May 25, 2016
Categories: Marketing, PR, and Social Media, Adoption

Want to know the secret to getting a shy black cat adopted, and win over the hearts of thousands in the process? Leave it up to the cat — and don’t be surprised if she decides to take the ice at a professional hockey game!

That was the winning strategy for “Lucky” Jo-Pawvelski, a homeless cat who ran across the ice during a San Jose Sharks hockey game — a game they would later end up winning, thanks to their good luck black cat.

When no one claimed her, the Sharks organization reached out to Humane Society Silicon Valley to make sure she got to safety and received care. The lucky black cat was named after the Sharks’ captain, Joe Pavelski.

“At three months old, she only weighed 1.96 pounds, so she had some eating to catch up on, and was also under-socialized,” said Finnegan Dowling, content marketing manager at HSSV. “There was a ton of media interest in her, and a lot of people wanted to know how she was doing and what she was up to. Camera crews wanted to film her. She was still pretty overwhelmed by everything.”

You might call it a stroke of genius when they decided to put her in the MaddieCam room so people could see her while keeping her comfortable. In just two weeks, the little celebrity generated a record of almost 40,000 pageviews to the MaddieCam page!

“The outpouring of support and concern for Jo was just amazing,” said Dowling. “The link got retweeted over and over, and shared by NHL.com, yahoo.com and a bunch of other media. It was amazing.” They even showed her MaddieCam feed on the jumbotron during a Sharks game, and NBCSN showed it during their broadcast.

It turns out being transparent with your community can be a very powerful thing. “The MaddieCam’s ability to let people see how we treat and house animals has been wonderful in helping break down a lot of myths about animal shelters that folks not in the industry might have,” Dowling said.

So with a lengthy list of people interested in Jo, who ended up adopting the famous kitty? None other than the perfect match! “She was adopted by a lovely local family who are huge hockey fans. They were aware of her from the game – her being on the ice – and put their name in with us immediately when they found out she was with us.”

Just when you think the ending couldn’t be any sweeter – it is. The family also adopted a more social kitty to help act as a role model for Jo!

“This whole experience has served as a good reminder that people are good and the animals have a lot more supporters than just the folks we see on our social media accounts. People want to do the right thing for animals,” said Dowling. “The San Jose Sharks went above and beyond to help a scared kitten. And we’ve seen so many tweets from fans and new followers asking people to please remember the other kitties needing homes, too.”

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