The year has started fairly positively for the shelters and rescue facilities caring for homeless kitties. In most parts of the country, shelters recorded notably lower rates of cat surrenders in 2024 than in 2023 and 2022, with around 340,000 cats surrendered to shelters by December of last year, according to Shelter Animals Count's intake database.

This news comes in the wake of a significant uptick in pet ownership. Widespread coverage about the COVID-19 pandemic pet boom suggested that more people making a furry addition to their households was one silver lining of lockdowns. Roughly 1 in 5 households, approximately 23 million households, added a cat or dog since the pandemic began, according to 2021 data from ASPCA. Despite the decrease in surrenders in 2024, many of those pandemic pets might not have found their forever home.

While there's no easy answer to why adoption rates went down and surrender rates rose, a few significant factors come into play. As social distancing restrictions eased, economic conditions shifted, and inflation rates reached their highest point since the early 1980s, adoption rates slowed, and many shelters suddenly found themselves in a bad way.

Pets come with important responsibilities, including financial ones. Most cat owners spend around $1,149 per year on their feline friends, according to the ASPCA. These annual costs, coupled with the rise in rent-burdened households and the decline in purchasing power for many Americans, may have led some pet owners to reconsider their decision to adopt a fur baby during the pandemic.

There's no solid data on the number of people who rehoused or surrendered pets for financial reasons, but one factor is that some people had to move into homes that did not allow pets. Some animal shelters across the U.S. have even needed to stop accepting surrenders periodically because they were at capacity.

But regardless of whether COVID-19 spiked pet adoption rates or surrenders, the number of pets surrendered this past year seems to be on the decline. Meowtel analyzed data from Shelter Animals Count's Intake and Outcome Database to see how the share of cat surrenders changed in each state from 2021 to 2023.

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