A HOTEL FOR PETS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1585, 15 April 1887, Page 3

A HOTEL FOR PETS.

In Upper Broadway is a large airy store for the sale of bird and beast pets. Just at the present its stock is pretty low, for birds are not imported to any considerable extent in summer, but another department of its business is quite brisk. In addition to being a store it is a hotel—a hotel for pets whose owners put them out to board during the hot weather. Just as soon as the days grow long and warm, and the fashionable world begins flitting away to sea shore, lake cide and mountain, the Pet Hotel begins to fill up. Cruel and unreasonable prejudice forbids even the most beautiful, intelligent, and exemplary dogs accompanying their masters and mistresses. Birds are such a nuisance to travel with that few persons attempt to take them along, except tough old maids, who have strange ways of their own. And as for moubeys, no hotel with a sane proprietor would open its doors to them, of course. So the best arrangement that can be made, for both owners and pets, is to leave the latter in the care of an expert

person during the summer. That is where the proprietor of the Pet Hotel comes to the front—as the export person. He sees to it that the birds and boasts are properly fed, that their and kennels are carefully cleaned daily, that any sick among them are promptly isolated aud doctored until they g«t well, and for all this makes quite reasonable charges. For boarding a big mastiff or St Bernard or Dachshund, with an appetite like a hired man, he will charge $4 or §5 a week, but reasonably-sized dogs, such as fox terriers, pugs, Yorkshire terriers, black and tans, and even 3piiz-8 aro boarded for only §2 50c. a wwk. There are generally fifteen or twenty dogs hero as temporary residents at tnis season. Their kennels are in a largo, light, high-ceiled, and well ventilated basement, where a dog would doubtless deem himself very comfortable for a time, but would eventually find existence rather monotonous. The hospital kennels for sick dogs out in the yard at the back of the building, where tbey will be isolated from the other animals. The food of th<» dogs consists of bread, water, and the saved from the tables of a large restaurant. Cats are also boarded for 2 dols. 50e. a week. They ere kept in a large wire cacre. where a glance in any direction satisfies them of the utter uselessness of yowling for " M'rier," and co nsequently they are very quiet and unobjectionable boarders. The bird guests in the Pet Hotel outnumber the beasts always. There are about 75 now in their cages in a rear part of the store partitioned out for their accommodation. Canaries and finches are cared for at 25 cents a week ; parrots, macaws, and mockingbirds, 50 cents a week. The only big birds boarding here now are a sulphurcrested cockatoo belonging to a Polish count who is temporarily in Europe, and a huge macaw, as gay iu colour as a new barber-polo, belonging to Theodore Moss. The macaw ia not simply a boarder, but a patient. Its feet are paralysed, and if it does not get better on treatment they are going to astonish it with some electricity. TV rr'c for boarding monkeyß is 75 cents a week, which barely covers the bananas, milk, and that the quadrumanous pets require. Not many of them are brought to the Pet Hotel, and the proprietor thereof is rather glad of it. No good reason seems to exist for putting monkeys to board here in idleness when their aristocratic owners might be drawing a revenue from them by hiring them out to the Italian dukes for the rural hand organ season. Perhaps the prevalence of some such arrangement prevents the number of monkey-board-ers from being greater. In conversation with the proprietor the fact was developed that our people care very little for our most charming native birds, preferring those imported from othpr countries ; but there is a great and steady dfmand in Europe for any sweet-voiced little " indigo " beauties, American goldfinches, Virginia nightingales, Baltimore orioles, and other choice birds from the United States.—N, T. Sun.