Hundreds of cats find homes through special program - 13abc.com Toledo (OH) News, Weather and Sports

Hundreds of cats have found homes thanks to a special summertime program at the Toledo Area Humane Society. It's called Five Dollar Fridays, and the name says it all. People are able to adopt a cat or kitten for just five bucks!

A look inside the cat rooms here at the Toledo Area Humane Society is proof that Five Dollar Fridays have added up to a lot of adoptions. Dr. Debbie Johnson is the Director of Operations at the Toledo Area Humane Society,"On Five Dollar Fridays we were adopting up to 35 cats, and on a normal day it is just four or five adoptions, so that is dramatically different."

Dr. Johnson points out the lower price doesn't mean the cats have been given any less attention. They've all had medical testing and preventative care. They are up to date on shots they've been spayed or neutered and micro-chipped. If you want to adopt one, you have to go through the usual screening process, "We don't value them any less because their adoption fee is only $5 or $10. We just really want to find them homes. We set goals to manage the high number of cats coming in and we have done great with it."

It was a fabulous Friday for three year old Taryn Hurst. We talked with her right after she and her mother adopted a cat, "What do you think of your new cat? I love it! What is his name? Brock. What a good name, did you pick it out? Yes!"

Taryn's mom Cindy says there was a problem, it was tough for Taryn to narrow her choice down to just one, "I let her pick and it was hard for her because she wanted to take all of them home. She wanted to live in a wonderland of cats. I wish we could do that, but we picked just one."

While Five Dollar Fridays have been an incredible deal for people looking for a new pet, the Humane Society's budget has taken a big hit, but Dr. Johnson says it is well worth it, "We normally charge a $100 adoption fee for cats and we can't make that up in volume, but we made a decision as an organization that it was more important to us to save lives than to make the revenue. We hope to make the money up in other ways because we have taken a big hit, but we feel it was the right thing to do."

As the program wraps up, the Humane Society is already working on new ideas, "We are looking at partnering with other agencies to try to put new programs in place to address the pet overpopulation problem but in the meantime the cats are here and we will try everything we can to find them great homes."

When it comes to overall cat adoptions, which includes those through the Five Dollar Fridays program, the Humane Society has found homes nearly 900 cats since June. That is almost three times the adoption number from the same time last year.