Harmony House For Cats

My experience with Harmony House was wonderful. Highly recommended!

Great experience here. To me, it is very obvious they do a great job in caring for their cats and giving sufficient testing and care. This place is leaps and bounds better than my experience in visiting either Treehouse location. We are considering a few kitties to adopt from our visit today and I am planning to donate as well.

Can’t say I’m an expert on cat shelters, as I grew up with dogs all my life, but I had a great experience adopting my first cat from Harmony House.
My girlfriend had a cat for about 4 years, and we had been living together for about two when I decided I would like my own little furry creature to enjoy. We had driven past many times so we decided to start there.
Harmony House was very clean, and we were greeted immediately when we entered. The rooms for the cats were huge, clean, and allowed for great interactions with the cats. We visited some of the standard rooms before being shown a an inner room with the «Game of Thrones» Litter. The mom’s name was Sansa, and had her litter while at Harmony House, so all of her kittens were given names from the books. Tyrion chose me almost immediately when entering the room.
We were able to leave the room, see some other cats and come back to see Tyrion. Not once during the experience did I feel pressured to go home with a cat, or felt like I was being talked down to for not owning a cat previously. The adoption process itself was quick and painless, and they were fantastic to throw in some toys that they knew Tyrion specifically liked (PIPE CLEANERS OF ALL THINGS, STILL GOES NUTS FOR ‘EM!).
Again, I’m no expert, but as someone who had never adopted a cat before I was very thankful to be at Harmony House with no pressure, no intense scrutiny and intensive questioning, just a great experience and now the best cat running around my home.

I’m amazed to see negative reviews of Harmony House. I have two cats from there. I adopted Starkist (now Dashiell) in May. When I said I wanted an older cat, thinking about 8 years old, shelter manager Jennifer took me around to see the likely suspects, who were considerably older than I’d hoped for. She soon realized that I didn’t need a geriatric cat, after recently losing a loved pet. She guided me to a handsome 5-​year old who was shy at the shelter. She asked about me and my experiences, and felt this shy fellow would thrive in my house and be a good companion to my other cat. He has. Jennifer spent time to find the best cat for me.
I’ve been to the shelter many times in past years, both at the old and new locations, for events and just to visit. It’s always been immaculate. The cats are extremely well cared for. The only sick cats I’ve seen were being treated and observed in the Medical Ward for problems they came in with.
Cats do sometimes die in shelters, especially with a population of 130. HHouse is a no-​kill shelter in business for over 30 years. Some cats are never chosen and live all their lives at HHouse. The staff cares for the cats as if they were their own and honor their passing.
HHouse was very lucky that a donor paid for the new «green» shelter. It’s right to acknowledge this beautiful new facility, but it’s cats that come first with the staff.
I’d say — go and see for yourself. I’m sure you’ll have a positive experience.

Unhelpful, bordering on useless. I recently called Harmony House for advice on what to do about kittens born in my back alley. «Chance,» who answered the phone, kindly took my phone number and promised that I’d get a call from Jennifer the next day to talk about placement options, and I followed up with an email that included additional details, along with an offer to make a donation to this non-​profit in thanks for their assistance in an amount of their choosing.
I got a followup email from «HHC Volunteer Ann» that basically said Jennifer couldn’t be bothered with these kinds of questions, so don’t expect a call back. I can understand if the shelter was too full to take in these newborn kittens, but this dog owner would have appreciated some direction/​suggestion on another agency to approach. They’re supposed to be the experts who care about Chicago cat welfare, right?
I wanted to do the right thing and work with a no-​kill shelter — but was disappointed with the non-​responsiveness of this shelter director and her staff.
They may be a great home for cats that somehow find a place there — but you wouldn’t know it from their management of basic community inquiries and potential donor relations.

Harmony House is fantastic. Their shelter is beautiful, modern, and clean. It’s very clear that they care deeply about their cats and are completely devoted to finding truly good homes for them and do not want to adopt to people who won’t treat them well or don’t understand the commitment they’re making. So they will probably ask you a lot of questions about yourself, your home, and any past or current pets. Please don’t interpret that as them being snobby or difficult, as a recent reviewer did — they just want to make sure everyone walks away happy and that their cats are going somewhere safe and healthy. This weekend I adopted a cat as a companion for my current one, and the whole experience was great. I interacted with two different staff members and they were both friendly and knowledgeable about the cats — which is impressive, because they’ve got a LOT of kitties to keep straight! The paperwork process was straightforward and I walked out with a wonderful cat and an awesome tote bag full of food, toys, and treats. I couldn’t be happier with my experience and highly recommend coming here if you’re looking to add a cat to your family.

