Chicago Organizations Help Senior Citizens Care for Their Pets
As we grow older, it can become increasingly hard to properly care for ourselves — let alone our pets. Sometimes difficult decisions arise of what to do with a pet when facing hospitalization or nursing home care. In Chicago, however, one woman has created two organizations providing the elderly with better choices to keep their pets cared for and safe.
Sister Marijon Binder is a former nun who left her California convent in 1976to pursue a different kind of higher calling — since relocating to Chicago, she has created Touched By An Animal and Cats-Are-Purrsons-Too, two charities dedicated to two similar and very important causes. Touched By An Animal works to help the elderly and disabled keep their companion animals in their homes for as long as possible, provides food and shelter to pets whose owners are temporarily in hospital or rehabilitative care, and even matches companion kitties with seniors in need of some fuzzy friendship. Binder originally created Cats-Are-Purrsons-Too as a safe shelter for cats and kittens whose elderly owners could no longer care for or keep them. Since its inception in 1989, the shelter has grown exponentially and now tends to stray and abandoned cats from all reaches of the city.
Binder recently spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times about the importance of her mission and how it has kept her from returning to her former convent: “I wanted to go back … but too many elderly people were relying on me. I simply felt in my heart that God wanted me to continue taking care of these people and animals.” Instead of returning to California, she continues to this day to work with volunteers and donations to help the elderly in her community hold onto their companions.
But when the time eventually comes that companionship is no longer an option, Binder makes sure that cats and kittens have somewhere to go — her own home, which is the site of the Cats-Are-Purrsons-Too shelter and also home to 70 cats. It’s a great responsibility and “a full-time job,” but Binder explained to Paw Nation the importance of the organization’s existence, to the elderly owners as well as to their pets. “These pets are their family. They’re desperate to find someone who will love and care for their pet after they are gone. So what we do is provide them with peace of mind.”
If you’re interested in volunteering, donating, or simply getting a senior citizen you know in touch with the charity’s services, call (773) 728-6336 or check out the Touched By An Animal website today.
