The Community Cats Podcast

"There's not a lot of that — you don't really hear about cat parks or cat meetups. So I wanted to try and change that."
This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic.
Darein Gray never set out to build a pet-industry platform — he's an IT guy by trade, working in data and business analytics. But when he noticed there was no real gathering space for cat people the way there is for dog people, he taught himself the tools to build one. What started as a solo passion project has grown into Paw-Events.com, a free directory now covering 60-plus U.S. cities, connecting cat and dog lovers with adoption days, spay/neuter clinics, rescue fundraisers, cat cafés, and community meetups in one searchable place.
Host Stacy LeBaron and Darein dig into how the platform actually works for TNR and community cat programs specifically — not just the bake-sale-and-fun-run events people usually picture. Organizations running mobile spay/neuter clinics, trapping events, or vaccination and microchipping days can list by city and neighborhood, filtered so people can find exactly what's happening near them. Darein talks through how smaller grassroots groups, which often don't have the advertising muscle of a PAWS or a Humane Society, can get the same visibility as the big names — and how individuals, not just organizations, are welcome to list events too, after a basic vetting process.
The conversation also covers the platform's education side (ESA and service animal resources, vaccination info, cat training events), its city-hub structure and how organic communities form within bigger metro areas, and Darein's openness to expanding into new states and regions when local advocates reach out. For anyone doing outreach for a workshop, clinic, or trapping event, this episode is a look at a free tool built specifically to solve the "how do we get the word out" problem.
Press Play Now For:
How Paw-Events.com works as a free, searchable directory for cat and dog events across 60+ U.S. cities
Why the platform is built for TNR events, spay/neuter clinics, and microchipping days — not just adoption fairs
How smaller rescues and individual organizers can list events alongside big-name organizations
The vetting process for individuals who want to post their own events
How city "hubs" and grassroots communities naturally form on the platform
What to do if you want your city or state added to the platform
The educational resources available, including ESA/service animal info and cat training events
Resources & Links
Paw-Events.com Website
Paw-Event.com's Facebook
Paw-Event.com's Instagram
Paw-Event.com's TikTok

"The environment we build around a cat shapes her outcome more than any single intervention we can ever make."
his episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic.
Jodi Belongié has spent more than 25 years in animal welfare and shelter medicine, driven by a question that traces back to age 14, when she talked her way into fostering an abandoned pregnant cat with no rescue to call. That instinct — that the systems cats need don't have to already exist, you can build them — led her to co-found the Chico Cat Café in 2021, which became the proving ground for what she calls the SAFE framework: an original behavioral welfare model, developed through the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, that reframes adoption assessment around a single question — not "is this cat adoptable?" but "is this environment giving her a fair chance to show us who she is?"
 
Jodi and Stacey dig into what that looked like in practice: the café's deliberately home-like design, hard caps on capacity (never more than 12–14 cats, nine visitors an hour), and a rescue-based intake process built to get cats settled before they ever meet an adopter. The conversation widens into Jodi's vision for community cat management's next chapter — small, replicable hubs that go beyond adoption into trap depots, spay/neuter access, and food pantries, especially in the rural and under-resourced areas philanthropy tends to overlook. That's the mission behind The CATS Foundation, launching spring 2027.
 
Press Play Now For:
 
The origin story behind Jodi's decades in animal welfare — and why she says "the credential has always been secondary to the question"

What the SAFE framework is and how it reframes adoption assessment around environment instead of the cat

Inside the design choices behind Chico Cat Café's home-like, non-industrial space

The capacity-for-care numbers Jodi holds firm on, and why more cats than people is intentional

How SAFE's underlying philosophy already shows up in the work of colony managers, TNR practitioners, and foster coordinators

Jodi's vision for a "2.0" model of small, replicable community cat hubs — and why she believes it should start small

The mission behind The CATS Foundation and its spring 2027 launch

 
Resources & Links:
 
Jodi's Substack, The Outpost Observer: https://pawsitiveparadigm.substack.com/

Jodi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodibelongiervt/

 
Editor's note: Since this conversation was recorded, Jodi has closed Chico Cat Café, paused The CATS Foundation, and consolidated her cats-centric consulting and publishing work under Nine Lives Strategies.

This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic.
Corinne Bourgoin returns to the podcast five years after her first appearance, and the numbers show what's changed: the MSPCA Boston Adoption Center's return-to-home rate for cats hit 33% in 2025, more than six times the roughly 5% national average. She draws a careful distinction between "return to owner" and "return to home" — sometimes a cat goes back to one caretaker, sometimes to a neighborhood that's been caring for it collectively — and traces the results back to a mindset shift: assume every stray has someone looking for it, and treat reunification as the shelter's job, not just the owner's.
From there, Corinne gets practical. A dedicated, well-followed Facebook page puts stray photos in front of the neighborhoods cats actually came from. For microchipped cats, she doesn't stop at the manufacturer's registry — she cross-checks petmicrochiplookup.com for the most current database, then follows up with whoever implanted the chip. She also shares how anyone can do this detective work before a cat ever reaches a shelter: neighbor conversations, Nextdoor and community Facebook posts, flyers, and "paper collars" — a strip of paper taped around a friendly cat's neck asking, "Is this your cat?" Technology like AirTags helps, but she's clear it's only half the equation; the other half is neighbors staying present in their own communities.
The conversation turns to ear tips and how "community cat" has shifted from a behavioral judgment call to a population-risk one — any unaltered outdoor cat, tipped or not. Corinne's years at Maui Humane Society gave that shift real stakes: during the Maui wildfires, more than 600 cats survived the burn zone, many already sterilized and ear-tipped, which meant no kitten boom compounding the recovery. She closes with Tiger, a geriatric cat who arrived at the shelter after five years missing — his microchip led her to an owner who'd long given up hope, and he walked straight to the cabinet where his food bowl used to sit.
Press Play Now For:
Why "return to home" is a more accurate goal than "return to owner" — and how MSPCA hit a 33% reunification rate for cats
A step-by-step walkthrough of tracking down an owner through microchip databases, including why the manufacturer's registry often isn't the most current one
Low-tech tools anyone can use to reunite a found cat with its family, from paper collars to Nextdoor posts
How the definition of "community cat" has evolved from a behavioral call to a population-management one
How more than 600 ear-tipped, sterilized cats survived the Maui wildfires without a kitten population boom
The story of Tiger, reunited with his family five years after going missing
Resources & Links
MSPCA-Angell
Pet Microchip Lookup
Return-to-Home Certification Workshop (Community Cats Central)
Contact Corinne: lostpet@mspca.org

