Question

A pet store has 17 rabbits. They have 5 fewer cats than rabbits. Write and solve an equation to find how many rabbits and cats the store has altogether show your work

Answer 1

Let R be the number of rabbits and C the number of cats. Since the pet store has 17 rabbits, then:

`R=17`

Then, the store have 5 fewer cats than rabbits. We can write this as:

`C=R-5`

Since R=17, we have:

`\begin{gathered} R=17 \\ C=R-5 \\ \Rightarrow C=17-5=12 \\ C=12 \end{gathered}`

Then there are 12 cats in the store. Finally, in total we have:

`R+C=17+12=29`

Therefore, there are 12 cats and 17 rabbits, making 29 altogether