New York Times Fashionさんのインスタグラム写真 - (New York Times FashionInstagram)「Rats are just some of the thousands of pets that have been adopted from animal shelters sprouting up in malls across the country in the past three years. A growing number of shopping centers are offering animal rescue groups empty storefronts for free or at a significant discount, sometimes as much as 90%. According to Shelter Animals Count, an animal welfare national database, shelters reported that intakes increased 4% in 2022, leaving them overburdened with animals that were once hard to obtain during quarantine. With such collaborations gaining popularity, malls and animal havens are hoping to attract more pet owners and customers to these retail spaces that were already struggling before the pandemic forced temporary closures. L.A. Love & Leashes, an organization in Los Angeles that picks animals up from the city’s six shelters every morning and displays them at its mall storefront before returning unadopted pets in the evening, has found homes for more than 3,000 pets since relocating into a shopping center in 2021. Alia Mahmud took home three 5-month-old rats from a meet-and-greet at the Westfield Annapolis Mall in February. Their names are Snoofles, Algernon and Ikit. “They melted our hearts with how little, affectionate and outgoing they were from the beginning,” she said. Read more about a new kind of mall rat at the link in bio. Photographs by @mattrothphoto」5月12日 1時01分