Stars Twitter to Save Animals' Lives

Photo by Donovan Henneberg-Verity

Many celebrities are famously known for their love of animals—Mary Tyler Moore, Betty White, and Ellen DeGeneres to name a few. But they tend to get involved in old-school ways, like holding a fundraiser or a charity auction.

Well, there's a new game in town for helping animals and it's all about social networking. Adopt-a-Pet has developed a program called TwitterACritter and stars like Alyssa Milano, Kevin Nealon, Kristin Chenoweth, and David Cook are getting in on the animal act.

Adopt-a-Pet has an entire website dedicated to finding homes for needy animals. Click on one page and we dare you not to get a little bit choked up wondering how anyone could abandon these beautiful creatures."

Adopt-a-Pet Executive Director and TwitterACritter creator, Abbie Moore, says, "Using the popularity and reach of Twitter, anyone can help a pet make their way out of the shelter and into a loving home, and they can do it from the comfort of their own chair, with just a few mouse clicks. And it's fun!"

Visitors to the site can help these wanna-be pets even if they're not in the position to adopt a dog or cat of their own. Simply select the location, breed, age, and/or size of a pet and the search engine will "fetch" matches. Each animal has its own "retweet" button. Just one click will spread the word to Twitter followers that this loving animal needs a home.

So imagine the boost the program gets when a celebrity with a large number of followers tweets an animal. Moore explained, "The celebrity support for TwitterACritter has been amazing! Often celebrities have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, and when they Twitter a critter, they encourage their supporters to do it, too. As soon as Alyssa Milano tweeted a critter, for example, literally thousands of her followers re-tweeted her message or tweeted a critter of their own. One tweet from a celebrity creates an avalanche of compassion."

Join celebrities like Ice T and Mario Lopez who are clicking to save the lives of these shelter animals.

For more inspirational pop culture moments visit Beliefnet.com.