As a disclaimer, I was a tag-​along on this shelter visit. I already have two of my own furry love-​bugs, and was only going to help my mom and sisters find their own kittens to take home. I had no personal stake in adopting here, but am incredibly outraged by the way we were treated and believe other families should know what they may be walking into. Also, if you have the nerve to try this place anyway, please go find Mr. Sanderson he’s a beautiful loving & floppy ragdoll/​persian mix that should go home ASAP :) It’s not the kitties fault that one staff member is such a fail.
If I had written my review 24 hours ago: This shelter is wonderful. The rooms are all kept clean and have plenty of windows for the cats to sit in and watch the butterflies outside. The gentleman who gave us the tour was professional and friendly, none of that holier-​than-​thou we’re doing you a favor by allowing you to give a home to an orphan cat attitude that you find at some other shelters in the city. During the tour he casually asked us questions about our previous family pets. It felt nothing at all like the interrogation you get at some other rescues and shelters. He was also compassionate when learning that we’d recently lost a pure-​bred cat to cancer. At no time during the hour did he give any indication that he felt uncomfortable adopting to my family.
So, why one star? It’s all in the staff. We went back today with high hopes; when we arrived a staff member was explaining to another family that they should go to anti-​cruelty where there are other dogs and cats and perhaps an animal more suited to their family. They didn’t look happy, but to be fair, perhaps they just didn’t find the right pet at Harmony House. Then it was our turn, the staff member, a young woman, took us to the kitten room to meet some of the kittens. Immediately the interrogation began «I see you had other cats, tell me about them» «What about the ones that passed away, what happened to them» Well… one had cancer and passed away (common pure bred issue), two others many years ago had unidentified illnesses and had to be put down because they were clearly in pain and we couldn’t do anything for them. «Well, but why, what did they have?» We don’t know, one had a lot of blood in her urine and we couldn’t seem to get her well again. «Your vet didn’t know what she had?» «What was wrong with her» «Are your cats declawed? They are? Well do you know what the declaw process is, what it does to the cats?» We explained that yes, at the time it was standard procedure (7 – 18 yrs ago) when a family had very young children, but we had no plans to declaw future pets. This conversation lasted around 5 minutes. First she said the kittens wouldn’t be adoptable for another month. We said that was ok, we could come back every weekend to visit with them until the ones we wanted were ready to go home. Then another family wanted to see the kittens. Staff woman said well, more people want to see them, it’s time to move on. I asked her, how are we supposed to decide which kitten we would like to adopt when they’re ready, we’ve only had a few minutes. She looked at us, and said, «well, I really don’t think I can allow you to adopt any of our cats. You really seem to view pets more as things than as members of the family.» Just like that, she’d decided in ten minutes that she knew us better than the gentleman that spoke to us for over an hour. The way she spoke to us, it’s like she viewed us as irresponsible trash, unfit to adopt a homeless animal. Never have I felt so degraded by another human being – really, she has judgment down to a fine art.
Well lady here’s the deal, it’s people like you that cause wonderful lovable kittens to sit in shelters until they’re beyond prime adopting age. You and your kind are the reason why my cat, who I treat like my own child, sat in a shelter for a year and a half rather than getting adopted right away to a nice family. You do not have the best interest of the animals in mind, you have a god-​complex and clearly treasure the power you have to denigrate other people under the guise of compassion for the kittens you’re supposed to be finding homes for.
To those thinking of adopting here, if you get a friendly gentleman, you’re probably in good hands, or better than we were in today. Otherwise if you want to adopt here, I hope you’ve never lost a pet to an unexplained illness or cancer. If so, I hope you had a 6 figure income and no qualms about putting a sick animal through expensive invasive surgeries with only a minimal chance at recovery all so you can explain to this staff member – in detail, in front of your kids – that you really put your cat through as much pain and suffering as possible before allowing it to pass-​away thus making you a fit guardian for a new furr-​baby. Also, if you have young children, be careful. This particular staff member has no problem treating you like dirt and making you feel like a terrible person in front of them.

