Helping pets keep homes
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:
ALBANY, N.Y.––The Whiskers Animal
Benevolent League spays, neuters, and finds homes for
cats––and also helps both cats and dogs to stay in their
homes by helping pet keepers locate housing .
“One of our volunteers works exclusively on hous-
ing,” co-president Sue Mahar told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Whiskers sees this as a priority because inability to find
housing that will accommodate pets is one of the leading
reasons why people surrender their pets to animal shelters.
“People call us with needs, and we research listings,”
Mahar continued. “We call every ad that doesn’t specifically
say ‘no pets.’ We also have an ad running continually in the
local real estate paper, and make contacts with rental agen-
cies. We’ve found that in a lot of apartment and condomini-
um complexes, they will accept pets if you can provide
some references, some places you’ve lived with the pets
where the landlords haven ‘t had problems.”
Whiskers was founded as a thrift shop in 1982 by
the late Joan Duer, who died of cancer last August. Her ini-
tial idea was to fund spaying and neutering, but when peo-
ple began dropping off unwanted animals at the store, she
turned it into a cat shelter. The group now cares for 65 to 70
cats at a time, assisted by about 70 volunteers and veterinar-
ian Michele Hardaker, who “has done fantastic things for
us,” Mahar said.
Details on the Whiskers home-finding program are
available from P.O. Box 11190, Albany, NY 12211; 518-
449-9565.
