Feline-Ality™ in Real Life: A Program Evaluation.

Area of Science:

• Animal behavior
• Shelter medicine
• Program evaluation

Background:

• High euthanasia rates in domestic cats necessitate improved adoption strategies.
• The Meet Your Match Feline-ality program attempts to enhance cat-adopter matching.
• Systematic evaluation of this program's implementation and efficacy is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically evaluate the implementation process and efficacy of the Meet Your Match Feline-ality program.
• To assess the program's impact on cat adoption rates, euthanasia, returns, transfers, and length of stay.
• To identify potential implementation errors affecting program success.

Main Methods:

• Controlled interrupted time series design (CITS) comparing two animal shelters over five years (2015-2019).
• Outcome evaluation examining adoption, euthanasia, return, transfer, and length of stay data.
• Process evaluation to identify and quantify implementation errors.

Main Results:

• No statistically significant changes in adoption, euthanasia, return, transfer, or length of stay were attributed to the Feline-ality program.
• The process evaluation at one shelter identified eight potential implementation errors, resulting in a 1.6% success rate.
• A high error rate in program implementation may explain the lack of observed positive outcomes.

Conclusions:

• The absence of evidence for the Meet Your Match Feline-ality program's effectiveness may stem from poor implementation rather than inherent flaws.
• Concurrent process evaluations are crucial for accurately assessing the efficacy of implemented programs.
• Improving program implementation fidelity is essential for achieving desired outcomes in animal shelter initiatives.