Why do people give up their pets?
That was the question that Scott Sorrentino, president of the Rescue & Humane Alliance-Los Angeles, posed in the West Hollywood Auditorium on Saturday. He wrote the numbers 1 through 5 on a piece of paper and asked his audience for answers.
"Moving," came one response. (the No. 2 reason). Behavior problems, someone suggested (No. 5).
But the No. 1 reason made even this audience of animal rescuers, volunteers, activists and animal services staffers -- people who wouldn't dream of giving up a pet -- gasp in surprise.
"Too sick" (or "too old") was the answer Sorrentino had written. Then he told of meeting a woman at a shelter who walked in with a cat she said was too sick for her to keep. The elderly cat was constantly throwing up, she said, and she didn't have money for veterinary care.
"Now bear in mind, this woman was in tears," said Sorrentino. "I said, 'If you could get to the vet, would you keep the cat?' She said, 'Of course!' " Sorrentino arranged -- and paid for -- a basic veterinary exam. The cat turned out to have an internal obstruction that passed through its system within a day.
"Here was a woman relinquishing her cat to a shelter," Sorrentino said, "when the whole solution was a $60 vet bill. We need to have some solutions like that.... We need to have some kind of fund that helps people who can't afford vet care to get no-cost or low-cost vet care."
Getting people to take pet ownership seriously was just one thorny issue discussed in a daylong conference, open to the public, on how to achieve a "no-kill" policy. Some call it a philosophy: the idea that shelters will not euthanize any healthy animal simply for space.
No goal is more sought after by city- and county-run shelters everywhere. And none is more difficult to achieve -- particularly at this time of year, when Los Angeles shelters have a bumper crop of kittens.
"But we can't hire St. Francis of Assisi," said Bill Dyer of the group In Defense of Animals -- which co-sponsored the conference with the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services -- invoking the patron saint of animals. "I don't think we've reached the community with this dire need for these animals to be adopted."
Rarely does any discussion of no-kill take place in L.A. in which Ed Boks, general manager of Animal Services -- which runs the six city shelters -- is not the target of people's anger. Saturday was no different. Boks commended In Defense of Animals officials for holding the conference in conjunction with his agency, "an organization that everybody loves to hate."
