Would You Risk Your Life to Save Your Pet?

The night of the Laguna Beach fire, television cameras captured a man waving neighbors away from their burning homes, telling them: “A cat’s just not worth it.”

*

Days later in the Calabasas/Malibu fire, filmmaker Duncan Gibbins dashed back into his flaming house to try to save his Siamese cat, Elsa.

While the cat survived on her own, the severely burned Gibbins died. His act made him an international hero to animal lovers but provoked amazement from those who could not understand why a person would risk his life for a pet.

“A lot of people would think, ‘What an idiot.’ But other people would fully understand why he would do it,” said Kathleen Brand, a clinical psychologist in Pasadena. “A lot of people really do think of their pets as their best friends.”

Gibbins--whom a friend described as sensitive, fearless and deeply attached to his pet--probably made a snap decision to rescue the cat and miscalculated the risks, say experts in human behavior.

But animal lovers worldwide have praised his courage, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has named an annual Duncan Gibbins Heroism Award for “extraordinary courage to save the life of an animal in distress.”

And many other animal lovers said without hesitation that they would have responded as Gibbins did. “I probably would have done exactly the same thing. You wouldn’t let your child burn,” said Gillian Julius, a clothing manufacturer from West Hollywood.

In fact, the night of the fire, Carbon Canyon artist Dian Roberts, 66, walked six miles along the beach past police barricades to rescue her two Rottweilers. She turned around only when she could no longer breathe, she said. “Other people were doing the same. I saw a man swimming. A lot of people came by boat. . . . Most people were talking about their pets.”

Roberts said her dogs were rescued by a friend. But animal-control officials said many other people are now grieving for their missing pets as they would for relatives.

Frank Augustine, a businessman who lost track of his dog when his house was destroyed by the Las Flores Mesa fire, has visited the Agoura Hills Animal Shelter two and three times a day for the past six days. “I call him not even a dog, or a pet, but a family member,” said Augustine, who is married with two children. “If I can bring the family back together by bringing back that missing piece, it completes one part of the picture.”

Augustine said he hopes people who have found fire victims’ pets will inform the animal shelters, rather than hold onto them.

Bob Ballenger, executive assistant with the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, said one woman burst into tears when she found her dog at the shelter. “She was sobbing. The dog was about the only thing left of her former life.”

Ballenger said that for some animal lovers, a pet is “the next best thing to having a child. If your cat or dog runs away or dies, you go through a grieving process much the same as for a dead relative.

“It’s incomprehensible to people who don’t love pets,” he added.

Researchers studying the human-animal bond at special centers at UC Davis, the University of Minnesota and Purdue University are only starting to understand why some people become more attached to animals than others.

Some experts speculate that the significance of animals has risen as the quality of human relationships has diminished. Some psychologists speculate that animals fill the sometimes pathological needs of lonely, isolated or incomplete people.

But the typical pet lives with a traditional family of parents and children, said Geraldine Gage, director of the Center for the Study of Human Animal Relationships and Environments at the University of Minnesota. “Human needs may be more complex and varied than we really thoroughly and totally understand. Maybe the family system was never intended to meet every need. Maybe people want a variety of emotional attachments--human and non-human,” Gage said.

But Lilli Friedland, a clinical psychologist in Century City, said she would start worrying when people look to animals for love they can’t find from human beings.

Sometimes love triangles appear with people and pets. Friedland said she hears girlfriends and wives saying to their partners, “I wish you treated me as well as your dogs, horses or birds.” She said she also hears: “ ‘I love my dog better than my wife or girlfriend. My dog always comes through for me.’ Those are not unusual comments.”

On the other hand, one Los Angeles couple lets their two Dobermans share their double bed. A Malibu couple went even further, sharing the foot of their bed with a deer. The deer had been abandoned by its mother, and after the couple nursed it back to health it stayed for 20 years, Roberts said.

Whether pets need to be rescued during disasters often depends on whether they are confined, officials said. Even then, cats may scamper off to safety through an exploded window, but they are harder to find later than dogs. Dogs, on the other hand, are extremely loyal and territorial, Ballenger said. One dog was found after the fire still waiting behind a chain-link door, even though his owners’ house and the surrounding fence had burned down.

Gibbins’ cat found a corner of the basement to wait out the fire and “got very lucky,” said Dr. Howard Baker at the Agoura Animal Clinic, which houses the now-famous pet. “Any others if left in those homes would have perished.”

Elsa’s pads were burned off all four paws, he said, but they will regrow and the cat should be healed in few weeks.

Meanwhile, at least 1,000 people have called from as far away as England and Spain to inquire about adopting Elsa, said County Animal Control Officer Ken Miller, based in Agoura Hills.

Gibbins’ mother may also take Elsa, said Madeline Bernstein, regional vice president of theASPCA. But, she added: “You can imagine the mixed feelings she would have about that cat.”