KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Suzette Hudspeth and her dog, Ceasar, are inseparable. Just ask their neighbors.
In her neighborhood, Hudspeth is known as Ceasar’s mom. She’s constantly asked how he’s doing. Everywhere she goes, he goes.
Outside of her 26-year-old daughter, Ceasar’s the only family she has in town. He’s a service dog, and he’s stuck with her through thick and thin for 11 years.
In November 2021, as the weather was rapidly changing from hot to cold, Hudspeth was struggling to manage her mental health, epilepsy and her finances after her father died.
She ended up losing her housing and found herself sleeping in cemeteries, but she didn’t want her pet to suffer. So, she started looking for help.
She realized she might need to give up Ceasar until she could get back on her feet, and she was terrified she would never get him back.
“He’s not just a dog to me,” Hudspeth said of Ceasar. “And he didn’t ask for what was going on.”
Hudspeth found a program at KC Pet Project that would help take care of Ceasar while she took the time to find housing.
And then, if things went according to plan, it would bring them back together.
“I almost backed out at the last minute and was going to go back to where I’d been staying,” Hudspeth said. “He was strong, so I had to be strong.”
KC Pet Project created the program, called Home Away from Home, to provide temporary foster pet care when someone is in crisis—eventually reuniting families with their pets—so owners like Hudspeth don’t need to give up their beloved companions forever when times get tough.
The program launched in March 2021 to connect pets to foster homes for up to 90 days and can help out cats, dogs and other small animals like rabbits or guinea pigs. It’s a pretty unique program that Tori Fugate, the chief communications officer at KC Pet Project, said symbolizes a shift in shelters working more to help people get what they need to be able to keep their pets.
KCPP is one of 18 shelters to receive funding from an organization called Maddie’s Fund to support the program and participate in a nationwide fostering study.
“Watching these owners have this opportunity and be able to get this level of support, it’s so beautiful,” said Natalie Howard, a caseworker at KCPP.
‘A VERY HEARTBREAKING SITUATION’
More than 1,100 pets have been surrendered to KC Pet Project in 2022, with around 30% of those surrenders due to financial or housing reasons. They’re the highest numbers in the organization’s history.
Fugate said that for many families, giving up their pets is one of the hardest things they’ve ever had to do.
“It is a very heartbreaking situation, every single day, to see people who are here that are going through a crisis already themselves,” Fugate said. “For them to have to give up their pets that they’ve had their entire lives, it’s devastating.”
KC Pet Project gets around 5,000-6,000 calls a month on their pet help hotline from families who are seeking assistance.
Fugate said of those, her team sees people coming to the animal shelter because they have nowhere else to go. She said many can’t afford to pay a $400 pet fee upfront for an apartment, and with prices rising on groceries, gas and just about everything else, they’re forced to pick between themselves and their beloved animal.
Other people have come to surrender their pet because they found a new place to live, but the pet is over a specific weight limit or is a particular breed — like Pitbulls — that the landlord won’t take.
“Until we have more places and options for people and their pets to live in Kansas City, this is going to be an ongoing crisis and more families are going to be separated as a result,” Fugate said.
The Missouri House of Representatives considered a bill to ban discrimination based on dog breed earlier this year, but it didn’t get anywhere before the session ended.
SOCIAL WORKERS FOR DOGS
When Hudspeth faced her worst fear and brought Ceasar to KC Pet Project, Natalie Howard reassured her that she didn’t need to worry.
Howard is the caseworker for the Home Away from Home program. It’s part of a broader initiative KC Pet Project has called Keep ‘Em Together, which is focused on keeping pets together with their families during financial hardships.
She is the first stop for people who feel like they’ve run out of options. With a background in mental health, she now works essentially as a dog social worker trying to connect pets and their owners to needed resources.
If a family comes in and feels like they need to give up their pet, but really they just need some help paying for food, she has an application for them. If they need help with vet bills, there’s another application for that.
If the challenge is more severe and urgent, that’s where the crisis care program comes in.
Howard works with families to find a good foster placement for their pet. She chooses from available families who have volunteered for the program and uses all the information that the surrendering family shares about their pet as part of the application process.
She also updates the pets’ vaccinations, communicates with both the foster family and the owner weekly to provide updates, shares photos of the pets with the owners and more.
