cats in a colony. Don’t place unsterilized animals in a colony—or, at the very least, separate unsterilized males and females.

But you’ll need to go beyond the obvious to find appropriate residents for group housing. And the screening process can be as intricate as deciding where to put eccentric Uncle Charlie at a wedding reception: That sweet four-year-old spayed calico loves people, came from a family with other cats, and never misses the litter box. But although she’s healthy, she needs a special diet and can’t eat the food shared by colony cats. Another wonderful cat may love people and appear playful when alone in his cage, but is clearly uncomfortable around other cats. Or a charming black kitty arrives with his personality intact but not his claws (declawed cats are at a defense-disadvantage in colonies).

Yet another cat likes both people and his feline brethren but leans a bit to the shy side. “This cat may ‘show’ better in single-cat housing where she won’t get overlooked by visitors approached by so many charming, purring, lap-jumping felines,” says Dilara Parry, cat behavior specialist for the San Francisco SPCA.

© New Hampshire SPCA Keeping one litter box per cat helps your colony residents mind their toilet etiquette. Many cats won’t share their bathroom space, and they may instead choose to relieve themselves elsewhere.

Assuming the cats are healthy and socialized, how do you make sure the cats will get along with each other and tolerate free-roaming humans in the colony room? Often, the only way you can tell whether cats will like each other, or at least tolerate each other, is to introduce them. But before you subject them to a nose-sniffing meet-and-greet, you should see how they respond to members of the two-legged species; the formal or informal temperament checkup staff give each cat shortly after they’ve arrived and have had time to “chill” will provide basic feedback.

Although the cat can’t tell you whether or not he plays well with other cats, the person bringing him to the shelter probably can. If your surrender form doesn’t already include questions about feline social skills, add them. New questions could include “Does or has the cat lived with other cats?” “How does your cat react when it meets a new cat?” or even, “Does your cat like other cats?” A simple response like “He loves people but hates cats ... bit the ear of the neighbor’s Persian” may make you think twice about making him a colony cat. But don’t exclude a cat from the colony based solely on the relinquisher’s statements: “Twice we’ve placed cats who were ‘not good with other cats’ and they did just fine,” says Gillian Hargrave, director of shelter services for the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm.

Likewise, just because a cat reportedly “got along fine” with the family’s other cat does not mean he’ll get along fine with all cats in a particular colony. “The rooms are truly personality-driven,” says the New Hampshire SCPA’s Carney. “Cats should not be chosen on ‘adoptability’ or ‘cuteness,’ but rather on how they interact with other cats, with strangers, with kids, and in groups.”

Because there’s a lot of gray area in making these determinations, it’s important to develop criteria to help you select residents for your communal housing. The Greenhill Humane Society has several separated colonies based on both temperament and “life-stage” groupings: “We have a large room and six smaller rooms,” says Golub. “In the larger room we have cats who live peacefully together. In the separate rooms we have shy cats, kittens, senior cats, declawed cats, and cats who just need more quiet living space.”

The New Hampshire SPCA distributes to staff its guidelines for “selecting cats for community rooms.” Your own criteria may be different, based on the types of cats you typically receive and on your shelter’s experiences. What’s most important is that you document your “colony admission” criteria and ensure that all staff understand and adhere to those guidelines.

Those animals who make the “colony cut list” should be further separated into different colonies based on life-stage groupings—essential separation to ensure your cats remain free from undue stress and dangerous infectious disease. “If an outbreak of disease does occur,” writes the Feline Advisory Bureau, “it can be more successfully confined to a single group.” Guidelines for life-stage groupings include:

• Never place kittens (six months and younger) with adult cats (except the mother). Kittens have underdeveloped immune systems and thus are highly susceptible to infections. Kittens under the age of three months should not be housed together unless they’re from the same litter.
• Separate “senior citizen” cats over the age of eight from younger adult cats, and keep them away from kittens. Older cats often have weaker immune systems and slower activity levels than those of younger cats. They may also be fed an age-appropriate food.
• Admit only sterilized cats. The reason goes beyond the obvious. Unsterilized cats, particularly males, may be more aggressive and prone to spraying.
• Never place a sick animal, no matter how trivial the illness, into a colony.

