Pets & Animals
RMN dispatches tagged Pets & Animals.
The Cat Boom Is About More Than Housing. r/Pets Explained What We Missed.
Reported Feature
A lively discussion in r/Pets about America’s kitten-versus-puppy shift brought new perspectives on rental restrictions, rescue animals, work schedules and how cats are represented online.
Chimpanzees Expect Better Behavior From Their Friends. Sound Familiar?
Reported Feature
New research from UC Berkeley suggests that chimpanzees don’t just form friendships. They may also expect those relationships to come with special treatment, even when pineapple is on the line.
America's Kittens Just Overtook Its Puppies. The Housing Market May Be Why.
Reported Feature
For the first time, more U.S. households have a kitten than a puppy — a small statistical crossover that may say something much larger about how Americans now live.
No School Monday? Abma’s Farm in Hillsborough Has a Full Day of Fall Fun
Event Abma's Farm · Hillsborough, New Jersey
Hayrides, corn mazes, pumpkins and farm animals offer families a way to spend the Columbus Day holiday outdoors.
Turtle Back Zoo Lights Up the Holidays With a Tradition Built for the Zoo It Has Become
Event Essex County Turtle Back Zoo · West Orange, New Jersey
Holiday Lights returns to Essex County Turtle Back Zoo for its opening weekend Nov. 20-22, turning one of North Jersey’s most transformed institutions into a winter evening destination.
Abma's Farm Packs Hillsborough with Hayrides, Goats, Pumpkins, a Headless Horseman and Oktoberfest
Event Abma's Farm · Hillsborough, New Jersey
The Somerset County farm's October calendar stretches from classic pumpkin-patch outings to kid-friendly goat decorating, 21+ carving nights and a flashlight corn maze after dark.
Hawk Ridge Farm Brings Its Fall Festival Back to Lake Hopatcong Oct. 17
Event Hawk Ridge Farm · Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey
Free admission, cider pressing, pumpkin decorating, candle making, face painting and farm animals fill a five-hour autumn afternoon in Jefferson Township.
The Dog Has a Thanksgiving Dinner Now
Reported Feature
Ollie's Holiday Feast is more than seasonal dog food. It is another sign that we are no longer merely bringing dogs into human rituals. We are building parallel versions of the rituals so they can participate.
The Dog Lives in Your House. So Does Its Microbiome.
Reported Feature
A global study of antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella in dogs and cats does not show that pets are making their owners sick. It does show how artificial the line between “human health” and “animal health” can become once we share a home.
The Dog Doesn’t Know It’s October 3
Reported Feature
CESAR’s pink Mean Girls tie-in is a small, silly and revealing example of what happens when an internet ritual becomes a physical object, and the family dog gets recruited into the bit.
Your Shopping Cart Is Becoming a Moral Biography
Reported Feature
Humane World for Animals’ new Travis Barker campaign asks people to help animals through ordinary choices about food, clothing, products and pets. The larger shift is harder to miss: advocacy is increasingly moving out of the meeting hall and into the checkout line.
The Problem Isn't Yoga With Puppies. It's Needing Puppies to Sell Yoga.
Reported Feature
St. Hubert's challenge to puppy yoga is really a challenge to the language businesses use to make commercial incentives sound like animal welfare.
“Luminaries for Lost Loves” turns a South Jersey shelter into a memorial for pets
Event Animal Welfare Association · Voorhees, New Jersey
Animal Welfare Association’s “Luminaries for Lost Loves” turns a South Jersey shelter campus into a shared memorial for pets — and fills a ritual gap many families are still left to navigate on their own.
Your Cat Has Taste Now. Apparently It Can Curate.
Reported Feature
Fancy Feast and Paige DeSorbo have turned three of her cat Daphne’s preferred foods into a limited-edition “edit.” The products are ordinary cat food. The interesting part is the increasingly human job we have assigned the cat: collaborator, critic and tastemaker.
What If the Rescue Event Didn't Feel Like a Rescue Event?
Event Choice Inline Arena · Sewell, New Jersey
At the Pup Cup in Sewell, roller hockey is not interrupted for a cause. The cause is built into the event, putting 12 teams, 10 rescue organizations, adoptable dogs and five hours of competition inside the same social space.
We Didn’t Just Bring the Dog. We Gave Him a Public Persona.
Event The Rusty Nail at the Beach Shack · Cape May, New Jersey
At Cape May’s Rusty Nail Doggie Pageant, the family pet gets a style category, a talent round, a public vote and an audience. Somewhere along the way, companionship became a kind of public identity.
The Pantry Has Dog Food Because the Household Has a Dog
Event Lunch Break · Red Bank, New Jersey
Lunch Break’s September drive in Red Bank treats pet food, litter and toys as part of household need — and exposes what safety nets miss when they are built around an abstract individual instead of the relationships people are actually trying to protect.
Your Vet May Soon Be Asking AI About Your Dog
Reported Feature
Philadelphia-based Instinct Science is building Attending, a conversational clinical reference tool for veterinarians. The important question is not whether AI becomes the veterinarian, but what changes when professional expertise increasingly arrives through an AI interface.
Sometimes You Need a Doghouse Before You’ll Pick Up the Saw
Event Diamonds & DrillBits · Hainesport, New Jersey
AWA’s ‘Raise the Woof’ gives women a reason to become beginners together — and turns the lesson into something an adopter can take home.
