Cats in shelter environments experience significant stress from confinement, unfamiliar smells, and social disruption, requiring targeted enrichment to maintain welfare and improve adoptability.
Shelter cats experience acute stress from loss of territory, exposure to unfamiliar animals and scents, and the unpredictability of shelter routines. This stress manifests physically in immune suppression and disease susceptibility, and behaviorally in hiding and aggression that reduces adoption prospects. Welfare improvements include individual housing that minimizes sensory overload from nearby cats, environmental complexity within enclosures, consistent positive human interaction, and robust foster networks that remove cats from shelter environments entirely. These approaches simultaneously improve welfare and increase adoption rates.