Over 2,500 cats and kittens find their forever homes through SPCA’s Walk-in Caturdays

With an extremely busy kitten season, SPCA Centres around the country have been struggling with capacity for cats and kittens.

“It’s challenging throughout the year, but during the warmer months it becomes particularly difficult for our teams to keep on top of the large numbers of cats and kittens that come into our care,” says Dr. Corey Regnerus-Kell, SPCA’s General Manager of Animal Services.

“The idea of walk-in Caturdays was to remove some of the barriers for those people who might be considering adopting,” says Dr. Regnerus-Kell. “While some people like the one-on-one time our appointment-based adoptions offer, other adopters prefer to look around in their own time, with our staff on hand to answer questions and guide decisions. We wanted to see as many felines as possible make their way into loving homes.”

This plan came to fruition every Saturday between 25 January and 15 March, as members of the public were able to visit their nearest SPCA Centre to meet the cats and kittens with no booking required.

The campaign was a huge hit, with 1,237 cats being adopted on Caturdays – this was an average of 155 adoptions per Caturday, compared to an average of 76 over the previous two Saturdays.

Over the seven-week period, a total of 2,534 cats and kittens found their forever homes.

Some members of the public wondered why walk-in appointments weren’t offered permanently.

“It’s something we’re certainly looking into, but many people don’t realise that we usually operate with appointments for a number of reasons,” says Dr Regnerus-Kell. “Firstly, many of the animals in our care are in foster homes – so if you see an animal listed on our website and you’d like to meet them, we often need the notice to bring them out of foster care, and back into the Centre.

Additionally, we’ve found that high levels of foot traffic and noise can be stressful for certain animals. While we know it is tempting, some visitors were coming by with the intention of cuddling the cats, but with no intention of adopting – and the wellbeing of the animals and helping genuine adopters has to be our top priority.”

SPCA is currently looking into ways that Caturdays might be extended in certain Centres in the future.

“We’d love to be able to offer these walk-ins for cat adoptions more frequently, so we’re reviewing some of our processes to see whether there’s a safe and efficient way for us to achieve this, while ensuring the wellbeing of the animals. Watch this space,” says Dr. Regnerus-Kell.

We’re very grateful to everyone who decided to open their hearts and their homes to a new family member, and brought home a cat or kitten from their local Centre.

Didn’t get a chance to adopt during Caturdays? Meet all of the animals who are still waiting to find a home.