When developing these groupings, consider that sometimes opposites attract: “We do try to place nervous cats with mellow ones,” says Phillips of the Animal Lovers Shelter. “Nothing calms a cat that goes into his new apartment frightened [better] than a group of new neighbors who stare blandly at him and walk away when the newcomer reacts in a very unfriendly or unsocial fashion,” she says.

Open Up and Say “Ahhh ...”

© New Hampshire SPCA Furnishing a cat colony room doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition. Hard plastic benches, plastic chairs, blankets, towels, and other washable items help create a cozy environment for kitties and a welcoming atmosphere for human visitors at shelters like the New Hampshire SPCA. “Every single thing in your room should be washable,” says Susan Carney, the shelter’s community programs manager. Anything that’s too difficult to disinfect—such as the big teddy bear—should go home with one of the cats before the next round of residents moves in.

If kitty matchmaking ranks high on the list of priorities for group housing managers, a top-notch disease control program is even more important. To even consider cat colony housing, your shelter must already have in place a full package of preventive practices—including a health check of each cat upon entry, an isolation period that includes tests and vaccinations before a cat is placed in the adoption room, and consistent monitoring by veterinarian-trained staff. Plus, all procedures and results must be fully recorded.

Cat colony housing presents disease-control challenges beyond those seen in single-cat housing. When a cat gets transferred from cage to colony, suddenly he is without the physical barriers that had protected him from direct contact with potentially disease-harboring felines. It’s true that airborne contagions can infect cats regardless of whether they’re housed in cages or colonies. Nevertheless, writes the Feline Advisory Bureau, “it cannot be stressed too often that whenever numbers of cats are housed together, infection risks are high.”

Disease can spread rapidly in a colony environment, says Rebecca Rhoades, DVM, executive director of the Kauai Humane Society in Hawaii. “I think one of the difficulties ... is when you have to quarantine or pull all the cats in a colony setting because of an outbreak,” she says. “With good individual housing, you avoid this. With communal housing, the whole crew may have to go under treatment or euthanasia if ringworm breaks or panleukopenia [appears] or there are overwhelming upper respiratory problems. This difficult decision should be made by the highest qualified staff person, ideally a veterinarian or vet tech.”

This isn’t to suggest that disease cannot be controlled in colony housing. (For specific disease control recommendations, see Maintaining Peace, Love, and Good Health in the Commune.) “I think that, provided you test and vaccinate prior [to introducing cats into the colony], the risks in colony cages aren’t any greater than in regular cages,” says Katie Kangas, DVM, director of veterinary services for the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA, which houses many of its cats communally. “Cats are certainly going to be exposed to upper respiratory in a cage as much as [in a] communal [setting].”

The experiences of other shelters seem to support this theory. “Our incidents of illness have not increased in either caged or colony cats,” says Goodman of Iowa City. “We believe that less stress is good for the immune system to help in fighting off disease. The colony cats stay healthier due to both mental and physical stimulation.”

In fact, some shelters report improvement. “We have had a significant decrease in upper respiratory [infections] due to a less stressful environment,” says Leigh Ann Harms, operations manager for the Woods Humane Society in San Luis Obispo, California. “If we do have a breakout of URI, it tends to be less severe.”

Despite the need for additional disease-control measures, proponents emphasize that the benefits far outweigh potential risks. “Studies show that the number-one thing you can do to decrease disease in the shelter population is to decrease the stress,” says Kangas, “and the number-one thing you can do to reduce stress is get [the cats] out of their cages and provide environmental enrichment.”

Let Me Introduce Myself

Housing is set up, and cats have been selected, tested, and vaccinated. And the quarantine period is finally over. What now? Dive in or wade in? Should you bring all the cages to the colony housing area, let the cats inside, and run away? Or perhaps bring them into their new home one at a time?

The Humane Society at Lollypop Farm places all of the selected colony cats into the room at the same time. “This way none of them can claim the whole room as their territory—they are on the same page. We then sit with them while they all get acquainted,” says Hargrave. “We usually get some spitting or swatting at first, but they eventually settle down.”

