Nationwide Pet Adoption Push Means Half-Off Fees At Lemont Rescue

LEMONT, IL — A Lemont-based animal rescue organization is doing its part to help provide homes for rescued pets by offering a 50 percent discount on adoption fees for a trio of animals as a nationwide effort to clear shelters continues.

Ruby Whiskers will offer the discount through the weekend in an effort to find more pet foster parents for the animals that the shelter is currently housing. Since opening just more than a year ago in Lemont, Ruby Whiskers has worked with pet shelters in four states to provide foster homes for animals who have been rescued.

Although Ruby Whiskers does not currently have enough space to offer shelter to the pets, it works with local animal lovers who provide temporary housing to the animals that are rescued. As animals are adopted following the fostering process, Ruby Whiskers is able to get more pets from other shelters to help with the overcrowding problem that faces many shelters across the country, coordinator Lisa Steck told Patch.

Ruby Whiskers, which is located at 12305 New Ave., has plans to eventually add physical shelter space but will continue working to find foster homes and forever homes for these pets in the meantime, Steck said.

Ruby Whiskers pulls dogs from the shelters to safety, puts them in foster care and gets them healthy then puts them up for adoption, Steck said. The shelter also helps with relinquished pets to keep them from being sent to the shelter to help from adding to the overcrowding and the situation typically wouldn’t be good for the pet to be put into a shelter.

Ruby Whiskers also moves cats in from the streets and put them in homes along with their babies, Steck said. The organization pays all of the costs associated with fostering pets and the fees cover everything the pet needs before they are adopted.

Adoption fees vary depending on the pet, but the costs range anywhere from $200 to $500, half of which will be discounted this weekend.

Ruby Whiskers, which is headed up by founders Kim Arias & Violet Vrsek along with coordinators Steck, Kelly Nolan, and Bree Scott — as well as many other volunteers —currently has over 150 approved fosters to date and has currently has more than 80 pets in foster care. Since opening in Feb. 2021, the organization has saved and re-homed about 330 pets, the organization told Patch.

To view a list of our available pets for adoption, residents can visit the Ruby Whiskers website at Rubywhiskers.org or can also find a list and photos of available pets here.

If residents are interested in being a foster, they can apply at rubywhiskers.org/foster or rubywhiskers.org/adopt if they wish to adopt a pet.