Remember last month, when the city told pet lovers they couldn't accompany their beloved furry friends to the Great Beyond? Unsurprisingly, the move didn't go over so well then, and it's not going over so well now, either, with protests against the measure gaining traction.
“You can have your ashes sprinkled over the sea, have them shot into space, so why draw the line at the pet cemetery,” said Ed Martin, the owner of Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, which currently holds about 700 interred with some 75,000 animals.
And attorney Taylor York, whose uncle bought a plot at Hartsdale to be buried alongside his wife and their two Maltese dogs, is lobbying the state to reconsider the ban. She says the Division of Cemeteries has "no authority to issue the ban since the agency is limited to the regulation of nonprofit human cemeteries."
Even State Assemblyman Thomas Abinati thinks the Division of Cemeteries is going a bit too far: “This would mean that the pet cemeteries would be the only place in the world that you cannot dispose of ashes of a cremated human being,” he said. He added that if the Cemetery Board "continues to assert they have jurisdiction, I will develop legislation which makes it clear they don't." Which means that you just might be able to go down with your precious sugar bear, after all.
