Curiosity might have killed the cat, but the Million Cat Challenge is on a mission to save one million felines from all threats, curiosity and otherwise.
On Monday, the project announced a milestone of 500,000 cats saved.
Julie Levy, a professor of shelter medicine at UF, co-founded the effort, which she said began on Jan. 1, 2014.
“The shelters are knocking it out of the park,” she said. “We expect to blow away that goal of one million cats saved in five years.”
For some shelters, saving a cat means avoiding euthanasia, Levy said. For others, especially no-kill shelters, the goal is to find more forever homes and help current cat owners keep their pets when money becomes an issue.
Though the program does not provide money to shelters, it does offer several initiatives to help shelters of all sizes, Levy said.
The initiatives are meant to educate shelters, she said, helping them better manage resources and decrease operational costs.
The Alachua County Humane Society will host a special adoption event from Thursday to Sunday in honor of the celebration, said director of development Margot Wilder.
The adoption fee for cats that are at least one year old will have a 50-percent discount, making it less than $40 to take home a cat.
As of press time, the shelter houses 84 cats, Wilder said.
“We’re so happy to be a part of this,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the next half-a-million cats saved.”