When a cat leaves the colony—whether because of behavior issues, sickness, or adoption—the staff at Lollypop Farm do not introduce a new cat. Instead, they let the colony dwindle until the last cat is adopted; then they power-wash and disinfect the room before letting it sit empty for a day. “Then we start all over again,” says Hargrave. “Bringing in another cat later can sometimes upset the balance. Also, there is also a greater risk of bringing in URI.”

Although The HSUS recommends this “empty out, start again” policy as the best way to control stress and disease, some shelters successfully add a new cat as an original colony member leaves. “We try to spread out the distribution of new cats among the colonies so too many new ones are not placed in one apartment at a time—this increases conflict level,” says the Animal Lovers Shelter’s Phillips.

Likewise, the New Hampshire SPCA adds cats to existing colonies: “We tried to fill the room, adopt until emptied, and then clean and refill,” says Carney. “However, then we just had too many cats and that process backed up our population and adoption. As long as the animals are healthy and compatible, we add cats weekly and sometimes daily.”

If your shelter chooses to admit a new cat as another leaves the colony, ease in the new cats gently. Simply putting a new cat in with nine others who already know each other can be stressful for both the new and original cats. “You must remember that each time a cat is added or removed from a colony, the entire dynamics and attitude of the room change,” says Carney. “When a new cat is added to [the colony], he spends the first day or two in a [tall, large] cage. This way the cat can get used to the activity of the room and the other cats without having to deal with being handled by the public.”

At the Animal Lovers Shelter, a new cat is placed into an established colony “apartment” only during working hours for the first two days so that staff can monitor the cats. “If they assimilate well, that is it,” says Phillips. “If not, we continue monitoring during working hours and caging individually at night. Cats who are particularly timid are placed in separate cages within the apartment to adjust to the others for a few days. It is extremely rare that a cat doesn’t fit in. We try another apartment in that case.”

If a cat doesn’t fit in because he terrorizes and stresses the community, he should, of course, be removed. But most shelters report this happens rarely, if at all, especially if the shelter has done its homework through initial temperament testing. “It is extremely rare to see the fur fly,” quips Phillips. “The most common reaction is vocalizing and swatting.”

The Woods Humane Society does not see huge cat fights either, “only ‘discussions’ now and then,” says Harms. “Everyone tends to claim their territory, and that is respected amongst the colony once it has been established.”

Keep It Clean, Guys

© Mike McFarland Nesting spots constructed of washable materials make cats feel right at home without contributing to the spread of disease; this dresser in the colony room at the Richmond SPCA in Virginia also serves as a great transition from the shelter environment to a new owner’s underwear drawer.

If all that selecting, testing, vaccinating, and monitoring keeps you on your toes, maybe the housekeeping aspect of colony cat housing will give you a chance to get down on your hands and knees, too—with a scrub brush and some good disinfectants. While cleaning a single-cat cage is relatively straightforward (remove cat from cage; remove bowls and furnishings; clean, disinfect, rinse, and dry cage; place cat and cat’s stuff into clean cage), the process can seem daunting when you’re dealing with a pen or room where cats outnumber you ten-to-one.

Sometimes your cleaning protocol will be determined by logistics. If your “colony” consists of three cats in a large pen, then removing them to thoroughly clean and disinfect will be done in much the same way you would clean a standard cage. But what if your colony contains a dozen cats living in a diversely furnished room? Do you have to round up all the cats and wash the entire room as you would a single cage?

The HSUS recommends that the entire room be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected daily to prevent the spread of disease. While removing all cats may seem tedious, it is far less tedious than dealing with an outbreak of panleukopenia. Keeping a cage bank in the colony room not only helps staff separate animals at night if need be; it also helps them put kitties safely into temporary quarters during the cleaning process. Carriers work well, too; the Humane Society of Vero Beach and Indian River County in Florida places cats in individual carriers each day while staff clean and disinfect colony housing. Not surprisingly, the shelter has not experienced any notable increase in disease in its colony housing.

Shelters that normally perform “top-to-bottom” clean-and-disinfect procedures only every few days must still clean the colony housing area daily. The Woods Humane Society does a “deep clean” once a week, but nevertheless thoroughly cleans its colony room daily using a 15-point “daily cattery duties” checklist that includes washing all bedding and toys; sweeping and mopping; cleaning shelves, ramps, and white walls; and providing fresh food, water, and litter containers.

