Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit: Cat Enrichment Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

Through this grant, we were able to provide cat scratchers for the cats in our care, allowing them to engage in natural scratching behaviors, stretch their muscles, relieve stress, and maintain their claws. Each scratcher provided to a cat will stay with that cat upon adoption so the cat will have a familiar item in its new home.

This grant helped increase adoption readiness, as engaged, happy cats are more appealing to adopters. It provided a more positive shelter environment, making enclosures feel less like cages and more like enriching interactive spaces.

Ultimately, happier cats show better, which increases cat adoptions for our organization.

How many pets did this grant help?

626

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Through this grant, we were able to provide enrichment to cats like Macho (first and second photos). He has other medical issues going on, and most people have not looked at him. However, thanks to enrichment like this, Macho is coming out of his shell even more, which has increased the number of people visiting with him.

We hope we see him get his own forever home soon, but we have seen him open up tremendously since he has been here. He gets very vocal now while he uses his cat scratcher, and when people walk by, he demands that they pet him.

He is still available for adoption here.

Additionally, we had several cats who were more on the shy side come out to use the cat scratchers, which allows them to be seen versus hiding in their cubby area all the time.