This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Community Cat Clinic.
Sandra Cagan spent decades in property management before a milestone birthday and a brief human-interest news story about a New York cat cafe sent her in a new direction. She cold-emailed her county commissioner in Lake County, Florida — "You're gonna think I'm crazy, but this is what I want to do" — and had his support within the hour. The Orlando Cat Cafe opened in September 2016 as Florida's first cat cafe, and this year marks its 10th anniversary alongside the Community Cats Podcast's own.
Sandra built it as a business first: a full-service cafe rather than packaged snacks, separate AC and filtration systems to keep the cafe and cat areas from cross-contaminating, and a "sweet spot" of about 28 cats at a time in a 1,000-square-foot play area, refreshed weekly by exclusive shelter partner SPCA Florida. All 489 adoptions facilitated last year sent 100% of the fee straight to SPCA Florida — a public-private model she credits partly to a public administration master's she earned during the pandemic. That same pandemic tested her resolve: Florida ordered the cafe closed, and she kept it shut into late July rather than reopen too soon, paying her staff the whole time. Her advice to other cat cafe owners: keep six months of reserves and treat the business like any other, rather than publicly asking for help with basics like a broken AC unit.
Ten years in, Sandra has turned that playbook into the country's first cat cafe franchise: 18 months of groundwork, a 500-plus-page operations manual, a $42,750 initial fee, and total investment of roughly $450,000–$650,000 depending on location. She and her team vet franchisees closely and personally scout a shelter partner in every new market, favoring slow, strategic growth — currently focused on the Southeast — over rapid expansion.
Press Play Now For:
How a milestone birthday, a chance news story, and one bold email led to Florida's first cat cafe
Why Sandra runs the cat side and the cafe side as two separate legal entities, with 100% of adoption fees going to her shelter partner
The financial cushion and mindset that got the Orlando Cat Cafe through a months-long pandemic shutdown without laying off staff
What it actually takes to become an Orlando Cat Cafe franchisee — from a 500-page operations manual to the investment range
Why the cats do the matchmaking at the cafe, and how that changes the adoption experience
Resources & Links
Orlando Cat Cafe: https://www.orlandocatcafe.com
Orlando Cat Cafe Franchise: https://www.orlandocatcafefranchise.com
SPCA Florida: https://www.spcaflorida.org

"People have to feel like they are making a difference, not earning a buck."
This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and Neighborhood Cats' TNR Certification Workshop.
Debra Magaldi never set out to run a nonprofit. What began as feeding a neighborhood stray in her alley turned into a chance encounter with Helen Sanders herself, and after Helen's passing in 2005, a small fund to feed her jetty cats grew into CatPAWS, a Long Beach and Orange County organization now operating with an all-volunteer board, paid veterinary contractors, and a growing spay/neuter program. Sixteen years in, Debra brings her business background and MBA to a mission she says still runs on a fundamentally different fuel than any company she's worked for.
Debra and host Stacy LeBaron dig into what it actually takes to build a volunteer-run organization that lasts. Debra pushes back on the advice to "run your nonprofit like a business," arguing that while structure and strategy matter, people show up because they believe in the cause, not because of a bonus or a quota. She's candid about the cost of starting a new program: it takes far more money than founders expect, and grant and donor funding won't arrive until there's a track record to earn it. She also talks through the hard boundary-setting that comes with leadership, including learning to say no to well-meaning ideas that don't fit the organization's priorities.
On the ground, CatPAWS has scaled its spay/neuter access dramatically, moving from a mobile trailer serving only community cats in 2023 to a full surgical suite that opened in 2025 and now serves owned cats as well, with almost 700 cats served since the start of the year and typical wait times of only one to two weeks. Debra also walks through CatPAWS's approach to the question every community cat organization fields constantly: what to do when someone finds a litter of kittens. Her answer starts with checking whether mom is coming back, since kittens who stay with mom have far better survival odds, and points to the organization's "Help, I Found a Cat" guide and DIY kitten kit program as tools that keep vulnerable kittens out of shelters that aren't equipped to bottle-feed around the clock.[/one_second]
[one_second]Press Play Now For:
How CatPAWS grew from a single alley cat colony into a 16-year-old nonprofit
Why Debra treats volunteer time as equivalent to a financial donation
The real difference between running a nonprofit and running a business, and where the "run it like a business" advice breaks down
What it actually costs to launch a new program, and why grants and donors won't be there on day one
CatPAWS's mobile trailer-to-surgical-suite spay/neuter expansion and current wait times
What to actually do when you find a litter of kittens — and why waiting for mom matters
Resources & Links
Helen Sanders CatPAWS
CatPAWS Spay/Neuter Assistance
CatPAWS Who We Are & What We Do