All statistical information on cats taken in, adopted out, euthanized and total shelter population is information that is provided to the board on a monthly basis. Those reports are a part of the official board meeting minutes and should be available to anyone who asks for them because the board meeting minutes (with the exception of executive session) are part of the Hermitage's public record.

You'll notice in 1997 the total annual adoptions almost doubled. That's because it was in 1997 that the board voted to have "open to the public" hours rather than requiring that people make an appointment to visit. The Executive Director has been saying in her interviews that the Hermitage has decided to focus more on adoptions now--implying that up until now the focus has been on the sanctuary. NOT TRUE! Eleven years ago the board decided to focus more on adoptions! And the results are obvious in the continual increase in the annual adoption totals through 2000. There was a significant drop from 2000 to 2001 (unknown why) but then the totals hold fairly steady from 2001 through 2004. Again, there's a significant drop from 2004 to 2005. The former staff believed that this drop may in part have had to do with the fact that it was in this time frame that the shelter pretty much stopped taking in cats. It is interesting that the total adoptions for 2007 dropped to almost exactly the same as 1997 and this was on the Executive Director Mary Jo Spring's watch. She was there all of 2007. Her claims to the press of 6 adoptions per month are totally unfounded.

As far as total shelter population, the Hermitage's all time high population was 507 sometime during the summer of 2004 (this total was the combined number of cats physically inside the shelter and in foster homes). From that point on the population was steadily declining so that by the end of 2005 they were back down to 418, by the end of 2006 they were down to 389, and the total population was down close to 300 by mid December 2007 (So Taylor Heidenheim's statement in the newspaper article saying that there were 440 cats at the shelter when he came on the board is not correct). This decrease in population came from legitimate euthanasia, adoptions and a significant decrease in the number of cats coming into the shelter.