Interview! Ann Dunn, Founder of Cat Town, Oakland, CA

"Nobody wanted to be standing in a cafe making coffee, they wanted to be helping the cats. But now, we're seeing how helpful it has been to forgotten kittens and see how successful it has been."

Ann Dunn founded Cat Town, which is a cat rescue organization focusing on helping the most vulnerable cats in local shelters. Cats that are too scared in that environment have a hard time showing their best selves and soon tend to be overlooked by potential adopters. After realizing this, she wanted to work with these cats that needed the most intervention and save them from being euthanized. She opened the first Cat Cafe in conjunction with Cat Town in 2014 and just opened an adoption center for the hardest to place cats.

She worked for over 20 years in public housing redevelopment in managing, funding and planning. While she didn't grow up with cats, she did end up adopting 2 cats after college. It was in their memory that she started volunteering at the local animal shelter. She never imagined it would lead her to open her own rescue shelter and she soon became obsessed with helping cats. In this new venture, she saw opportunity to apply her professional skills to address the high euthanasia rate she saw with the higher risk cats who weren't having luck find homes. In 2011, Oakland had a 42% euthanasia rate, but by focusing on cats most likely to be euthanized, she has helped place around 1,800 cats and reduced the euthanasia rate to 14%!

Ann brought a different perspective to the problem when looking at the variables that were in play at an animal shelter. She saw obstacles that were in place that prevented some cats from feeling safe enough to be confident, which in turn, led them to not be adopted and often times, euthanized. Instead, she wanted to find a way to help by finding a way to place these cats in something other than a cage, where people could get to see them open up more. She originally was thinking this would happen in the form of a quasi sanctuary/adoption center/ cat cafe, so people would be able to spend time with these types of cats in an easier environment for the animals. She wanted to see these troubled cats find a "safe place" where they would transform into confident cats that people would want to adopt.

She now works on the Forgotten Kitten Project, as well. She uses a different approach with kittens that come in who may not be socialized because they are a little older. She brings them in and lets them become desensitized to an active environment, where they are amazingly resilient. It helps boost their confidence and gives them the skills they need to become more adoptable cats. She received a grant from Maddie's Fund for this, where she documents her findings in order to hopefully inspire other organizations to do the same thing and replicate this approach elsewhere.

Ann also participates in an apprenticeship program through Maddie's Fun, where she shares innovative ideas with other organizations. Cat Town is a host organization, where they have different organizations come in and shadow them, to see how they are doing things and what they can do to implement their ideas and success in their own organizations.

Find out Ann's thoughts on the Cat Cafe and what she would do differently if she had to do it again. Would she even open a cat cafe if she was starting all over?

Learn more at www.cattownoakland.org