Hudspeth said that through Howard, she was able to send voice messages that the foster family would play for Ceasar.
“We both had to get to a new normal without being around each other for a minute, so I thought that was pretty neat,” Hudspeth said.
With the number of families and pets in need right now, it takes Howard a week or two to reach out to an applicant after they submit their application. She manages around five to 12 applicants at a time because they each require so much coordination.
Howard said she wishes the shelter could take on more families because the need is there, but they don’t have enough foster families or caseworkers to manage more right now.
“It’s taking us some time, which defeats the purpose of having a crisis program when we’re not able to actually find them resources within the period of crisis,” Howard said. “That’s why foster placement is so incredibly important.”
With more foster families available, she wouldn’t have to spend so much time finding the right place, she said. It’d give her and the organization more time to provide the crisis-level support they’re hoping for.
“The biggest barrier that we’re experiencing as of right now is our fosters,” Howard said. “We are very much in need of more foster placement to be able to actually utilize this program as a crisis program.”
“I’M LUCKY”
The goal of the Home Away From Home program is to reunite families with their beloved pets eventually.
And it can work. Just ask Dominick Filangeri.
His two pets, a 16-year-old full-bred Pekingese named Captain and an 8-year-old house cat named Mow Mow, were recently in the program after Filangeri found himself temporarily homeless in North Kansas City.
Someone bought the apartment building he lived in and wouldn’t renew his lease, which put him in a tough spot. Filangeri went back to the East Coast — where he’s originally from — to live with his sister while he figured out what was next.
“It was a bad deal, and I’m lucky to have fallen back on the Home Away From Home program because they really helped me out,” Filangeri said. “They helped me keep my pets. Otherwise I would’ve had to give them up.”
He’s had Captain since 2008 after rescuing him from a previous family that abandoned him, and he’s had Mow Mow since 2013.
With Howard’s help, his pets were split up between two foster families.
Mow Mow adapted to his foster family immediately and even had his own closet room where he’d hang out and watch television on a tablet.
Filangeri received photos and updates for both pets frequently from Howard. Every Wednesday, she’d call him and let him know how the pets were doing.
Captain’s foster family told Howard that he had free reign in the backyard and loved running around.
His pets were with foster parents for two months, a little bit longer than he hoped. The program only allows families to foster pets in the program for up to 90 days before the owner has to come get their pet or surrender them to the shelter.
When Filangeri picked up Captain, it was a very different experience than when he picked him up from the family that abandoned him. The dog was happy and buoyant this time because the foster family cared for him so well.
Mow Mow’s foster gave Howard a card to give to Filangeri saying how much fun the cat was, and passed along his favorite toys from when he was in their care so he could keep them.
After being reunited, Filangeri brought his pets back with him out east where he had more stable housing with family.
“My pets are with me and they aren’t going anywhere,” Filangeri said.
HOUSING CRISIS COMES TO ANIMAL SHELTER
The biggest reason Howard sees people turning to the program is housing. The median rent in Kansas City has gone up by nearly 26% in the last year, making it harder for people to afford pet expenses too.
She’s helped numerous people facing eviction. Others were in the middle of moving places or were living in a pet-friendly apartment, and suddenly, the complex decided they would no longer allow pets.
KC Pet Project data as of May 31 shows how many families have surrendered their pets for the following reasons:
• Housing—loss of home: 52
• Housing—-moving or relocating: 78
• Housing restrictions: 41
• Incompatible with living arrangements: 109
• Cannot afford: 59
Fugate added that they see many people come to the shelter looking for help for their pet that’s sick or injured. In some cases, they end up surrendering their pet because they can’t afford the medical bills.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
After 57 days with a foster family, Hudspeth was reunited with Ceasar.
She said there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
“Of course I was crying when I went in the building,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t crying that day when we got back together. My caseworker, Ceasar’s caseworker, all the people who were answering the phones.”
They’re still together in her apartment, living happily together. As long as Ceasar’s by her side, she said she’ll be just fine.
And now, Hudspeth wants to pay it forward. She said she plans on signing up to foster pets with the program to help someone in a similar position that she was, once she’s in a better financial position.
“Who doesn’t deserve to have something that loves you unconditionally?” Hudspeth said. “Everybody deserves that I believe, and that’s what Ceasar is, he loves me no matter what.”
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