Cat City — Jobs through city programs

Every colony and every site needs hands. We hire them from the city's own programs.

Feed-station rounds, litter service, collar assembly, gateway installs, trap checks and data checks are steady, part-time, low-barrier work. We staff them through the city's Human Services department and county partners: people in housing and homeless services, parents in CalWORKs, people in recovery, veterans, and adults from autism and neurodivergent employment programs — who are exactly who you want on detail work like collar builds and data QA.

Role	What it is	Hours	Placed through
Colony caretaker	Daily feed-station + litter-station round on one site; refill, empty, note what the dashboard flagged; recall visits when a cat needs a battery swap or a vet check	1–2 h/day	Human Services, CalWORKs, recovery programs
Collar & station builder	Assemble, flash, test and repair collar nodes, gateways, feed and litter stations; 3D-print shells; keep the parts log	Part-time, flexible	Autism / neurodivergent employment programs, vocational programs
Field tech	Gateway installs on roofs, drone-repeater flights (with the Part 107 pilot), trap checks, burrow verification walks	Part-time	Workforce development, veterans programs
Data checker	Review flagged events, confirm cat IDs on camera, verify burrow points against photos, keep the counts honest for the city report	Remote, part-time	Autism / neurodivergent employment programs
Drone pilot	Part 107 night sweeps and repeater flights	Per flight	Veterans programs, community college UAS courses

Role

What it is

Hours

Placed through

Colony caretaker

Daily feed-station + litter-station round on one site; refill, empty, note what the dashboard flagged; recall visits when a cat needs a battery swap or a vet check

1–2 h/day

Human Services, CalWORKs, recovery programs

Collar & station builder

Assemble, flash, test and repair collar nodes, gateways, feed and litter stations; 3D-print shells; keep the parts log

Part-time, flexible

Autism / neurodivergent employment programs, vocational programs

Field tech

Gateway installs on roofs, drone-repeater flights (with the Part 107 pilot), trap checks, burrow verification walks

Part-time

Workforce development, veterans programs

Data checker

Review flagged events, confirm cat IDs on camera, verify burrow points against photos, keep the counts honest for the city report

Remote, part-time

Autism / neurodivergent employment programs

Drone pilot

Part 107 night sweeps and repeater flights

Per flight

Veterans programs, community college UAS courses

How the jobs get paid for

Sponsor subscriptions — warehouses, breweries and logistics yards paying for managed working-cat and rodent-monitoring service. That revenue is the wage base.
Workforce grants — the county Workforce Development Board, CalWORKs subsidized employment, Department of Rehabilitation and Regional Center supported-employment programs already pay wages and job-coach time for placements like these.
Not the animal budget. Grant money for cats pays for cats. Jobs are funded by the commercial side and the workforce side.

Why it makes the pilot easier to fund, not harder

Every role above is one the city or county already pays someone to place people into. A pilot with real paid placements ticks a second box on the council packet — animal welfare and workforce — and opens a second grant channel. It also solves our own staffing problem: colonies need someone there every day, and that someone should be paid.

Training

Caretakers: one week shadowing, then a checklist and the dashboard. Cat handling is done by the TNR partner, not caretakers.
Builders: a written build guide with photos, a test jig, and a supervisor who checks every unit before it goes on a cat.
Everyone: safety rules — no trapping, no chemicals, no roof work without the field tech.

For city Human Services / county programs

We want to be a placement site.

Tell us which programs need part-time, structured, outdoor or detail-oriented placements, and we'll build the pilot roster around them.

For people who want the work

Email us. Say which role fits you and which program you're with, if any. No résumé needed for caretaker and builder roles — we train.

amh@artificialmindhive.com