The most trusting soul in West Los...

The most trusting soul in West Los Angeles? It could be the anonymous person who stapled a $20 bill to a postcard the other day and mailed it to the local headquarters of the CARE charity.

But regional CARE director Richard Hoff wasn’t at all surprised by the gesture.

“We’ve been receiving two or three cards a week like this for about four years,” he said. “Sometimes it’s $10, sometimes $20. It must be the same person because it always has a Marina del Rey postmark and Biblical citations.”

Postal spokesman Dave Mazur, though recommending against mailing cash, noted that the mysterious gifts say something about the honesty of postal employees.

“From the time those cards are mailed to the time that they’re delivered, as many as 10 postal people could touch them,” Mazur pointed out.

Hoff just wishes that CARE’s benefactor would include a return address.

“We’d be more than willing to send him some envelopes,” he explained.

On the subject of Biblical citations, Maria and Bill Cowell of Los Angeles note that during a recent Rams football game one proselytizing fan apparently focused his effort not on “saving the souls of America, but on saving the marriages of America.”

He hung out a banner that said, “Ephesians 5:25” (“Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for it.”)

“How appropriate for Monday Night Football,” the Cowells write. “Football widows take heart.”

Numbers, numbers . . . from Ephesians 5:25 to the good old “111st St.” sign near Los Angeles International Airport.

Robert Burton rejects the contentions of some readers that the latter be pronounced “One Hundred Eleventy-First Street.” He prefers the rhythmic beat of “One Hundred Eleven Street Street.” After all, there is a precedent for civic redundancy--the La Brea Tar Pits, which translate as the Tar Tar Pits.

Meanwhile, Steve Statham asks whether there’s a “112nd St.” a block away. Alas, there is no 112nd, or even 112th, in the area.

Statham also wonders if the creator of “111st St.” was “a relative of the guy who first misspelled La Cienega Boulevard”? He points out that it should be “La Cienaga. “

The latter error never would have happened had the city used the English translation, instead. Then, Restaurant Row would be located on fashionable Swamp Boulevard.

The search for the “happiest, perkiest” cat in the country came down to five finalists who paraded before Friskies judges Wednesday at Universal Studios.

Here’s the sad part: No local felines qualified. Think of it, not one representative from L.A., home of about 215,000 cats.

One presumes, then, that L.A. tabbies are more downcast than those in other areas. But why? Are they worried about another outbreak of pit bull incidents? Or, are they nervous wrecks from trying to scurry across streets amid the worsening traffic situation?

The winning entry, by the way, was a New York cat. Hard to picture anyone from New York being perky.

Patti McGee has no trouble remembering what time it was when she phoned Times reporter Paul Dean from the Bay Area.

It was 5:04 p.m., Tuesday.

Dean wasn’t in the office, so McGee, the L.A. branch director of the Independent Adoption Agency, left a rapidly accelerating message on his answering machine:

“Ooooo, earthquake. And, er . . . big earthquake and . . .

“Thenumberisfouronefivefoursixthreezeroninetwozero.”