(Radio Iowa) – An animal shelter in northeast Iowa is seeing an unusual spike in its year-end number of animals. The Cedar Bend Humane Society, based in Waterloo, is caring for nearly 500 cats, dogs, and smaller animals. Felicia Arias, the shelter’s volunteer and outreach coordinator, says that number is startlingly high, across the board. “We’re already seeing more than what we’d typically see within a year,” Arias says, “more animals coming in stray or lost, more animals coming in through Animal Control, more medical cases.”

Arias says part of the strangely high number may be related to the so-called return to normalcy, following the COVID-19 pandemic. “It might have something to do with folks going back to work from COVID, animals over that period of time not being as socialized as they normally would when folks were allowed to go out,” she says, “so the quarantine period may have had something to do with it.”

Arias says about half of the shelter’s animals are available for adoption.