My friend Cora lives in a studio, has three animals

Flickr photo by SkyWideDesign

A week or two ago, my friend Cora adopted a fluffy calico cat she named Blanche.  Perhaps a year old, Blanche joins Jiggy the pug and Derwood the gray-and-white American short-hair cat in the rent-stabilized studio that Cora has called home for decades.

Cora happens to be 66, and she is hardly alone–among humans as well as animals.  In fact, a new survey commissioned by AARP has found that 40 percent of Americans 65 and older own a pet.  Of those, 27 percent have a dog and 19 percent, a cat.