Your checklist should emphasize frequent litter box cleaning, a task especially important in group housing. “Cats are fastidious in their habits and many will react badly if they have to share litter trays,” writes the Feline Advisory Bureau, “especially if they are not kept scrupulously clean.” Because “reacting badly” may translate into “peeing in the corner,” make sure that all litter boxes get scooped several times a day and thoroughly washed at least twice a week. This is also important to reduce disease transmission—and odors, which can be quite noticeable to visitors even when they’re not on the olfactory radar screen of desensitized staff.

Even with the recommended daily “power-clean,” cleaning a cat-colony room may in some shelters be less cumbersome than cleaning a room full of cages. “The rooms are cleaned really well every day, but the amount of time it takes to do this is significantly decreased from before,” says the Gastineau Humane Society’s Hinman, “due in part to the openness of the area and not having to pull each cat out of their kennel and move them several times.”

In Rhoades’ experiences in Hawaii, it’s actually more difficult. Cats must be placed in crates during each cleaning, and the crates themselves must be washed between cats. All the “stuff” that makes the colony room a comfortable place to be also must be scoured, bleached, and laundered. “Increased staff time to clean thoroughly must be figured in,” says Rhoades. “We have experienced some bad outbreaks due to ineffective cleaning—and had to redo our surfaces.”

Monitoring the Meows

© Mike McFarland Even social animals need some down time; cubby holes and boxes provide kitties with places of refuge when they’re ready to chill out, meditate, or take a nap away from nosy neighbors and adoring humans.

Colony housing will be an adjustment not just for the cats, but also for your shelter’s staff. Additional training will help employees and volunteers follow the new routines that group housing requires. They need to be prepared for a different set of circumstances; for example, because cats can now be nose-to-nose, they may also scratch a nose, so workers must be able to recognize common signs of fear and aggression.

“With a minimal amount of training, staff learned what to watch for and to understand what body postures were desirable or not,” says Hinman. “We also taught the staff some better techniques to safely handle cats.”

Even with this extra training, it can be difficult for staff to determine when to pull a cat from the colony. Should you tolerate one swat or ten? Does one sneeze mean disease—or just temporary isolation and observation? “It’s important for staff to develop a ‘watch list’ for cats,” says Pullen. “If a cat sneezes or lashes out at another cat, note that on the list—and make sure the information gets passed to staff on the next shift; if the sneezing continues, then pull the cat. If staff aren’t communicating, then cats may develop illnesses or severe behavior problems that go unnoticed until it’s too late.”

Whether a shelter pulls a cat after its first sneeze or its fifth depends on its own set of veterinary guidelines and the thoroughness of its ongoing monitoring, but a few sneezes should never be taken lightly. Any sneeze warrants a physical exam; eyes should be checked for redness and discharge; mouths should be checked for ulcers; and overall body condition should be assessed.

In shelters that have enough space and resources to treat illnesses, cats can be isolated in a quarantine room until they recover. “Sneezing cats with nasal and/or ocular discharge are taken to our quarantine room and treated with antibiotics, vitamin B, Interferon, and plenty of stinky food and TLC,” says Golub. “We also do periodic culture and sensitivities to see what ‘bug’ we are dealing with and to make sure we are using the appropriate antibiotic.”

Although your staff should already know basic signs of illness, they must now be extra diligent sleuths. “One thing that staff must watch for on a daily basis is that all the cats are eating and drinking,” says Harms. “This is hard to do in a communal living environment. You really have to keep an eye on the ones that tend to hide. As we all know, cats can go downhill very fast and may not recover if you catch [the problem] too late.”

Staff at the Woods Humane Society check on all the cats in the cattery every day to make sure they are healthy and maintaining good body condition, Harms says. They’re particularly careful after learning all too well what can happen when they don’t take precautions. “One day this [check] was not performed, and a cat had passed away and was found by customers curled up in the bottom of a cat tree,” she says. “The cat passed away from a liver tumor that had exploded, so it was not threatening for other cats. We were lucky and had no PR issues, but it could have been a PR nightmare.”

