One shift a day, and the clock keeps moving.
You run one shift a day at Cuddlebrook, where time moves in real time. Starting a task, a feeding, a walk or a brushing, takes you off the clock until it finishes, so each shift is a real scheduling problem: which animal needs you next, and on what.
Every animal has five traits you learn only through the care you give: energy, other people and animals, being handled, noise and bustle, and being left alone. Every home looking to adopt states its own version of those same traits openly, so placing an animal well means matching what you discovered against what a home is asking for.
Not every animal is looking for a new home. A stray may have an owner looking for it right now, and a surrendered animal has no one looking, so it goes toward an ordinary adoption instead. When the shelter runs tight, a partner rescue can take an animal in. That animal is safe and placed, and the game keeps its own count of the ones sent to partners, apart from the ones you saved.