A section with key insights from State of Pet Adoption Platform Insights 2025
Demand and interest in rescue pets on PetRescue.com.au
Enquiries received via PetRescue.com.au in 2025:
🐕 Dogs: 59,143 (63.7%)
🐈 Cats: 32,316 (34.8%)
🐇 Other pets: 1,460 (1.6%)
📋 Total: 92,919
Average enquiries submitted over time was 3.27 enquiries per person but this data is highly skewed towards low volumes of enquiries:
- 1 enquiry: 30.5%
- 2 enquiries: 28.4%
- 3 enquiries: 14.4%
- 4-5 enquiries: 13.3% combined
- Very long tail of a small number of people who submitted higher numbers of enquiries
Of the 74,416 pet listings activated in 2025, more than 1 in 5 pets received more than one enquiry, and approximately 10% received more than 3 enquiries, including 4,953 dogs, 2,212 cats and 76 pets of other species.
Enquiries were highly skewed towards popular pets, defined by high demand, fast interest and a short time to adoption. This was reflected in listing activity across the platform, with more than 41% of small dogs receiving at least three enquiries and their first enquiry being submitted within just 7 hours of listing.
Together these findings indicate a substantial proportion of potential adopters submit 1-2 unsuccessful enquiries on PetRescue.com.au and then stop their search.
Based on the sources of pets reported by Animal Medicines Australia, for dogs in particular, this most likely means that these guardians have sourced their new pet from a breeder (60% of pet dogs), via word of mouth or informal networking (up to 25% of pet dogs), or through petshops, a pathway to pet ownership that has increased by 8% since 2019.
While pet cats are more likely to be adopted than pet dogs, a large portion of owned cats are obtained through informal pathways, such as buying a kitten locally through word of mouth or taking ownership of an urban stray cat.
At a time when capacity within the sector is stretched thin and adoptions are slowing, it is crucial that all pet adoption organisations maximise adoption opportunities for their pets by engaging with interested people early and helping them to add to their families through adoption.
Jump to specific insights from the report:
Images: Canva, unless captioned otherwise.