Share some love with some sweet kitty cats! Become a volunteer or adopt one (or two)! More info at

First off, Let me say. this is a very hard review for me to write.
Because, I had been a volunteer at Harmony House for Cats, had gotten
to know them, grew to love many of them.
For quite a while I would go in 2 nights per week to volunteer, and basically
that meant helping to socialize them for a lot of them were feral.
For the record, I had previously written a glowing review on Harmony House
when I started volunteering there, at that time I truly believed they were this
great place with the animal’s well being their main concern.
After I had been volunteering for awhile I started seeing/​noticing things that
were serious enough to make me start changing my way of thinking about
this Shelter.
I took the previous review down, simply because I didn’t believe it to be
true any longer.
Now, I have read the other reviews here on Unilocal,and the majority of these
reviews are written by adopters who come into the Shelter maybe once or twice
and don’t realize what is truly going on in there.
Let me state a few facts that are going on at Harmony House.
I have seen 5 cats die/​perish since I have volunteered there, now maybe
1 or 2 of them died from natural causes/​possibly old age but definitely not
all of them!
I found out the most recent death was a beautiful, fluffy black and white
cat named Sirius, who was looking pretty healthy the last time I had seen him.
He passed away last week, I was told simply they found him dead one
morning last week, Sirius was one of my favorites, so sad!
Some of those rooms are so terribly cold with the AC way up and so many
of those cats have had colds and eye infections, more than a few times I
would go in and see cats with puss/​discharge coming out of their eyes,
and I always reported it to staff, and the standard reply was that they
knew about it and were treating it, but then I would come back the following
week and see the same issues all over again!
Now granted, throughout this Shelter they had various rooms/​areas and many
litter boxes, and I would see the cats using the litter boxes, more than a few
of them had diarreah repeatedly,
Many of the cats were terribly matted with huge clumps along their fur/​skin
and Harmony House felt the thing to do was to give them Lion Cuts in the
middle of winter, which I’m sure left them quite cold with no fur!
I kept going because I had developed a true fondness for some of the cats, I
took many pictures, I even helped Linda K with closing procedures at night
when she would be the Volunteer Coordinator/​Office Monitor.
I did it for my love of the cats!
But, some of the staff there weren’t the nicest of people, snooty actually,
some never even acknowledged my prescence when I was there.
The only thing they did pretty much was open the door for me…
But, yet, I donated paper plates to them because they said they needed
them for the cats, I was a good and caring volunteer.
So, this truly saddens me because I have not been back to Harmony House
for the last 6 weeks and I have no intention of ever going back there again.
I am writing this review honestly and truthfully because I am an animal
advocate and I always stand up for what’s right.
And, it truly hurts my heart to know that I won’t see Gatsby, or Barnabas,
Lady GaGa and some others anymore because I truly grew to love them.
But, I can’t stand by and pretend that things are okay at Harmony House.
Because they’re not!
They truly need to stop focusing on the fact that they are «Green» Eco-​Friendly
and put their efforts into the welfare of the 130 or so cats they have there.
That would be the right thing to do…

I can’t sing enough praises about Harmony House and our wonderful experience adopting a cat there. I had lived with my wife and her cat for about a year and a half, but I was a total rube when it came to the process of adopting a pet. The people at Harmony House not only put me completely at ease but also found us our perfect match and for that we are very grateful.
This was our third stop on our kitty-​search. We had enjoyed one very positive experience at a similar type of establishment, but at the second place we were appalled at the poor conditions and the useless staff, so going into this visit I didn’t know what to expect. Harmony House was better than I could have imagined: a clean, spacious, modern facility full of many different cats to choose from, all ages, sizes, colors, personality types. And the staff are so gracious, patient, knowledgeable, and compassionate. They will bend over backwards to make you feel welcome and to help you find the right cat.
Our exceptional adoption counselor Amanda knew almost everything about all of the residents and asked lots of questions about our current cat and what we were looking for. She showed us at least a dozen specific cats in every single room, including some of the isolation units. She let us spend as much or as little time as we wanted at each stop and did not pressure us whatsoever to select a specific feline.
Long story short (trust me, I could go on effusively), we found our match that day thanks in great part to Amanda. At that point, Kathy, one of the higher-​ups, checked in to ask a few more questions and then let us know that they would need to follow up with the vet on Monday morning (this was a Sunday) to make sure that the cat was ready for adoption. A few days later, both Amanda and Kathy ushered us through the paperwork, highlighting the important points of the contract, and set us up with a kitty care package containing some toys, catnip, food coupons, and informational pamphlets. They even included some milk-​jug rings that our girl had been playing with earlier that day. What a sweet touch!
Harmony House gives a two-​week health warranty, so when it became apparent that our little bundle of joy was not getting over the «kitty cold» that she brought home, arranging vet care was very straightforward. We called the shelter and described the problem; Kathy referred us to their animal hospital of choice (Portage Park) and then faxed a purchase order to the hospital to cover the payment. After three visits for her cold, a minor ear infection, and a dental procedure, now our Penelope is healthy and very happy in her new home.
I cannot recommend Harmony House enthusiastically enough. If you are a cat lover, please consider adopting from them or donating money or materials. They are the best shelter out there, and so deserving of your support.

