At the beginning of the pandemic, animal shelters all over the world saw a spike in pet adoptions and pet fostering, but now, as the world adapts and people head back to work, many animals are sadly being returned to shelters.
To address the surge in returned pets, the Munich Animal Welfare Association decided to advertise their animals looking for a forever home in a rather unorthodox way. They hired an advertising agency to shoot professional pictures of 15 of the shelter’s residents and created Tinder profiles for each one. Now, lonely people looking for matches on Tinder may be surprised to find that the companionship they were looking for all along is in an unexpectedly furry package.
“The response [has been] insane,” says Jillian Moss, a shelter staff member.
The shelter purposefully only made Tinder profiles for their more mature animals, as young puppies and kittens don’t have a hard time finding a “match.” The shelter hopes that, through the dating app, these animals will finally find their true forever home.
“There aren’t only lonely souls among humans, but there are also a lot of lonely souls among animals,” Benjamin Beiilke, who coordinates the Tinder connection for the shelter, told Reuters.
The staff is excited about this out-of-the-box approach to finding homes for the animals. “Quite simply, it’s a lot of fun and better than boring newspaper ads,” Moss told CBS News.
So, the next time you’re on Tinder, don’t be alarmed if you end up matching with a cat, because who knows, they may just be your purr-fect match.
