An animal shelter spends $2.50 per day to care for each cat and $4.50 per day to care for each dog. Adrian noticed that the shelter spent $126.50 caring for cats and dogs on Thursday. Adrian found a record showing that there were a total of 33 cats and dogs on Thursday. How many cats were at the shelter on Thursday?

11 cats

Step-by-step explanation:

I did trial and error.

I started with 16 cats and 17 dogs, so:

(16x$2.5) + (17x$4.5) = $116.5

The value is too low which means that they spent more money on the expensive side (i.e., dogs).

I ended up with 11 cats and 22 dogs, so:

(11x$2.5) + (22x$4.5) = $126.5

1. 22

2. 1

3. 7

4. 18

step-by-step explanation

e2020 got it right