Coat Color and Cat Outcomes in an Urban U.S. Shelter

Abstract

Some nonhuman animal shelters have developed rehoming programs for black cats to remedy what they believe are their higher rates of euthanasia and lower rates of adoption. This study reviews humans’ preferences/aversions to cats of various coat colors and uses contingency tables and multinomial logistic regression to test possible differences in outcomes (euthanasia, adoption, or transfer) for 7983 cats that entered an urban public shelter in Kentucky, USA from 2010 through 2011. While coat color overall was negligibly associated with cat outcomes in a contingency table, the pairwise difference between black and white cats was significant (p < 0.05) and nontrivial in strength. Specifically, black cats experienced the highest euthanasia and lowest adoption rates, while white cats had the lowest euthanasia and highest adoption rates. Brown, gray, and orange cats experienced similar outcomes, but middling between those of black and white cats. These patterns by color remained weak but significant after controlling for breed and stray status in regression analysis, with the exception of orange and white, which did not differ significantly. A subsample of 1219 entirely black cats was analyzed to assess whether they had different outcomes during the run-up to Halloween; their October percentages of adoption and transfer were comparable to or lower than all other months of the calendar year. Thus, this study did not find that outcomes improved for black cats during October. Overall, this study provides weak support for what has been termed “Black Cat Bias” by others, and hints that black cats in public shelters should receive extra consideration for rehoming, particularly if such efforts do not substantially redirect resources from other initiatives.

Cat Coat Color, Personality Traits and the Cat-Owner Relationship Scale: A Study with Cat Owners in Mexico

“…Contextualizing the findings of any coat color study with the existing literature is not simple due to the lack of uniform color patterning in cats [12]. The results of the present study partially coincide with those found by Delgado et al [10], who reported that orange cats are considered friendly and tricolor cats are intolerant.…”

“…In addition, color classifications are prone to errors. Carini et al [12] indicated that coat color in cats is difficult to describe due to the wide variety of patterns that exist. Therefore, color assessment is subjective and results in incongruity between the findings of different studies on the subject.…”

“…Thus, although adopting people say that color is not relevant and that they consider how playful cats are and how willing they are to interact with people black cats usually remain in shelters longer before being adopted [11]. In addition, Carini et al [12] found that coat color can be advantageous or disadvantageous with respect to adoption opportunities for cats in shelters.…”

Animal sheltering: A scoping literature review grounded in institutional ethnography

“…Many researchers have tried to identify adopter ‘preferences’ and other factors that may decrease LOS, often focusing on ‘phenotypic’ traits of animals such as breed group, sex, size, coat colour and age as listed in shelter databases. For example, Lepper et al ( 2002 ), Brown et al ( 2013 ), Brown and Morgan ( 2015 ), Kay et al ( 2018 ) and Voslářová et al ( 2019 ) used statistical analyses to compare animal traits to LOS, live-release rate (Patronek & Crowe 2018 ) or general outcomes of adopted, euthanased or transferred (Carini et al 2020 ). A common finding from such analyses is that younger dogs have a shorter LOS than adults (Brown et al 2013 ; Žák et al 2015 ; Patronek & Crowe 2018 ).…”

Direct and Indirect Factors Influencing Cat Outcomes at an Animal Shelter

“…Identifying predictive components which result in different outcomes are vital, and typically, the focus is on characteristics of the cats as well as the type of intake. Regarding the physical attributes of the cat, coat color is considered a strong predictor of adoption ( 11 – 13 ). Age is a prominent factor as well, where younger cats are more likely to be adopted than older cats ( 14 – 16 ).…”