Our Mission

Cat Town's mission is to transform the approach to saving shelter cats, reducing euthanasia nationwide. Our focus is to find great homes for cats who are considered unadoptable in the traditional rescue model.

What is the traditional rescue model? Supporting young, healthy, confident cats in large numbers. This approach is crucial to saving lives, but when it’s the only tool in the toolbox, cats who don’t fit the model never receive help. Cat Town focuses on the elderly, frightened, stressed, and sick or injured cats who would otherwise be killed, because there were no rescue organizations focused on them at our overcrowded city shelter. Cat Town’s approach proves these cats are highly adoptable, and since 2011, has helped reduce the euthanasia rate for cats at Oakland Animal Services, Oakland’s municipal shelter, by more than 70%.

Our History

In 2011, while volunteering at Oakland Animal Services, the city’s only open-admission shelter, Ann Dunn noticed that the shelter’s lack of resources left many cats without options. She watched rescue organizations pass over the cats who were stressed by life in a cage, emotionally shut-down, sick, or elderly. Seeing that the cats who needed the most help weren’t receiving support, Ann founded a small foster organization in which these cats could feel safe, show their true selves, and find the adopters they deserved — Cat Town was born. Today, fostering is still at the core of Cat Town’s work.

In 2014, Cat Town launched the first cat cafe in the United States, the Cat Town Adoption Center (formerly known as Cat Town Cafe), in collaboration with the Cat Man of West Oakland, Adam Myatt. With this new space, overlooked cats have their best chance of being seen for who they truly are, while less confident cats can learn to be brave from more confident cats, and begin to trust people at their own pace. In 2017, Cat Town doubled the size of our Adoption Center to give shelter cats with more specialized needs private spaces of their own. This expansion was made possible thanks to Maddie's Fund and Pet Food Express.

Today, Cat Town works to change cat rescue nationwide by sharing our approach with rescue organizations large and small, from coast to coast.

In January of 2020, Ann Dunn stepped down as Executive Director to take the helm at Oakland Animal Services. Andrew Dorman has taken the leadership at Cat Town as our new Executive Director. While Cat Town is wholly independent of Oakland Animal Services, this transition has further strengthened the close partnership we have with the city shelter. Members of Cat Town’s core staff volunteer at Oakland Animal Services to this day, allowing us to quickly identify the cats who most need our intervention. We consider this collaborative approach integral to the success of our mission.