Feline friends to infiltrate Seattle City Hall for adoption event

Seattle-area residents hoping to give a kitty a home for the holidays need look no further than City Hall, which will be transformed into an adoption event Tuesday.

The annual event, hosted by the Seattle Animal Shelter and returning from hiatus after the pandemic, lets adoptable kittens and cats take over Seattle City Hall for a day.

Members of the public can visit “kitty stations” to meet about 16 kittens and three adult cats and snap a photo in the Kitty Cam Photo Booth. Visitors will also have the opportunity to vote for the adult cat who will be crowned “Kitty Council President.”

Most of the kittens and the cats at Tuesday’s event will be available for adoption, and potential adopters at Kitty Hall can place “first choice” holds on their favorite kitten or cat.

Attendees will fill out adoption forms at the event, and shelter staff will contact them the next day to complete the adoptions and arrange pickup.

“Our community has been through so much together over the past nearly three years and — for many of us — pets have helped us overcome and provided support. This is an opportunity to celebrate that and to connect some of our kittens and longtime, older adoptable cats with a forever home so they can experience the joy of being a pet as well as spread that joy to the homes they enter,” Seattle Animal Shelter Director Esteban Rodriguez said in a news release.

The event will be held in the Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall, 600 Fourth Ave., from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

This year’s event is happening as the shelter celebrates its 50^th anniversary.

“Teams at the Seattle Animal Shelter have done incredible work throughout the pandemic and been on-site since day one,” said Calvin Goings, director of the Department of Facilities and Administrative Services, which oversees the shelter. “That’s why we’re so thrilled to have Kitty Hall back and to hopefully bring a little joy to the community. This event will be festive, fun and a great chance to give a kitten or senior cat a wonderful forever home.”

Kitten season, when female cats often give birth to their litters during the warmer months, resulted in a slight uptick in the number of kittens at the shelter, said Melissa Mixon, communications and marketing director for the Department of Facilities and Administrative Services.

Mixon said the shelter is seeing more kittens a little later in the season than in previous years, but the number of cats at Kitty Hall is in line with the number at previous years’ events. Mixon said the shelter has not seen any increased trends in adoption returns related to pandemic adoptions or otherwise.

Folks who cannot make it to Kitty Hall but still want to adopt or foster can visit www.seattle.gov/animal-shelter for more information.