Literacy and animal welfare prominent for The Page & Whisker

The Page & Whisker founder and co-founder of APARC Samuel Sandidge says the organization wanted to have a long term goal for fundraising.

“I decided I could combine my passions for both reading and book selling because I did that throughout university just to make income, and combine it with my love of helping lost and homeless animals in our community. So the Page & Whisker was born.”

Customers have a chance to find that exciting new read and even a new pet.

“So it is something that is going to reach out to the community and help with the homeless animal population, so we do have cats here that are adoptable. These ones are through APARC, so the adoption goes through them as well. But he is reaching out to other rescues that want to put cats in here,” according to APARC’s general manager Kaylyn Genio.

APARC has 60 cats in their care right now, and different cats will rotate to have time in the book store. Proceeds from book sales will also go towards APARC’s new low-cost spay and neuter program.

Genio says, “We’re going to have it a little bit different during kitten season, we can do more kittens than we do adult cats. So it kind of depends on the season and what we have. But we can have up to 5-10 cats in here at a time.”

They hope to offer the low-cost spay and neuter program to the community sometime this year.

“Because of what we do at APARC, we provide impound services, and we kind of have an idea of who the problem animals are. And if we can get those in for low-cost spay and neuter, if that’s what preventing them from being fixed, we can save hundreds and hundreds of lives,” according to Sandidge.

The soft launch of The Page & Whisker was on Friday and Saturday. Regular hours will start next week on Tuesday, January 14 from 10:30 am-8 pm.

You can find the Page & Whisker downtown on 2nd Street SE.

by Scott Roblin

Literacy and animal welfare prominent for The Page & Whisker

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