UPDATE: Humane Society Apologizes For Controversial Cat Ad

The Windsor-Essex County Humane Society is seeing a lot of backlash over an ad it posted online, promoting cat adoption.

Windsor-Essex County Humane Society ad it had posted to Twitter and Facebook, October 19, 2016. (Photo take from Windsor-Essex County Humane Society Facebook page)

This week only - adopt a cat (6 months and older) for only $50! pic.twitter.com/LsFRPqiwkb

— Windsor Humane (@windsorhumane) October 19, 2016

The humane society has since pulled the ad from its social media pages.

"A lot of the comments were people who thought we were making light of sexual assault, and that was never our intent," says Executive Director Melanie Coulter. 

"We apologize if we hurt anyone with the ad," she explains.  "It was intended to be a lighthearted take on the US election and so we do apologize for anyone who may have been offended."

The online comments started to pour in on the humane society's Facebook and Twitter pages minutes after the ad was posted Wednesday morning.

@windsorhumane not impressed by this. It's in poor taste and bad judgement. Someone needs to pull this ad.

— Taras Natyshak (@TarasNatyshak) October 19, 2016

@windsorhumane I am profoundly deeply disappointed and disturbed by this advertisement. When it comes to sexual assault #itsneverok

— Lisa Gretzky (@LGretzky) October 19, 2016

@windsorhumane Appalling. Sexual assault is NOT a joke or a marketing tool. This = feeding into rape culture. Please take it down.

— Sarah (@SarahPenn08) October 19, 2016

@windsorhumane Not all publicity is good publicity. This is offensive, and a blight on an otherwise great org. Please remove it.

— Kristen Pennington (@klpennington) October 19, 2016

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Coulter hopes this incident doesn't deter people from coming in to adopt cats, as the humane society took in 145 last week and their cat adoption area is full.