When multiple cats share the same habitat, it can become more challenging for staff to distinguish between, say, two orange tabby cats. If a customer reports spotting one urinating outside the litter box, will staff later be able to tell which one? They will if all cats are easily identified through identification collars or other means. The San Diego Humane Society and SPCA makes it even more foolproof: “We microchip each cat before they’re placed in colony housing,” says Kangas. “That way, if they have two black cats, for example, [staff] can definitely tell them apart via microchip.”

Staff will also need to become excellent security guards, ensuring that one of the many cats milling around the door doesn’t escape when workers or visitors make their exit. Likewise, staff and volunteers must become surveillance experts, keeping their eyes on all visitors. “In a busy environment where the public is freely mixing with loose cats, it’s that much easier for someone unhappy with your shelter’s adoption requirements to ‘save’ that cat by putting him under her jacket and walking out the door,” says Pullen.

You can help your staff excel in their new routine by walking them through the process and providing them with clearly written procedures and policies. The Woods Humane Society distributes several handouts detailing monitoring, cleaning, and other colony-room duties. Staff are reminded to report to the operations manager “any noticeable physical and emotional problems such as sneezing, diarrhea, lethargy, or constant hiding” so the cat can be placed into isolation for observation and treatment. Also, if possible, send a few employees to a neighboring shelter that already has group cat housing. This way they can watch and even participate in operating a well-established colony.

While staff adjust to the new responsibilities and routine, there’s a task that cannot go neglected: conducting playtime. “In a pack setting with limited human interaction, cats may become less social with humans and therefore become less adoptable,” says Pullen. That’s why giving cats plenty of “people time” is essential, even when cats seem perfectly content with feline companionship. Group-housed cats at the Hawaiian Humane Society get lots of action, says animal behavior program coordinator Marty Hutchins, because some people who can’t adopt come in specifically to help socialize their feline friends.

Adapting to Adopters

© Bob Keefer A perch in the cattery of the Greenhill Humane Society in Eugene, Oregon, lets this cat be king of the jungle and spend some time alone in his dominion.

Historically, making human-cat matches has been hard for staff and volunteers—because much of the public still equates clinic-like stainless-steel cages with sick cats. That’s a misconception, of course, but the fact remains that a cat in a cage may not be showing off his true personality to quickly passing visitors.

“The [colony] setting attracts people who don’t adopt from shelters because of their mistaken image as loud, dark, diseased, and depressing,” says Wilder of PAWS. “And it creates a huge opportunity to open up the lines of communication and education between shelter staff, volunteers, and the public.” But the opposite is also true: Improperly set-up communal housing threatens both the welfare of the animals and the public’s image of your shelter. The public wants to see happy cats in an inviting environment, but it also expects to see a professionally run, organized facility.

So when setting up group housing, try to see it through the eyes of not only the new feline residents but also the first-time visitors—potential adopters. If “colony” housing looks like “chaos” housing, if cats are literally climbing the walls and popping out of corners, then visitors may feel even more apprehensive about entering that room than they would entering the stereotypical “depressing room full of cages.” Cats should be housed in a contained environment not only for their own safety, but for the visitors’ as well.

Even in controlled colony settings, many visitors may still have trouble seeing through the mix of cats to find that special kitty meant just for them. In fact, some people are so used to seeing cats in cages that they may not realize the cats in group housing areas are up for adoption as well. “The one thing we have to remind people when they go into the [colony] room, which also contains caged cats, is that the ones that are loose are also available,” says Goodman. “People often think that [the loose cats] live here—because they’re so comfortable.”

How can you help adopters isolate cats in a group environment? Posted on the outside of each room at Iowa City/Coralville Animal Care and Adoption Center are cat profiles containing a photo of each cat and information not just on the cat’s sex, age, and personality traits but also on his behavior around other cats and dogs. And cats in the Houston Humane Society’s Kitty Kat Kondos all wear collars—pink for girls, blue for boys—with their names and identification numbers. Detailed profiles, accompanying photos, and identification collars are important both in helping visitors learn “who’s who” and in assisting staff in monitoring cats for health and temperament.

