In animal shelters, some suffer from Black Cat Syndrome
If a black cat -- or even a black dog -- crosses someone's path at an animal shelter, chances are that animal will be overlooked.
Officials at shelters across the country sing a common refrain -- black dogs and cats take longer to adopt than animals of other colors. The phenomenon even has a name -- Black Dog or Black Cat Syndrome.
The reasons vary -- from superstitions to the difficulty in photographing a black animal for such things as adoption websites -- but the results are the same.
"I can put a litter where you have black ones and brown ones and across the board, anyone will tell you the brown ones are going to be adopted first if all their other characteristics are the same," said Gretchen Fieser, spokeswoman for the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society in Pittsburgh.
Take Hogan, a small, black, mixed-breed dog that was part of a litter of three brought to the Westmoreland County Humane Society in Hempfield. His lighter-colored siblings were adopted immediately. But Hogan, now 6 months old, still waits, said Kathy Burkley, the Westmoreland Humane Society's executive director.
"People will walk up and down the kennel and totally pass him over, and he is truly one of the most social dogs we have," Burkley said. "I think sometimes people shop for animals the way they shop for clothing. They're more affected by appearances than they are by temperament and other things they should be concerned about."
Fieser said the human eye is drawn to lighter colors -- when shopping for clothes and when looking for dogs and cats.
"Their eye just naturally is drawn to the brown dog or the yellow dog or the gray dog," she said.
As people look for shelter animals online, photography has also been a detriment to black animals.
"A lot of people choose their pet based on what they see on our website and the black animal is just harder to photograph. You can't see their eyes or their personality," said Jolene Miklas, director of communications for Animal Friends in Ohio Township, Allegheny County.
Shelters will often put colored bandanas on black dogs to help them stand out. At Animal Friends, the cages are brightly lit so black animals don't blend into the shadows.
For the most part, finding homes for black puppies and black kittens isn't a problem, said LuAnn Hutcheson, shelter manager at Action for Animals in Derry. And black dogs with a pedigree aren't hard to adopt, added Burkley.
Superstition comes into play, especially when it comes to black cats.
"Surprisingly, and I was shocked by this, but there is a sizable part of the population that believes they are bad luck or believe they are related to the devil," Fieser said.
Popular culture doesn't help.
"When you see a mean animal on TV or in the movies, it's often a black animal," Miklas said.
Shelters historically have had concerns about adopting black cats at Halloween for fear the animals will be used as a novelty for a costume or tortured as part of a Satanic ritual.
Action for Animals still bars people from adopting black cats in October. People can pick out their cat , but can't take it home until Nov. 1.
"Those guys we watch at this time of year," Hutcheson said. "You just don't want to take a chance."
The Westmoreland County Humane Society used to ban adoptions of black cats in October but halted that after a few years. Animal Friends and the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society also allow such adoptions in October.
All said they believe their adoption screening processes would weed out anyone who wasn't serious about adopting a cat, and none reported ever having problems.
"Obviously, if someone came in and we thought it was a problem, we wouldn't adopt it to them, but that's our standard procedure anyhow," Burkley said.
