An estimated 500,000 cats live outdoors across New York City, yet most residents rarely see the scale of this crisis or understand what’s behind it. Underfoot was created to pull back the curtain on one of the city's largest hidden animal welfare challenges and investigate why so many cats end up on the street in the first place.
Rather than focusing solely on rescue stories or taking shelter overcrowding at face value, the series examines the systemic factors driving the crisis, including barriers to affordable veterinary care, housing instability, and gaps in public policy. Our goal was to educate listeners, elevate community voices, and shift the conversation from reaction to prevention. By connecting animal welfare to broader issues of affordability and access, we aimed to inspire greater public awareness, civic engagement, and support for long-term solutions that keep pets with their families and reduce suffering before it begins.
Underfoot is a six-part documentary podcast exploring New York City's cat overpopulation crisis through the experiences of rescuers, veterinarians, advocates, policymakers, and community members. Rather than treating animal welfare as an isolated issue, the series investigates the systems that shape outcomes for pets and people alike.
The project was built around a simple but often overlooked idea: most animal welfare crises are preventable. Through field reporting, interviews, and documentary storytelling, each episode examines a different driver of the crisis from veterinary affordability and housing insecurity to volunteer burnout and gaps in public infrastructure.
To maximize impact, the podcast was supported by a fully organic launch campaign across social media, community events, listener engagement initiatives, educational resources, and bonus episodes tied to real-world policy opportunities. As New York City's budget negotiations unfolded, the series expanded beyond awareness-building to help listeners understand how local government decisions affect animal welfare outcomes and what actions they could take to support prevention-focused solutions.
A key challenge was broadening the audience beyond people already involved in animal rescue. By framing community cats as a lens through which to explore affordability, public health, housing, and civic responsibility, the series connected animal welfare to issues that affect millions of New Yorkers. This approach helped transform what is often viewed as a niche topic into a broader conversation about how communities care for one another when systems fall short.
The result was a storytelling initiative designed not only to inform audiences about the crisis, but to engage them in imagining and advocating for more humane, sustainable solutions.
Underfoot reached more than 45,000 listeners and drove over 1,500 visits to Flatbush Cats' policy platform, extending the conversation from awareness to action. Produced and launched without paid media, the series generated engagement through community events, social storytelling, listener participation, and bonus educational content focused on active policy and budget debates.
The podcast helped reframe animal welfare as a systems issue rather than an individual one—connecting shelter overcrowding, outdoor cat populations, and pet surrender to affordability, access to care, and public policy. By pairing documentary storytelling with practical education and civic engagement opportunities, Underfoot created new pathways for audiences to learn about, discuss, and support prevention-focused solutions for animals and the people who care for them.
