CAT SHORTAGE IN OREGON?

While chatting with my manicurist the other day, she told me that during the holidays an animal-loving friend of hers had chosen a cute little kitten to adopt from the Sacramento City Animal Shelter.  At the last moment before the adoption went through, she was informed that she could not adopt the kitten because it was being transferred, along with many other homeless felines from the shelter, to a town in Oregon because they have a cat shortage. A cat shortage? Are you kidding me? That's like saying dogs have a flea shortage.  

Cat overpopulation is rampant almost everywhere because of the stray problem and their propensity to reproduce at rapid rates.  The excuse given for denying an adoption to a perfectly good home sounds very suspicious to me.  If this person had already spoken for the cat, she should have been allowed to adopt it.  That seems very cruel.  Could it be that these cats were actually being shipped to a lab or to someplace else that would pay more money for them? Granted, this was a story "as told by," and I thought our local shelters didn't sell stray animals to labs any more, but it makes you wonder if this is how shelters make ends meet these days.