Patrolling the People

At last, some visitors spy cats they want to meet. What next? Unlike its traditional cat rooms, where potential adopters often have to wait their turn before visiting with a caged cat, the Hawaiian Humane Society’s colony rooms enable multiple visitors to enter and mingle with multiple cats. “Customers are able to interact with cats freely and are allowed to spend as much time as they would like with the cats,” says Hutchins. “Our colony room allows us to monitor the interactions between cats and often helps us to assist customers when they are trying to adopt more than one cat, since the cats often form friendships.”

Yet colony housing lacks the kind of natural policing that comes with traditional housing arrangements—in which staff or volunteers typically must remove the cat from the cage and are usually present during cat-visitor interactions. Compare this with the virtual “open door” policy of many cat-colony rooms, and you begin to see potential problems: What happens when a laxly supervised toddler pulls a cat’s tail and gets scratched? Or when visitors exit the adult cat room and enter the kitten room without sanitizing their hands? What’s to prevent a visitor from walking out with a cat under his arm?

“For liability reasons alone, visitors should be accompanied by trained staff or volunteers to oversee the interaction and intervene if there is a safety issue,” says Joan Carlson Radabaugh, executive director of the Humane Society of Vero Beach and Indian River County. “In addition, staff oversight is helpful in determining if the cat and family are compatible and in providing a dialogue to address the concerns with a cat’s transition from the shelter to the home environment.”

At the Gastineau Humane Society, only staff are allowed in the adoption rooms; adopters view animals through the large viewing windows and are taken to a separate “meet and greet” room to interact with a selected animal. “The public can be a great carrier of disease into the cat population,” says Hinman. “We have had, as I’m sure everyone has, those people that treat the cats as a petting zoo, letting their children run rampant in the rooms ... . The incidence of cat scratches to visitors has [now] been virtually eliminated because of [our] setup.”

If your shelter cannot have staff or trained volunteers positioned continuously in or near the colony areas during visiting hours, it’s essential to lock the rooms’ doors, says The HSUS’s Pullen. Post bright, welcoming signs telling visitors to find a staff member or volunteer when they want to visit with a cat.

Such well-positioned signs can provide other safety tips as well. The Tri-Valley SPCA in Dublin, California, has several “habitat rooms”—usually containing just one or two cats but occasionally up to four; the shelter posts colored signs detailing the safest way to approach and handle a cat or kitten. The signs also urge visitors to read the profiles of each cat to learn about any special needs or behaviors that should be considered. And visitors are frequently reminded to use hand sanitizer between visits with different cats.

By opening up your colony areas to visitors—even under controlled conditions that require the presence of staff or volunteers—you can give cats that feeling of control they so enjoy; cats in colony areas tend to shed their “adoptee” role in favor of that of adopter. “Some people will take the first cat that comes up to them, others will have a seat and wait for a cat to choose them,” says Harms. “The environment seems to be more inviting for both cats and humans alike.”

There’s No Place Like Home

Today, more and more shelters are replacing the stereotypical image of sad kitties staring out of barren cages with a new reality: bright, comfy, furnished single-cat or multiple-cat housing that looks and feels more like home to both cats and visitors.

Such enriched environments become all the more necessary as the increase in limited-admission shelters and long-term care facilities translates into longer confinement for many animals. The extra room, companionship, and physical and mental stimulation offered in cat-colony housing can greatly diminish the boredom, stress, and general depression faced by cats who are kept confined.

Interestingly, while cat-colony housing can sometimes improve the day-to-day lives of shelter cats, many shelters, like the Gastineau Humane Society, are finding that some cats in group settings are now leaving the shelter sooner: “The number of cats we can house for longer periods of time has increased,” notes Hinman, “though the need has decreased and the number of adoptions has increased greatly.”

And that’s great news, because no matter how fun the toys or comfy the couch or kind the employees, a stay in the shelter should be a temporary situation, not a permanent home. The ultimate goal of all shelters, whether they’re big or small, limited- or open-admission, individual-housing-focused or colony-oriented, is to find a real home with a loving and responsible family—and to make the animals as comfortable as possible during the transition.

Julie Miller Dowling, a former editor of Animal Sheltering, is a freelance writer based in California’s Bay area.