Did you know that Thursday, March 2 is International Rescue Cat Day? To commemorate the day Best Friends Animal Society, a leading animal welfare organization working to end the killing of cats and dogs in America’s shelters by 2025, wants to celebrate a milestone in cat lifesaving during 2022.

Back in 2021, an estimated 2.3 million cats went into the U.S shelter system and around 240,000 did not make it out alive. Thankfully, 2022 saw an improvement in cat lifesaving with an 8% reduction in cats needlessly dying in shelters compared to 2021—and that’s something we want to shout from the cat tree rooftops.

To keep reducing the number of cats dying in the shelter system, it’s important to note that there are both indoor and outdoor cats and how the community deals with them will help with overall lifesaving. Currently, there are around 79 million cats living in homes in the US, while many cats including feral and outdoor healthy cats are living outdoors.

While we are seeing cat lifesaving moving in the right direction, Best Friends is asking the public to continue to help save the cats being killed in shelters due to lack of space.

“Cats that are doing well outside should be trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and then returned to their original location so that shelters have room for lost, abandoned, and surrendered cats,” says Samantha Bell, Cat Expert, Best Friends Animal Society.

If you are looking to bring a cat or kitten into your home, choose adoption.

“It’s important to note that when you adopt you are saving two lives, the life of the cat you are adopting as well as clearing space for another one to be taken in by the shelter or rescue group,” Bell said.

With kitten season coming up soon, there will be a huge uptick of available kittens in shelters across the country. To find out how you can help or to find an adoptable cat or kitten near you, visit bestfriends.org.