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Kitty cornered: Condo owners told to ditch cats
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By Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporter

February 17, 2007

The fugitive cat holed up in a seventh-floor condo came into Frances Gertz's life eight years ago, after her husband died.

The loneliness and depression had become overwhelming. Her psychiatrist suggested a pet.

So Gertz, 88, got a white-haired, green-eyed Persian and named it Tommy.

Yes, the bylaws at her condo at 3150 N. Lake Shore Drive don't allow pets to be "raised, bred or kept." But Gertz got one, anyway, and quietly joined the untold legions of city dwellers who choose to believe that "no pets" does not mean "no cats."

"The cat doesn't take the place of a husband," said Gertz, who had been married 54 years. "But it helps."

Then, in September, came the letter.

The building's management company, directed by the board of directors, notified Gertz and at least two other residents that they had one month to dump their felines.

House rules, the board said. All three of Gertz's appeals have been denied by neighbors she calls insensitive, intrusive and impractical. Even as the threat of a fine looms, she hangs on to Tommy, who likes to sit on her lap and gently paw her face as she watches television.

The drama has played out again and again among the 60 million people living in 300,000 community associations nationally, in co-ops, condos, townhouses and single-family homes, said Frank Rathbun, a spokesman for the Community Associations Institute in Washington, D.C. According to a 2005 Zogby International poll, residents of community associations most often don't get along with neighbors because of pets.

"All the time people try to hide them, they try to go above weight limits or they don't obey leash laws," Rathbun said. "Pets can be a very thorny issue. For a lot of people, pets are family. For other people, pets are just domesticated animals."

Frustrated Florida pet owners have formed Citizens for Pets in Condos to lobby that state's legislature, but the fight is national, said David Shapiro, the group's vice president.

"Condominiums are overrife with rules," he said. "You own your own apartment. You want to bring a dog or cat in and you can't do so. That makes no sense."

Pet owners in no-pet condo buildings are left to rely on discretion.

A 35-year-old consultant who lives in a different no-pet Lake Shore Drive condo, but didn't want to be identified because he has two cats, said most of his vet visits come as house calls. (About one-quarter of home visits for Cat Hospital of Chicago vets are prompted by no-pet condos, said Ellen Cantu, the clinic's practice manager.)

In common spaces, the consultant said, he and his cat-owning neighbors smirkingly ask each other about their "kids."

At pet stores, he won't buy more supplies than he can fit in a paper bag he brings bearing the label of a grocery store.

"It's so bizarre there are these restrictions," he said. "Cats don't infringe on anyone else. It's so irrational."

The no-pet rule seemed like a potential deal breaker when he was shopping for condos, but he liked the building and heard other people had covert kitties.

"It's a very poorly kept secret, but it's still outlawed," the consultant said.

The three residents at 3150 N. Lake Shore Drive who have been ordered to remove their cats all say their building operated for years under a similar "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Gertz said she never went out of her way to hide the cat food she brought home from the grocery. She said she once even called a building engineer to help find Tommy when she feared he was lost behind a radiator cover.

Gertz said she is too old to move from the high-rise where she has lived for 31 years, and where uniformed doormen greet residents by name. She also has no intention of dumping her cat and is prepared to go to court after the three requests for an exemption were denied. Two of her requests cited the Americans with Disabilities Act provision for reasonable accommodations in housing.

"I'll never get rid of him," Gertz said. "But I'm nervous about it. Having that hanging over your head is terrible."

Board President Gerald Weisberg, a building resident for 16 years, would not say why the board decided to evict the cats when it did. He also would not discuss how or when board members became aware of the cats living in the building. But he said he was unaware of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

"We are directors running a business," Weisberg said. "This is a no-animal building. This board has an obligation to all the homeowners to see to it that the documents governing the building are enforced. We are doing just that."

Danny Kopelson, 48, a marketing director who lives with his 2-year-old Himalayan, Mikey, also was served with the cat eviction notice. Kopelson said he moved into the building's 12th floor nearly 12 years ago with his partner and two cats, also with the understanding that the building was pet-free only on paper.

"We lived openly and didn't hide the cats," he said. "No one cared."

By 2004, both cats and his partner had died and, Kopelson said, he was lonely. He renovated a 32nd-floor apartment and got Mikey.

He has appealed again to the board, arguing that he is living with a disability because he has been diagnosed with HIV and relies on Mikey for emotional support. But the board has turned down three written requests to keep the cat. In the most recent letter, dated Jan. 25, he was told he had to be rid of the cat in 30 days or be fined $300 a month.

One of the building's board members lives across the hall, and the matter has made for a few tense hallway moments.

"They're my neighbors and I've always liked them all, but what this has done is make me hate them," Kopelson said.

Mike Kim, a Chicago lawyer specializing in condominium law, said the board is obligated to uphold its rules, but maybe not so abruptly if it had been looking the other way for years.

"If there's a provision that prohibits animals, it would be advisable to phase it in rather than just require pets to be taken out on relatively short notice," said Kim, who once represented a condo board in a suit against a resident and his pot-bellied pig.

"To avoid the potential problem of owners fighting with the association, as long as the pet is not creating a nuisance or a danger, our general recommendation is to let the pets live out their lives," Kim said.

The third resident to get the letter, Carol Ciesielski, a 54-year-old doctor, moved her cats to a friend's home in Uptown at the end of October after the board denied her appeal.

But she said she spends several nights a week at her friend's home because one of the cats won't eat unless she is there.

Ciesielski said she took in the cats from a recently deceased friend after being told by the building staff that there were many cats in the building. She said she believes the board was long aware of the practice, but she isn't optimistic its members will reverse the decision.

Instead, Ciesielski is planning another course of action. Just as soon as she can, she said, she is going to move to a cat-friendly building.

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jbnoel@tribune.com
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