crawlspace inviolability: N.J. Ranks Low On Pet Ownership, Dogs & Cats

Friday, January 18, 2013

N.J. Ranks Low On Pet Ownership, Dogs & Cats | BizBlog ...

As a business writer, I get all sorts of press releases sent my way, and many of them have nothing to do with business. I?m going to blog about this one anyway, despite the admonitions of our Webmasters here at The Record.

I come from a family of animal lovers. My kin have had pets ranging from iguanas to three-legged box turtles roaming the house to every breed of dog and cat under the sun.

My sister is bucking the tide by owning Romeo, since New Jersey ranks 49th among the states in feline ownership.

So it was much to my surprise that I learned this week that New Jersey ranked only 48th, near the bottom of the 50-state barrel, for pet ownership in 2011.

Only 50.7 percent of Garden State residents have a pet, according to a press release from the American Veterinary Medical Association.The only states behind New Jersey in terms of pet ownership were New York, at 50.6 percent, and Massachusetts, at 50.4 percent.

The top pet-owning states were Vermont, where 70.8 percent of households have a pet, and New Mexico, with 67.6 percent owning pets.

And it?s not raining cats and dogs in our state.

New Jersey ranked in the bottom-10 states for dog ownership, at 32.4 percent. And the Garden State did even worse in the cat category, ranking 49th in the ownership of felines, at 25.3 percent, with only Utah behind us.

There must be a lesson here somewhere. But obviously, this survey didn?t query anyone in my clan.

Case in point: My sister?s Sphinx cat Romeo, seen here on Cinco de Mayo.