January 23, 2019 by Kate Hurley, DVM, MPVM

Audience: Executive Leadership, Shelter/Rescue Staff & Volunteers

Video Length: 94 Minutes

How do we in animal welfare balance the needs of cats and birds? Can that challenge only be met for birds at the expense of cats, or of cats at the expense of birds?

In this presentation, Dr. Kate Hurley, Director of the U.C. Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, will explore the real-life implications of various policies proposed to resolve this conflict.

She'll look at the experience of those on the front lines of cat management, investigate the science and research, and examine the role of "catch and kill," eradication, TNR, return to field, confinement, and other approaches to community cat management and the welfare of birds and other wild animals.

Bio photo of Dr. Kate Hurley, smiling in blue scrubs, in a shelter holding a siamese cat on her shoulder

About Kate Hurley

Dr. Hurley has been working in shelters since 1989. She has worked in almost every capacity of sheltering including: adoption counselor, kennel attendant and California state humane officer. After graduation from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine in 1999, Dr. Hurley worked as a shelter veterinarian in California and Wisconsin. In 2001 she returned to Davis for further training as the world's first resident in Shelter Medicine. During her residency, Dr. Hurley completed her Masters of Preventative Veterinary Medicine (MPVM) with an emphasis in Epidemiology.

Since completing the shelter medicine residency and undertaking the direction of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program, Dr. Hurley has become a recognized leader in the field of shelter medicine. She has worked extensively with shelters of every size and management type, and has consulted with shelters from all regions of the United States on subjects ranging from control of a specific outbreak to shelter health care programs and facility design. She assisted in developing guidelines for shelter animal vaccination in conjunction with the American Association of Feline Practitioners and the American Animal Hospital Association, co-edited the textbook Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) and served as a co-author for the Association of Shelter Veterinarians Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters.

Dr. Hurley regularly speaks nationally and internationally on topics related to shelter animal health. She was awarded Shelter Veterinarian of the Year in 2006 by the American Humane Association. Hurley loves shelter medicine because it has the potential to improve the lives of so many animals and make life better for the dedicated shelter workers who care for all those homeless pets. Her interests include population health, infectious disease epidemiology and unusually short dogs.