The Animal Foundation Teams Up with Best Friends Animal Society To Save 15,000 Cats in Las Vegas

The Animal Foundation (TAF) and Best Friends Animal Society today announced the Community Cats Project, a $1.7 million partnership that aims to spay/neuter 15,000 community cats in Clark County over the next three years. This project brings the organizations one step closer to Mission: Possible 2020, saving all healthy and treatable animals that enter TAF’s care by the end of the year 2020.

The plan is to spay/neuter and vaccinate 5,000 cats per year between April 1, 2016 and June 30, 2019. To accomplish this, TAF will dedicate one employee while Best Friends will hire two locally based full-time and one locally based part-time employee for oversight and assistance with implementation. Best Friends will also provide two vehicles for trap/neuter/return projects.

“Best Friends is proud to partner with The Animal Foundation. They have a strong commitment to saving the lives of dogs and cats and I believe it will make their goal of saving all the healthy and treatable animals that enter their care by 2020 possible,” said Holly Sizemore, director of national programs for Best Friends Animal Society. “Across the country cats make up the majority of animals dying in shelters, up to 70 percent in some places, many of them are free roaming or un-owned, known as community cats, and efforts to solve the issue by rounding up and euthanizing them have failed.”

“Best Friends Animal Society has a demonstrated track record with these types of projects at shelters in other areas. Their partnerships with shelters to spay/neuter community cats have dramatically improved live release rates and decreased euthanasia at those shelters,” said Christine Robinson, executive director of The Animal Foundation. “By spaying/neutering and vaccinating these cats, not only will we prevent the birth of thousands of unwanted litters but by the end of the three-year project, we’ll also achieve an overall cat live release rate of 85 percent in Las Vegas and Clark County. This will bring us closer to Mission: Possible 2020, which is our goal to save all healthy and treatable animals that enter our care by the end of the year 2020.”

About The Animal Foundation
The Animal Foundation is a private, non-profit agency that operates Nevada’s largest open-admission shelter (Lied Animal Shelter), taking in approximately 30,000 lost, unwanted and abandoned pets every year. The Animal Foundation envisions a humane and compassionate community for all animals and is dedicated to saving the lives of all healthy and treatable animals in the Las Vegas valley. The Animal Foundation offers pet adoption, lost and found services, volunteer and foster opportunities, as well as low-cost spay/neuter and vaccination clinics. To learn more about The Animal Foundation or view adoptable pets online, visit www.animalfoundation.com.

About Best Friends Animal Society®
Best Friends Animal Society is the only national animal welfare organization dedicated exclusively to ending the killing of dogs and cats in America’s shelters. A leader in the no-kill movement, Best Friends runs the nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary for companion animals, adoption centers and spay and neuter facilities in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City as well as lifesaving programs in partnership with more than 1,400 rescue groups and shelters across the country. Since its founding in 1984, Best Friends has helped reduce the number of animals killed in American shelters from 17 million per year to an estimated 4 million. By continuing to build effective initiatives that reduce the number of animals entering shelters and increase the number who find homes, Best Friends and its nationwide network of members and partners are working to Save Them All®.

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