Japanese Pitch In for Victims’ Animals : Quake: TV and newspaper coverage of pets’ plight has bolstered efforts. Veterinarians plan a shelter.

Outside the smashed walls, decapitated gate and tilted, tile-roof entrance of the 1,000-year-old Ebisu Shinto shrine, some survivors of Japan’s killer earthquake have found a temporary home. They are the dogs, cats and other pets that lost their owners in the Jan. 17 temblor that killed more than 5,000 people.

Large numbers of pets--including a penguin--have been reported roaming the streets of the disaster area. But local officials, police, firefighters and Self-Defense Forces have been too busy caring for human refugees and trying to restore urban services to devote any attention to them.

“Human life comes first, which I understand,” said Seiji Nasa, 29, a pet-goods manufacturer. “But it’s unfortunate that no one wants to do anything for animals.”

Even monks at the shrine shunted aside pleas to allow a pet shelter to be set up inside its precincts, Nasa said. “They heard reports that stray dogs had bitten people and didn’t want to get involved in trouble,” he said.

Nasa, however, is discovering that average Japanese people, despite a reputation for apathy about charity, are willing to get involved.

His pleas for help to friends and business contacts started the effort, and widespread TV and newspaper coverage bolstered it. This week, Nasa’s animal refuge had expanded to four tents. More than 30 volunteers from outside the disaster zone--”people who don’t have to worry about surviving themselves,” Nasa said--were caring for about 100 pets.

The principal tasks were to comfort whining and barking dogs and wrap dogs and cats in blankets to shield them from the near-freezing temperatures.

On the sides of the tents were photos of lost pets and appeals for their return.

The tents--as well as tables, folding chairs, cages, blankets and pet food piled on a sidewalk--all were donated. Among the contributors were the Japan Kennel Club and the Japan Animal Welfare Assn.

Veterinarians in the disaster area have announced plans to build a permanent shelter for 1,000 displaced pets. No one has estimated the actual need, but at the time of the quake, 80,000 dogs were registered as pets in Hyogo prefecture, or state, which contains Kobe--the city where the quake was centered--and nearby Nishinomiya.

Until the veterinarians’ compound is finished, Nasa’s center is the only organization helping people who lost their homes and want to entrust their pets to others and people who want to adopt pets.

Sueko Ikuta, a woman in her 50s who had come from Osaka with her teen-age daughter, is typical.

“I wanted to do something to help out in the earthquake disaster. Adopting a pet is all I can do,” she said.

“I heard on TV that they were looking for the pets’ owners and thought I could help out because I have strong legs. I can do any amount of walking that is necessary,” said Hiroko Sakurai, 49, who drove 2 1/2 hours to lend a hand.

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Ichiro Wagai, 39, a veterinarian who left his pet hospital in Tokyo in the hands of his employees and came here several days after the quake, said average Japanese “all want to do something.”

“It’s hard to do volunteer work because organizations haven’t been nurtured to carry it out. In Japan, government officials carry out what Americans and Europeans think of as charity,” he said.

Wagai said he was surprised to find few animals with serious injuries.

“Apparently most of the pets that were trapped in the rubble did not escape,” he said.

One 15-year-old dog, however, was rescued after being trapped in the debris of its owner’s house for 12 days. And four miniature penguins were rescued after 10 days from an indoor pool that remained intact as a building collapsed around it.

One of the penguins later ran away and was found in the streets of Kobe.

“Police thought that initial reports of the penguin were a joke,” Masayuki Imai, 43, the owner, said in a telephone interview.