During the first quarter of 2016, the Companion Animal Alliance’s adoption rate was 30% higher than the same period in 2015.
The reason: the alliance is publishing dynamic, professional glamour shots online to advertise adoptable pets.
“They’re glamour shots, and we know they work,” says Mark Rayner, a CAA adoption counselor. “That’s why we work really hard to get as many adoptable animals posted as fast as we can.”
As 225 details in a feature from its current issue, social media has become a way for pet lovers to connect with each other and potential pet adoptees.
Rayner says in the past year he had received nearly 1,600 emails from potential adopters. Stories about would-be adopters connecting with pets online are becoming more common as animal rescues and shelters are using photography and social media to find homes for adoptable dogs and cats.
Potential adopters input their location, preferred species, breed, age, color, and the distance they are willing to travel. They can view pictures and read descriptions of all the rescued pets who meet their criteria. The more professional and dynamic photographs of shelter pets are, the more likely they are to attract interested adopters.
Erin Locke, of Knoxville, Tennessee, found her cleft-nosed buff kitten Clementine online. A few years ago, Locke created an Instagram account for her cleft-nose cat, Posey.It started as a joke, but the account—@DoubleNoseWonderCat—now has more than 14,000 followers.
Whenever people see other cats who have cleft lips and noses, they tag Posey. Last year, an account belonging to a Baton Rouge kitten tagged Posey in a post featuring a kitten rescued by Baton Rouge’s Cat Haven.
“Her mother and her five littermates had all been adopted,” Locke tells 225. “I thought, ‘there’s no way that kitten was still available.’ But she was. I didn’t understand that because she’s the cutest one.”
Locke got in her car and drove 10 hours to Baton Rouge to adopt the kitten she would name Clementine. Clementine now has a new home, a famous cat companion in Posey and even her own hashtag—#doublenosewonderkitten.
