Photos courtesy of Animal Care Services unless otherwise indicated.

Hopefully, term limits are up in the best way possible for over 40 cats from Long Beach Animal Care Services (ACS) and Pet Food Express’s Cat Adoption Center, which pulls cats that may be on their final days at ACS. On Friday, August 11, from 11:00AM to 3:00PM, cats and kittens will storm Long Beach City Hall to demand forever homes and then will swat a fuzz ball, lick themselves everywhere, and look irresistible. And the public is invited to support their cause and paws.

The third annual Kitty Hall event is one of the pet projects of Mayor Robert Garcia. Cats in the shelter are the silent majority (except at mealtimes) left behind on the shelter side of the P. D. Pitchford Companion Animal Village when spcaLA picks out cats for their own adoption area. And the empty kennels they leave behind fill up awfully fast from both owner dumps and strays and the great number of kittens born during kitten season.

Garcia so moved to inaugurate a Kitty Hall in July 2015 after he was so moved by a similar event in Seattle. Both the first event and the one taking place last year were unqualified successes.

Mayor Robert Garcia celebrates the newly found family of a kitten at Kitty Hall 2016.

“At the first one, we had nine or 10 cats,” ACS Manager Ted “Cat” Stevens said. “We ran out of them, and we had to bring more. And we adopted all those out. The next year, we said, OK, we’ll be prepared this time, so we brought out 30. They all went, too.” The final adoption, Catsy Cline, went home from the shelter the following day. Her new best friend wound up volunteering at the Cat Adoption Center.

As with the previous years, Kitty Hall will take up the entire City Hall lobby. An exercise pen will be used as a play area and a meet-and-greet, Pet Food Express will have a booth and will provide goodie bags, and VIP Pet Clinic, which is located in the store, will donate carriers to adopters. Mayor Garcia, members of his staff, and interns will take photos, and it’s rumored that the mayor and fiancé Matt Mendez will be looking for a brother or sister for their cat, Tommy, who was adopted from ACS a few years ago. Last year, a couple of city employees adopted cats who were permitted to go upstairs to their offices that day. Tim Patton, Garcia’s senior administrative deputy, took home a great pumpkin of a cat named Buttercup, who’s blossoming in the Patton household.

Kitty Hall will take over the City Hall lobby on Friday.

The x-pen makes Kitty Hall kitten and kid friendly.

Besides hoping to break last year’s record with a greater number of cats, there will be some enhancements to this year’s event. The mobile Adoption Waggin’ will be there, and the adoption process will be streamlined in an assembly-line fashion facilitated by volunteers.

Kitty Hall candidates’ ardent supporters: ACS volunteers and staff.

Adoption fees will be $20 per cat, and a second cat may be added with no additional fee if there’s room in the home and heart (they make great company for people and each other, if both cats agree). Furthermore, the special adoption rates will continue throughout the weekend for anyone who wants a cat but is unable to attend the event. All cats will have been spayed or neutered before the event; adoption requirements will remain the same in every case.

Coast-to-Coast PBS Broad-cats

Most significantly, the entire country and parts of the world will be able to see what shelters and communities can do through partnering. ShelterMe, a PBS series that celebrates shelter pets with positive and uplifting stories, will be filming the entire scope of Kitty Hall: cats working with volunteers at the shelter, transport to the event, lobbying for love at City Hall, and follow-up interviews with a few of the new families at their homes. Backstories of some of the cats will also be filmed.

Breezy has undergone an impressive transformation. Currently fostered through the Pet Food Express Cat Adoption Center, she was frightened and completely shut down when she entered the shelter. Thanks to the humans who saw her potential, Breezy is now secure enough to hold audiences for her foster’s dogs and other cat. Photo courtesy of Julie Somers.

“The animals are as much participants in our stories as the humans are,” said Steve Latham, an award-winning filmmaker and producer and director of ShelterMe, sponsored by the Petco Foundation. “This makes us very different from [other animal stories on televised media]. I see stories on the news, and animals are always the objects. People are always trying to do something nice for them. But we really try to speak with the animals. They can’t tell their story, so we try to interpret for them.”

ShelterMe illustrates the strong bond that can be forged between community and shelter when the one that so many of us have with animals serves as an accelerant. The series’ current episode is hosted by living icon Jane Goodall, who follows a high school cross-country team that couples exercising their own bodies with those of dogs; demonstrates a pet-literacy program similar to the one at ACS in which children and adults read books to pets, helping to socialize them; and features an organization that trains shelter dogs to protect endangered wildlife—elephants and rhinoceroses—in Africa. A preview can be seen here.

Other episodes feature high-profile animal advocates introducing the work done through shelter-and-community partnership—pairing at-risk youth with homeless pets, showing pet owners how their doggies can have safe play dates with strangers and others, training shelter dogs for search-and-rescue, and of course, reasons for the need for adoption. All shows highlight why the pets wind up in shelters in the first place: strays, owner surrenders, abuse, getting lost, and so on. The “celebrity touch” may draw a viewer in, but the spotlight is clearly focused on the animal and the shelter. All episodes can be viewed here.

Latham had connected with all the open-admission shelters in the SoCal area as well as many throughout the country to offer support and get the pets adopted. He’s with ACS for several years, bringing in talented photographers like Sara Cozolino and George Themelis for the ShelterMe.com social network (take a peek) and assisting with the transport of animals from ACS to other approved shelters with shortages. He’s been inspired by what he’s seen at ACS and in other open-admission facilities.

“This show is unapologetically an advocate for shelters,” Latham said. “The idea is that the shelter’s not ‘the pound’—it’s a welfare center, the idea being that they get nurtured and ready for adoption. With the help of our entire community we look forward to reaching more milestones in the future and continuing to reduce pet overpopulation and find new forever homes for animals at the shelter.”

Unarguably, not all shelters epitomize the model that Latham wants to further. But he emphasizes that just as it continually happens here in Long Beach, even shelters that are real hellholes that aren’t fit for a dog, a cat, a rabbit or anything with four (or three) legs or wings may be inspired to do something about it. Those that are struggling with burdens of budget and other drawbacks can connect with community and vice versa, which is how changes and innovations continue to be effected in Long Beach and other cities.

“I believe that change comes from inspiration, not desperation,” Latham said. “I work with open-admission animal shelters in Southern California and throughout the country. [They] face challenges like no other organization in animal welfare—they have to take in every owner surrender, lost animal, hoarding case, abuse case. The only way to make things better is to get involved. The shelters can’t do it alone. They need massive community support. It’s time for people to stop complaining and start participating. Working together for positive change is what’s needed.”

To bring it back to the current agenda, you’re hopefully inspired to come down to Kitty Hall. And when the mayor approaches the podium in the company of a feline officiate and asks “All in favor of this adoption?” you’ll respond “Aye!”

Graphic by Bryan Baughman and Dennis Dean.

ShelterMe’s Kitty Hall episode will air on PBS at the beginning of 2018. Stay tuned for details.

“One cat just leads to another.”

~ Ernest Hemingway