So, I haven't been online for a while and decided to check which pets were in the pound to adopt. I noticed there are only 23 pets there at the moment, when before it used to host hundreds or more at a time. Did something change?

They purged the AC a while back. Meaning they cleared the pet names, thus erasing any of the pets that were in there because it was overcrowded with pets that would never find a home due to having bad names, ect. So the amount of pets in the AC have been up and down a lot since then, sometimes only 10 are in there, sometimes 70.

You shoulda seen it a few days ago when we got the bonus pet slot. It went down to zilch for a bit there.

On the plus side, it makes it really easy to go through all the pets in the Adoption Center in a very short period of time.

Yeah it's kinda depressing when I have a free spot open so I feel you. On the plus side people zap cool stuff and put them in so... :) I like to do that when I have a spare spot open. off topic you seem familiar. are you an oldschool SBer?

I seem to recall, they are renaming bad-named pets plus giving them special colours now. Thus it's more likely they get adopted.

Ohhhh I see, thanks everyone for your help :D