Got roommates? Spare a thought for Kathy and Paul Compitus. The couple share their 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom Gramercy apartment with three large dogs, a cat, a pigeon and a third human roommate. To most New Yorkers, this setup would be unbearable. For the Compitus clan, it’s the opposite.
“My husband is a fashion designer and I’m an academic, and the animals give us the structure that we need,” says Kathy, 33. The routine of walking the dogs helps her deal with the stress of studying for a Ph.D. while launching a new business, which just so happens to be a doggy day care (wigglypups.com).
Visitors to the Compitus household get a warning about the menagerie that awaits behind the door. But nothing can really prepare them for the sight of an elderly 70-pound Dogo Argentino who uses a wheelchair, a 100-pound Akita mix, an 88-pound black Lab, a Maine Coon cat and a diaper-wearing pigeon soaring above the dining room table.
“We found pigeon diapers online so he can fly around without making a mess,” says Kathy. Guests, she admits, can be overwhelmed, so she makes sure that all nonhuman housemates know their place at the party.
Morgan, her food-mad Lab, is trained to sit outside the room when people are eating. Angie, the Akita mix, and Jack the elderly Dogo Argentino, lounge on their dog beds in the bedroom or living room. Since he’s polite, Eros the cat freely weaves his way around the apartment, and Ralph the pigeon chills in his cage — until brave guests ask to pet him and he comes out to stretch his wings.
“He has the personality of an adolescent boy,” Kathy says of the bird she adopted after a friend found him, injured on the street, at 2 weeks old. “I’ll pick him up and he’ll peck me, not in a mean way, but in a you’re-annoying-me kind of way.”
Despite study and work commitments, the Compitus family make their pets a priority. They joined a meet-up group for large breeds, and Sunday morning is for snuggle time in bed. Ralph prefers to watch Kathy type — “he starts pecking the keys” — or put on makeup. “He jumps on my head and tries to grab the eyeliner out of my hand,” she says.
Before meeting Kathy, 44-year-old Paul’s only pet had been a hamster. “I didn’t want them on the bed when I first moved in. Now they basically rule the joint,” he says.
While the couple sometimes dream about more space, their apartment is rent-stabilized, so they’re content for now — even with that third human in the second bedroom. “Our roommate keeps to himself,” says Kathy. “We rarely see him.”
After paying vet bills, buying food for the whole menagerie and trekking to Brooklyn for giant-breed play dates, do they have time for anyone or anything without wings or four legs?
“We’re not what people think of when they think crazy animal people,” says Kathy. “We’re young and we have lives. But I would rather be homeless on the street with my pets than without them.”
pets@nypost.com