Interview! Danielle Bays, Director of Cat Protection and Policy, HSUS

“We’ve seen…so much progress so rapidly across the country.”

Danielle Bays, Director of Cat Protection and Policy at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), is a frequent flyer here on CCP, having appeared before on Episode 55 and Episode 261. She joins Stacy again here to talk about what’s going on across the country for cats, and about various events happening in the animal welfare world this spring.

One such event is HSUS’S annual Animal Care Expo conference, being held this year in New Orleans on April 15-18. Danielle tells Stacy that not only will there be a cat track again this year, there will also be a day-long program devoted to kittens, and lots more about cats within the other conference tracks, like behavior and veterinary. Jackson Galaxy will be at the conference as a speaker on cat behavior, and also as part of a roundtable session with attendees. There will be a session in the veterinary track about FIV and FeLV, which will discuss everything you need to know to get those cats adopted like any other cat in your shelter! Several sessions on trapping will also be included, including one focused on return to field, one on how to deal with large-scale colonies, and one on “cat counting.”

Stacy and Danielle also review the 2019 legislative update for cats, including several declaw initiatives making their way through the channels and how people can make the declaw issue a more pressing one for their elected officials. There is also interesting cat-related legislation happening in South Carolina and Illinois, and Danielle feels that each year, the “temperature” for community cats gets better and better across the United States. “We’re just seeing such great work throughout the country,” Danielle tells Stacy. “These ideas that we have about how we handle cats in shelters, how we treat cats outdoors, are really gaining so much traction.”

To learn more about HSUS, legislation, and the Animal Care Expo conference, visit animalsheltering.org. You can also can get in touch with Danielle directly at dbays@humanesociety.org. Thanks to this week’s podcast sponsor, Catalogical. Be sure to check out The Ultimate Cat Food Guide on their website today!

Listen to Episode #293 Now