Sometimes the Dog Can Play With the Robot
Reported Feature
Cheerble’s new Wickedbone Air lets owners steer play from a phone or hand part of the chase over to an automatic mode. That does not have to mean outsourcing the relationship. Sometimes technology is simply covering a few minutes while the human does something else.
The Work Behind the Working Dog
Reported Feature
Eukanuba's National Service Dog Month campaign is built around a simple purchase-and-donation mechanic. Behind it is a much larger system of breeding, volunteer puppy raising, professional training and lifetime support that most people never see.
What Changes When the Shelter Dog Gets a Portrait?
Event Atlantic Cape Art Gallery · Mays Landing, New Jersey
Atlantic Cape Community College is putting shelter and rescue animals on gallery walls. The interesting part is not simply that art might help an animal get adopted. It is what happens when an animal normally reduced to an adoption profile is presented instead as someone worth studying.
Stretch, Breathe and Try Not to Get Distracted: Kitten Yoga Comes to St. Hubert’s
Event St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center · Madison, New Jersey
The Sept. 19 class in Madison pairs a one-hour yoga session with kittens and directs every ticket dollar to St. Hubert’s programs for animals and pet families.
Give the Shelter Dog a Red Carpet
Event Livingston Memorial Park & Oval · Livingston, New Jersey
Mt. Pleasant Animal Shelter’s Pet Palooza returns to Livingston on Sept. 19 with food trucks, contests, adoptable animals and a new Shelter Pet Gala built around a simple idea: sometimes adoption is an attention problem.
Some Dogs Arrive With Families. Some Are There Looking for One.
Event Essex County Turtle Back Zoo · West Orange, New Jersey
Turtle Back Zoo’s 10th annual BARKtoberfest brings rescue groups, adoptable animals, family pets and a public costume contest into the same West Orange gathering — turning pet adoption into something visible, communal and occasionally dressed like a taco.
The Dog Is Part of Gameday Now
Reported Feature
The NFL has named The Farmer’s Dog its first official pet-food partner, putting dogs inside the league’s biggest cultural moments. The sponsorship is commercial, but the assumption underneath it is cultural: the dog is no longer outside the family ritual waiting for everyone to come home.
Your Dog Has a Personal Brand Now
Reported Feature
Barkhouse's Dog Fashion Week puts dogs and their people on the same runway. The joke is easy; the cultural shift underneath it is more interesting.
The Cat Behind the Counter
Event 213 Bowery · Lower Manhattan, New York
TEMPTATIONS is turning the neighborhood shop cat into a Lower Manhattan pop-up. The more interesting story is that the shop cat already had a public role long before a brand decided to celebrate it.
The Dogs Come Back
Event Voorhees Town Center · Voorhees, New Jersey
At Animal Orphanage’s 30th Woofstock, the Alumni Parade turns pet adoption into a public homecoming, and gives a community one more reason to return to a place built around letting animals leave.
The Event Is Wherever the Dog Is
Event Any location (nationwide)
Pet Partners' World’s Largest Pet Walk has no central starting line, no required route and no minimum distance. Its ninth annual edition turns a simple walk with an animal into a national ritual held together by participation rather than place.
Your Cat Has an AI Personality Profile Now
Reported Feature
Pet wearables are crossing a line from measuring animals to narrating them. That could help us notice what we miss — or teach us to trust the dashboard over the animal standing in front of us.
Your Dog Has a Personality Test Written in Its DNA Now
Reported Feature
Embark’s new Behavior Insights feature promises to connect 15 behavioral tendencies to a dog’s genetics and then build a year of training around them. The useful part may be understanding predisposition. The harder part is remembering that predisposition is not destiny.
Pet Friendly, but Make Room
Event Working Dog Winery · Hightstown, New Jersey
A giant-breed gathering at Working Dog Winery is built around a simple idea many “pet-friendly” spaces never have to confront: some dogs change the geometry of the room.
The Family Costume Has Four Legs Now
Reported Feature
PetSmart's 2026 Halloween collection looks like a seasonal retail story. It is also evidence that pets are no longer adjacent to family rituals. Increasingly, they are cast in them.
Five Runs, One Championship Belt and a Ballpark Full of Dogs
Reported Event TD Bank Ballpark · Bridgewater, New Jersey
Somerset beat Hartford 7-2 on a night when WWE star Damian Priest, Bark in the Park and a championship-belt shirt giveaway turned TD Bank Ballpark into a perfect collision of baseball people, dog people and wrestling people.
The Point Was Always to Let Them Go
Event Animal Welfare Association · Voorhees, New Jersey
At Animal Welfare Association's Monarch Festival in Voorhees, the public is invited to gather around a form of care with an unusual ending: release.
Your Dog Is Becoming a Data Source
Reported Feature
For most of human history, knowing a dog meant watching the dog. Connected collars are turning that relationship into a stream of location, activity and behavioral telemetry, and increasingly asking software to tell us what the animal means.
Even the Dog Gets a Girl Scout Cookie Now
Reported Feature
Patch Pals, the first Girl Scout cookie made specifically for dogs, is more than a novelty line extension. It is another sign that pets are no longer standing beside American family rituals. They are being formally invited into them.
At Morey's Piers, the Water Park Is Going to the Dogs
Event Raging Waters Water Park · Mariner's Pier, Wildwood, New Jersey
PigDog Puppa Palooza returns Sept. 13 with one last improbable use for a Wildwood water park: handing the pools over to the dogs while the Airshow moves overhead.