I am a current volunteer and I love it here. I have adopted two cats and am currently fostering another one. The staff is great and they really know cats. They are always able to answer all cat related questions. If your looking to volunteer or adopt I highly recommend this place.

i love harmony house! i am a recent volunteer there, and have nothing but good things to say so far. their volunteer orientation is painless and easy to schedule and, within no time, you are able to get around to socializing and meeting so many interesting cats with many eccentric and playful characters.
if you’re like me, and aren’t able to have pets in your residence (or you just know that you’re in your early 20s and are barely responsible enough for yourself [and cats can’t live off of a diet of 40s]), GO HERE!
also, such wonderful volunteer coordinators and staff members work here! you can tell they truly love and care about the animals. i can’t wait to see their glorious new space that’s in the works on elston.
as a warning, there’s an emphasis on CAGE-​FREE here, so this might not be the best place for people who aren’t super comfortable with cats or
for small children to volunteer alongside their parents.
the only slight hitch is that their volunteer hours at the shelter are quite limited, and i hope to see that change in the future.

What a great shelter! They really know their cats and will work with you to find the right pal. I’ve had my cat for 10 years and will go back when I adopt again.

A) I now have two great cats (only one of whom is swiping at a houseplant right now).
B) I plan on coming back and visiting the other awesome kitties. (Trusty is looking for a lap, you know. A big lap.)
C) What a great center. Totally committed staff, happy kitties.
Adopting from Harmony House was a wonderful experience. I know I supported the best cat shelter I’ve ever known, and the staff sent me along with thoughtfulness and care. I’ll be back — not to adopt (I’m outnumbered as it is!), but to hang out with the great personalities (feline and human).

I have been volunteering here for a long time and while there are many shelters which do an excellent job, I can’t imagine a group that is more dedicated to the health, and happiness of their feline residents. If you want to adopt a cat, volunteer to pet cats or help with outreach, this is the place to go.
Great work Harmony House!

I’ve visited several shelters and this one is the best. It’s the cleanest and the odor is minimal. Very well organized business with detail-​oriented volunteers. Donation acknowledgments are sent out quite promptly, usually within 1 — 2 of their business days.
They have a great selection of healthy, well-​cared-​for cats. There are 3 floors of cats with several isolation rooms (for kittens, medical, new, etc.).
Extremely knowledgeable volunteers who spend a lot of time socializing the shy cats. Other shelters claim to do so, but I’m skeptical.

A wonderful shelter that takes great care of its cats. I used to volunteer here and I highly recommend it; basically you go over there and you pet cats. And let them sit on your lap. And sometimes dangle toys in front of their faces. Tough work if you can get it, right?
Here are a few cats that have been there a while and have winning personalities: Mother Nature, Fredrica, Jerry, Crosby, Wink, and Scar. Go adopt these buddies!

Harmony House was a little hard to find as there is no signage out front. (They said this was due to too many people dumping their cats there! How sad…) The counselor was friendly and helped us find the perfect cat based on the personality we were looking for. Unlike many other shelters I’ve visited, Harmony House was hassle-​free, and the people were actually nice (which is what you would expect of animal lovers, right?). We’re picking up our kitty this week and we can’t wait!

We adopted our second cat from this shelter a year ago. Our experience with them was great and I’d highly recommend using and supporting this shelter. When we first arrived, the counselor spoke to us for awhile about ourselves, our home (we had one cat already), our other cat’s personality, and needs etc.
Based on what we’d said, she introduced us to a number of the cats she thought might work with us. The first cat we were really drawn to was pending adoption, which was kind of a bummer. But after a month or so, we decided to try again and went back, this time with success! Harmony House had gotten him from The Anti-​Cruelty Society, so I’m assuming his name had been added to the short list, which would have been very sad because he was only 1-​year-​old and had the sweetest personality.
It was evident from the first moment we laid eyes on him that he was a friendly (albeit reserved) guy. And now that we’ve had the chance to have him in our home for the past year and have gotten to know his personality, we’re even more thankful for the advice and help we received from Harmony House. Oliver gets along really well with our first cat (Molly), loves having his belly rubbed and doesn’t miss an opportunity to cuddle on the couch.

We adopted an adult cat from here two years ago. The shelter staff really know the cats and take the time to show you around and introduce you. We were looking for a cat that was pretty unflappable, since s/​he would be joining our Urban Zoo and needed to get along.
We adopted a «special needs» cat because his personality was perfect for our household. It is so easy to give a pill to this cat which is good since he needs two a day.