Choosing Your Pet

When it comes to picking out a new pet people can get down right picky. They want the yellow puppy that doesn’t get too big or the brown and white cat not the black. Jim Monsma at the Washington Animal Rescue League out in Washington D.C. says that it is common for people to have a specific look in mind when finding a new pet. “People come in and say, I had a black and white tuxedo cat before, so that’s what I want. But cats are not all the same. They have widely divergent personalities.”

To make things a little more interesting for people they are trying out a new program called the Feline-ality or Meet Your Match program. The program was created by Dr. Emily Weiss a behaviorist at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Part of the ASPCA’s Meet Your Match program, which also includes Canine-ality for dogs, the program assesses a variety of behaviors in individual cats. It rates the animals on confidence and sociability, which Weiss’ research has shown are independent of each other. It will then count up all of the assessments and place them into nine different cat personality categories - which will than be matched with a family’s desires and situations. It’s very similiar to a magazine quiz to find out, “Which kind of cat are you?”

Already the program has increased the number of adoptions because people are able to truly have fun while trying to pick the animal they want.