Even Tickle Me Elmo didn’t have it this good. Photo courtesy of Long Beach Animal Care Services.

“Clear the Shelters,” a daylong nationwide push to get adoptable pets into forever homes, was a huge success, with 18,966 cats and dogs adopted nationwide at a rate of $20 per pet. The event took place August 15 and the usual screening standards were in place.

NBC 4 and Telemundo promoted the event in SoCal and deemed it a huge enough success, with over 2,500 animals into forever homes, to do it again next year. In fact, the date’s been set for Saturday, July 16, 2016.

Locally, the city’s Long Beach Animal Care Services and spcaLA, an independent nonprofit animal welfare organization serving SoCal, both participated, and there was a line of potential adopters wrapped around the P.D. Pitchford Companion Animal Village. ACS and spcaLA share the venue, and spcaLA handles adoption procedures for both.

“It was crazy awesome,” said Kelly Miott, ACS’s outreach coordinator. “It seemed like the adopters were here because they felt like they were part of a movement.  It was like Christmas walking the line to find out who was in line to adopt whom. So many cat adopters—I spoke speaking with a few they already had a cat, I think they felt compelled to welcome another family member. After all, what’s one more mouth to feed?”

In all, 92 animals were adopted between both entities.

“It’s safe to say that this was the largest adoption event at the Village,” Miott said.