an unFurgeTTable affair

BY CAROLINE RYAN

ELYSIAN’S UPCOMING

NEW YORK FASHION WEEK EVENT CATWALK FURBABY WILL FEATURE INDIVIDUAL DESIGNERS WHO WILL COLLABORATE WITH A RUNWAY MODEL AND A FOUR-LEGGED RESCUE ANIMAL TO SHOWCASE CUTTING-EDGE FASHION CREATIONS AND RAISE AWARENESS AND PHILANTHROPIC SUPPORT FOR ANIMAL WELFARE.

haddeus Stevens Boltz snuggles up close to his owner, Fiona, on the living room couch. A relative newcomer to the family, the goofy gray cat with the sweet white muzzle and piercing green eyes joined the Boltz tribe that includes two grown children and a senior canine named Eleanor during the COVID pandemic when their previous cat passed away.

“When we said our goodbyes to our first rescue cat, I was convinced we were one and done,” remembers Fiona. That cat, Aslan, was one of a kind—smart, sweet, and incredibly handsome. But one day, I started looking at rescue cats online, and a picture of a beautiful shorthair popped up on my screen. I couldn’t stop staring at him, and two days later, he came home for good! Thaddeus (named for the emancipator Thaddeus Stevens), brings our whole family lots of laughs, is easily amused with toys and laser pointers, and is a prodigious snuggler. We are definitely two for two with rescue cats!”

Thaddeus’ story is similar to that of many others—in fact, according to the ASPCA, 23 million American households adopted a pet during the COVID-19 crisis—that’s one in five homes that have added a new canine or feline member since 2020. Many of those adoptions were from animal shelters and rescue organizations, and underscored people’s need for companionship, especially during lonely and isolating times.

“This incredibly stressful period motivated many people to foster and adopt animals, as well as further cherish the pets already in their lives,” said Matt Bershadker, President and CEO of the ASPCA.

Research has shown that having a pet in your life is good for your mental health and can help with depression and stressful situations. A recent article in Nature reported that human–animal interactions may even improve peer-to-peer social relationships, as well as enhance feelings of respect, trust, and empathy between people.

But why consider a shelter animal? There are myriad reasons to do so, according to the Humane Society of the United States. For starters, HSUS says that by adopting, you will most certainly save a life. Each year, more than a million adoptable cats and dogs are euthanized simply because there are too many pets in shelters and not enough people considering adoption. This number could be dramatically reduced if more people would rescue a pet from a shelter or rescue organization instead of purchasing one from a breeder or pet store.

Helping Hands Humane Society also believes that adoptions and rescues help stop cruelty in mass breeding facilities. These facilities, often known as puppy and kitten mills, engage in intolerable practices that force animals to produce litter after litter in harsh conditions until these animals are no longer profitable. Adopting a shelter animal means you do not support these practices and can help make it financially unviable for these types of facilities to continue operations.

Supporting shelters that have taken up this charge to encourage pet adoption and that also promote animal welfare and advocacy as a whole, is a cause that is near and dear to ELYSIAN publisher Karen Floyd.

Floyd met the love of her life seven years ago after an introduction from her veterinarian. The handsome fellow had four legs, a microchip, and some serious health issues. However, Floyd fell head over heels for this skinny, ailing dog and nursed him back to health. “There was something about him,” she recalled fondly. “He had a nobility about him. Most important, he loved me, and I loved him.”

Floyd named him Kansas, for the state that turned out to be his place of origin, and the pair created a lasting and meaningful bond during their next six years together.

It was Kansas who ignited Floyd’s desire to do more for animals, and the memory of their time together has served as the unofficial inspiration for ELYSIAN ’s upcoming inaugural New York Fashion Week event dubbed CatWalk Furbaby, a day of fashion designed to benefit animal charities from around the country, coordinated by cocollaborator BISSELL Foundation, founded by fellow animal lover Cathy Bissell. The foundation has a network of more than 5,750 shelters in all 50 states, and has impacted more than 605,000 pets since 2011.

According to Bissell, the foundation is saving animal lives in all 50 states as well as Canada. Like Floyd, Bissell’s inspiration for the foundation came from her own adoption of her black lab, Bear. Bear was six years old and he was surrendered by his original family to the local humane society because they got a new puppy and didn’t have time for him.

The BISSELL Foundation has now grown into an organization that partners with shelters across the country to address the pet overpopulation crisis in the U.S. and works to reduce the number of animals in shelters and rescues through pet adoption, transport, spay/neuter programs, vaccinations and microchipping, as well as to help animals who are facing crisis situations due to human-made and natural disasters.

“BISSELL Pet Foundation is excited to be the beneficiary charity of ELYSIAN magazine’s CatWalk FurBaby event during New York Fashion Week,” said Bissell. “My team and I are dedicated to creating solutions for animal welfare organizations and the communities they serve through our adoption, spay and neuter, vaccination, microchipping, and crisis and disaster response programs. We are grateful to the participants for raising awareness and philanthropic support to benefit deserving pets and help us get closer to achieving our mission to end pet homelessness.”

Catwalk Furbaby will feature teams of individual designers who will collaborate with a runway model and a four-legged rescue animal to showcase cutting-edge fashion creations and raise awareness and philanthropic support for animal welfare on behalf of featured shelters from around the country.

Floyd, long a champion of initiatives related to businesswomen and children, is also a dog lover known for her animal advocacy and philanthropy. She believes that now is the perfect time to begin the CatWalk Furbaby initiative.“I have devoted the last 10 years to creating change related to women, children, and the environment,” she said.“The fourth issue where I want to make a difference is animal welfare.”

CatWalk Furbaby, which will take place on February 10 in the Paramount Hotel’s Sony Hall, one of Midtown Manhattan’s premier venues, will be produced by Runway 7 Fashion and will feature clothing and accessory lines from SohoMuse designers for both the models and the participating dogs and cats. SohoMuse, which was founded by “rebel heiress” Conseulo Vanderbilt Costin, a seventhgeneration descendant of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, is an invite-only social networking club and global community that boasts thousands of creatives from the fashion world, including designers Malan Breton and Nicole Miller, and New York Times fashion writer Ruth La Ferla. SohoMuse is known for creating experiential events that highlight topical issues.

This melding of creative minds and organizations will most certainly result in a memorable inaugural event, according to Catwalk Furbaby Chair Kimberli Scott. It will be an event that is worthy of the venerated New York Fashion Week, which has been featuring cutting edge couture since 1943, and more recently, has been a vehicle for spotlighting social issues, such as diversity, equity and inclusion, migration, and sustainability. New York Fashion Week, a biannual event of runway shows and presentations, features celebrity models, vaunted fashion guests such as Vogue’s Anna Wintour, and some of the world’ most notable designers who are highlighting their collections for the coming season.

Scott, who is also the chair of Elysian Impacts, the philanthropic arm of Elysian Publications, said that Catwalk Furbaby is the result of the efforts of an “incredible team of people” who have come together to amplify the cause of animal welfare and to create change.

“CatWalk Furbaby is a way to celebrate the spirituality of rescuing animals and to support the work of organizations that are making it possible for animals and humans to create meaningful connections,” added Floyd. “Elysian is particularly excited to release its much-anticipated ‘Pets & Fashion’ spring issue at the event. ■

Loxahatchee Groves, Florida