Anna Raines, Best Friends Animal Society
Anna Raines, currently a community cat program manager at Best Friends Animal Society, has been involved in animal welfare for about 10 years. She started her career as a wildlife rehabilitator, where she learned about complaint mitigation and the importance of spreading the message of coexistence. From there, she became an ACO, a role in which she learned about TNR and community cats. After taking over the Best Friends community cat program in Cobb County, Georgia, Anna helped bring the county’s save rate for cats from 62% to 94%. Anna talks with Stacy about how she started out vehemently opposed to TNR and RTF after being introduced to it through her wildlife rehab work. “I was being fed a very different narrative on outdoor cats,” she told Stacy, than the one she later encountered as an ACO. Now a passionate advocate for TNR and RTF, Anna is working to help change the ordinances in her area to make TNR and other community cat programs legal. To learn more about the work Anna is doing, you can email her directly. You can also visit the Best Friends Animal Society website, where you’ll find lots of resources on community cat programming.