Americans can’t afford their pets. It’s pushing animal shelters to the brink.

Americans can’t afford their pets. It’s pushing animal shelters to the brink.

A young beagle mix at an animal shelter in Central Islip, New York. | John Paraskevas/Newsday RM vis Getty Images How animal shelters are coping with a crisis of abandoned cats and dogs. Lonely and stuck at home, millions of Americans turned to animals for comfort in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, adopting and fostering cats and dogs from shelters at record rates. Videos of empty animal shelters went viral; Wired called it “the feel-g…