Black cats are the hardest animals in any shelter to photograph, and you can watch the problem happen on any adoption page. The tabbies and the tuxedos photograph like cats, all stripes and contrast and personality. The black ones come out as a cat shaped hole with two eyes floating in the middle of it, and your eye slides straight past them to the next thumbnail.
That photo does more damage than any superstition ever has.
The rest of it is one real effect, one number that gets quoted backwards, and a Halloween myth with no support at all. The part that surprised me most is not about color.
Are black cats harder to adopt?
Nationally, no. The largest study anyone has run found the opposite, and by a clear margin.
ASPCA research covering 14 US communities and close to 300,000 animals found black cats made up 31 percent of all cat adoptions. Gray cats were 20 percent. Brown cats were 18 percent. Black was the single most adopted color in the country.
The catch, and it’s the reason the myth refuses to die, is that black cats are also roughly a third of the cats arriving at shelters in the first place. Black fur comes from a dominant gene, so there are simply more black cats in the world. They go home at about the rate they turn up. Not better, not worse.
It also explains why the shelter looks full of black cats on a Tuesday afternoon. More arrive, so more are still waiting. You see who is left over, draw the obvious conclusion, and the obvious conclusion is wrong.
Individual shelters do vary. A Colorado State University study that went through nine years of records at Larimer Humane Society and eighteen years at the Dumb Friends League in Denver found adult black cats waited three to six days longer than cats of other colors. That gap is real. It is also a lot shorter than the months people picture when they say nobody wants a black cat.
What actually decides a shelter cat’s odds?
Whether it came in as a stray. Not its color, and it is not close.
The most detailed look at this followed 7,983 cats through a large urban shelter in Kentucky. The researchers ran the numbers on coat color, then controlled for breed and for how the cat arrived, and the picture changed completely.
Being a stray increased the odds of euthanasia by 106%.
Carini, Sinski and Weber, Animals, 2020
A cat picked up as a stray had more than double the odds of being euthanized. Against that, coat color barely registered. The same team was careful about how they described the color effect they did find.
This study provides weak evidence for what has been termed ‘Black Cat Bias’ by others.
Carini, Sinski and Weber, Animals, 2020
So the argument everyone is having about fur is close to the least important thing in the room. If you want to change outcomes for cats, microchips, collars and getting lost cats home again move the number. Arguing about black cats on the internet does not.
Do black cats get adopted more at Halloween?
No. This is the finding that surprised me most, and it contradicts something shelters have organized around for years.
The same Kentucky team pulled out a subsample of more than 1,200 entirely black cats and looked at October on its own.
Their October percentages of adoption and transfer were comparable to or lower than all other months of the calendar year. Thus, this study did not find that outcomes improved for black cats during October.
Carini, Sinski and Weber, Animals, 2020
Plenty of shelters have spent years pulling black cats off the adoption floor every October, worried about what people might do with them. The data does not show October moving the number in either direction.
Why do people call black cats voids?
Because in dim light a solid black cat has no edges at all. You don’t see a cat sitting on the arm of the sofa. You see an absence roughly the shape of one, and then it blinks at you. Somebody online called it a void and every black cat owner recognized it instantly.
House panther is the other one, and that name is for good light, for the moment the coat goes glossy and the shoulders roll like something four times the size. The Bombay breed was created on purpose to look like a small panther, which tells you the appeal is not new.
Both names are compliments.
The photo problem is fixable in one afternoon
Most shelter photos get taken quickly, in a metal cage, under fluorescent light, by a volunteer with nine more cats to get through before lunch. A black cat in that picture is a smudge with eyes. It is not a fair representation of the animal, and it is the single thing most likely to keep that animal waiting.
If you volunteer anywhere, fixing this is the most valuable hour you can give a shelter. Shoot near a window in daylight, not under the ceiling lights. Put a light colored blanket down so the camera has something to meter against. Get low, at the cat’s eye level, and focus on the eyes. Take thirty frames and keep two.
And if you are the one adopting, go and meet the cat instead of scrolling past it. The gap between a bad cage photo and the actual animal in front of you is wider for black cats than for any other color, which means they are the most likely to be better than they look.
Bringing one home
Give them one small room for the first two weeks rather than the run of the house. Food, water, a litter box, somewhere to hide. Let them come out on their own schedule. None of that is specific to black cats.
Boredom is the part new owners underestimate, and there are plenty of ways to fix it that cost nothing. An indoor cat with nothing to do will invent something to do, and you will not enjoy it. Rotating new toys beats a pile of old ones, because a cat loses interest the moment it has solved one. That is the idea behind a monthly box like KitNipBox, which starts at $25.99 for a one cat household. It is not the only way to keep a cat busy. It is the one that does not depend on you remembering.
And if you want to say it out loud, Only Cats Allowed makes a Black Cat Energy tee for $29.99 and a Rescued Is My Favorite Breed mug for $12.99. A shirt has started more conversations about adoption than any argument online ever has. Both of those are ours. CatBox, KitNipBox and Only Cats Allowed are all owned by KitNip Brands Inc.
Common questions
Are black cats bad luck?
No. In the UK, Japan, and much of Europe a black cat crossing your path means good luck, not bad. The unlucky version is a medieval European invention and it has no basis in anything. We looked at where that superstition actually started separately.
Is black cat syndrome real?
Partly. The Kentucky researchers called the evidence weak once they accounted for breed and stray status. A Colorado study found black cats waiting three to six days longer. Nationally they are adopted at roughly the rate they arrive. It is a small real effect that gets talked about as a large one.
What color cat gets adopted the most?
Black, by raw count. Black cats were 31 percent of all cat adoptions in the ASPCA’s study of 14 US communities, ahead of gray at 20 percent and brown at 18 percent. Part of that is simply that there are more black cats to adopt.
Why is my black cat turning brown?
Sunlight can rust a black coat over time and that is usually harmless. Diet can shift coat color too. If the change happens quickly, or arrives alongside hair loss or bald patches, book a vet visit rather than guessing at it.
Disclosure. CatBox.com, KitNipBox.com and OnlyCatsAllowed.com are all owned by KitNip Brands Inc. When we recommend one of our own products we say so on the page, and we only do it where it actually answers the question in the article. We may also earn a small commission if you buy through other links here, at no extra cost to you. More on how we make money and how we choose products.
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