Pets may be federally protected tenants

SOLDOTNA, Alaska - Dante is not your typical home health aide, and his presence is causing a scrap with the landlord.
The wrinkly, hairless gray cat helps Miranda Monet feel at home and comforts her when she cries, she says. A nurse practitioner prescribed the cat to help with Monet's treatment for manic depression and a traumatic brain injury that saps short-term memory.
"He calms me down," Monet said, stroking the cat on her sofa in a small living room ringed by posters of wolves. "If I start to get upset, he knows it before I do. He senses it."
Dante is somewhat cold toward visitors, though, casting an icy stare that leads Monet to offer, "He's a one-person cat."
Companion animals like Monet's are an increasingly popular treatment, and advocates for the disabled say too often landlords and store owners don't recognize they have a legal basis.

Pets inspire painter's creativity

Ted Horton lost the sweet-natured golden retriever when she was just 4 years old, and to ease the pain of her untimely passing he painted a likeness of her on canvas.
It was pretty good. Very good, in fact.
Soon one friend, then another, and then complete strangers were calling on him to paint their pets.
And he did, with surprisingly good results, given that he has no training in art and by occupation he's on the crew of the Broome County Department of Public Works. Heavy equipment is more his milieu than dainty paint brushes.
But one after the other, people began singing his praises as an artist.
An acrylic likeness of Shana the Labrador retriever hangs on the living room wall in Mike Cooper's Endwell home.
"I was pretty surprised," says Cooper, who also works for the BCDPW, as does Tim Brink of Binghamton.

Strange Pets

Weird, wonderful, and outright strange pets are becoming more and more popular, and it seems that there is no limit to the animals you can domesticate.
Lets start with fish. You would think that fish in a tank are pretty mundane and boring, but a quick trip to a few aquariums will soon turn that theory on its head.
Tropical marine fish from the Great Barrier Reef are a great place to start, with electric eels, puffer fish, toadfish, parrots, angles, and clowns just being the tip of the iceberg.
But you cant just go out and catch some fish and plop them in a tank. Only specially licensed aquarium suppliers can provide our native fish to pet shops.
Still too boring for you? How about a buying a fish that looks like a lizard, has coral-like horns, breathes with gills, has a fish tail, but walks on four legs! Its an Axolotl.