These Local Animal Shelters Are Waiving Adoption Fees This Month

If you're considering adopting an animal, this could be your moment.

Two D.C.-area animal adoption agencies are waiving fees for parts of this month, hoping to clear some space as they deal with a glut of foster animals.

"We just have an abundance of cats right now that are looking for a good home," says Chelsea Jones, senior communications specialist for the Animal Welfare League in Arlington. "So we're continuing the promotion for the whole month."

The league will charge no adoption fees through the end of August on any adult felines six months and older.

Jones says the shelter is seeing the opposite of what happened last year during the pandemic when everyone wanted to adopt an animal. She says people are more interested in traveling and going out now that restrictions have been lifted, and anyone who wanted a cat already got one.

To top it all off, this comes during peak kitten season (i.e. breeding time), when the shelter receives a majority of its baby cats. Jones estimates the shelter has a surplus of approximately 30 adult cats and more than 70 kittens at the moment.

"We are bursting at the seams a little bit," she says. "But we need help to find a new home for all these awesome cats."

Thanks to a donation from former Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer and his wife Erica, the Humane Rescue Alliance is also currently waiving adoption fees on any animal through August 10. (The organization also collaborated with Scherzer on a Humane Rescue Alliance baseball tee.)

This isn't the first time the Scherzers have acted as pet philanthropists. They've covered adoption fees at the alliance on multiple occasions over the years for a limited time. Both organizations have also previously waived adoption fees to encourage people to adopt a new companion into their forever home (the alliance held a promotion earlier this year on dogs over 40 lbs).

The Humane Rescue Alliance is a chain of five animal welfare campuses in D.C. and New Jersey and works with more than 100,000 animals annually, according to its site. It houses animals at its many locations and also works with foster parents who take care of the animals while they wait to get adopted. The Animal Welfare League in Arlington similarly houses about 25% of its fostered animals in-house, with the remaining 75% taken care of by foster parents.

Here are some standout cuties up for adoption. In this corner representing the Humane Rescue Alliance:

And in the other corner representing the Animal Welfare League:

This story is from DCist.com, the local news website of WAMU.