Animal Passion : 235 million pets. $17 billion for supplies. $7 billion for health care. What do these numbers say about us? Infatuation.

Ask Allan Marion if he has children, and he flips his wallet open to a photo of Cosette and Liza. The girls’ baby books are in the works. They have dinnerware with engraved nameplates, custom-made beds with velvet coverlets, a motorized ball, a kitty fishing pole and a dozen Super Balls.

This day, Marion, 37, wants Liza to demonstrate her physical prowess. In a coaxing voice, he urges her on. WHOOSH! Liza launches herself into a 360-degree flip, five feet off the ground. Marion beams, the hopeless victim of unabashed kitty love.

“ They are our children,” he says, sitting on the floor of his Sherman Oaks house with Liza, an American Shorthair silver tabby, his wife, Susan, nearby. Cosette, a straight-eared Scottish fold with calico markings, has disappeared. “They have the run of the house. We just live here. When we go away, I get manic. I call to check on them. [The sitter] puts them on the phone.” (When one now-deceased cat fell ill, the couple paid extra for vet house calls.)

By all accounts, pets are living larger than ever, and neither the occasional hairball between our toes nor mounds of dog doo, nor welted, flea-bitten legs seem to deter us. More than half of U.S. households have one or more pets, a figure that has steadily increased over the past decade. In 1988, Americans had about 205 million pets, contrasted with 235 million today. Dollars shelled out on pets for supplies and food are also way up, from about $3.9 billion annually 20 years ago to about $17 billion today. An additional $7 billion a year is spent on health care.

Legitimizing our inner cat/dog lover is an explosion of pet literature, including books on the emotional and social lives of dogs and cats, treatises on “pet souls” (suggesting animals have an afterlife) and novels with pet protagonists and poetry written by writers’ dogs (trans-channeled, of course, via their masters).

There are cat hotels (Burbank and Westside), day-care centers (Yuppie Puppy in New York, where “Lassie” and “The Wizard of Oz” are favorite videos, and a Doggy Daycare Center in San Francisco) and high-end specialty stores for the chic, anti-bourgeois pet set (Harley-Davidson leathers come in dog and cat sizes; can body piercing be far behind?).

Shrinks, psychics, dentists, acupuncturists, chiropractors, homeopaths and taxi/ambulance services cater to the quadruped class. Veterinarians charge thousands of dollars to treat the ill--less than 2% of whom are covered by pet health insurance--for kidney failure, cancer, hip problems, epilepsy and diabetes.

At the high end of the pet-services continuum is the Burbank Cat Hotel, sort of the Ritz-Carlton equivalent in lodgings. Done in minimalist decor, mostly black with white tile and gray carpeting, each cage is furnished with an overstuffed, slip-covered couch (cat-size), two other lounging spots in paw-pleasing fabric (faux fur) and a miniature TV.

New Age music (such L.A. cats!) is piped in, sinus-clearing peppermint aromatherapy fills the air. A huge fish tank is built into one wall. Cats stroll individually every day, often perching on the counter across from the tank to be hypnotized by the fishes’ movements.

“It’s fantastic with that nocturnal atmosphere,” says Mark Delman, 56, who checked his black-and-white kitten, Hi-Shear, into the posh hotel while he and his wife, Sally, took an 11-day trip up the Mississippi River. Hi-Shear took a “super-condo” at a rate of $35 a night. The total cost: $405.

“I’m that crazy guy . . . who spends lavish amounts of money and loves his pet more than anything else in the world,” Delman said. “You can’t always trust neighbors to do what they say they will do. Plus the cat was so young [three months] and she has fear of the unknown. I didn’t want her to get the fear factor so young in life. I called every day to ask, ‘How’s my baby?’ [The money spent] was worth it for the peace of mind.”

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Obviously, simply caring for Puddy Tat and Rover does not fully express our passion.

About 62% of the country’s 54 million dog owners buy poochie Christmas gifts; 20% buy birthday gifts; 25% woo their pets on Valentine’s Day.

About half of the 59.4 million cat owners and a third of all small-animal owners report lavishing pets with holiday presents. People fete their pets with birthday parties (one local man threw a surprise party for his dog). Others dress them up in tuxedos, tutus, Santa suits, peacoats or bikinis.

Lines of greeting cards, pet-to-owner and pet-to-pet--”Sorry to hear you got fixed”--are flying off the racks, industry sources say.

Capitalizing on such anthropomorphic tendencies are mega-stores--500 of which have opened nationwide. Doggie car seats and seat belts (keeps Fido from face-slamming the dash) backpacks (for the working dog), kitty press-on nails (in red, green or natural, for couch-shredders), reptile rock warmers (for the snake that has everything), kitty tepees, pigs’ ears (yummiest chew), sanitary napkins and fragrance equivalents of Giorgio, Opium and Chanel for the skankier pet sector.

Such lavish demonstrations notwithstanding, intraspecies relations are not without dysfunction.

“We’re in therapy,” says Sarah Bruck, 40, with a sigh. Bruck, a Corona del Mar resident, shares her house with her husband, Richard, 47, and their two Malteses, Col. Beauregarde and Miss Dixie.

“We’ve been diagnosed with PPC [Pack-Position Confusion],” says Bruck. “It’s where they think they are top dog and they train me to give them what they want [Baa-Baa-Q-Bits, made from lamb].

“So we’re re-establishing our pack position [to the tune of $700]. When Beauregarde is throwing a temper tantrum, I roll him on his back and growl until he licks me [the canine equivalent of saying Uncle ]. I have to defend my position by barking and growling when we go on walks. It’s sort of embarrassing.”

For the Brucks, who are unable to have children, the dogs fill a certain need.

There are no dog-free zones in their lives. The Brucks take the fluff pups on vacations (rent a Winnebago), driving (Beauregarde takes the wheel, but Master steers), shopping (they ride in the cart on sheepskin), to Lakers games (park near the guard, doggies lounge in the car), kaffeeklatsch (La Mocha at Fashion Island with the little darlings tied to the railing) and for romantic dinners complete with a little spousal te^te-a-te^te (table for four, please).

“We don’t want them getting dirty [they see the hairdresser and manicurist weekly], and I don’t want the waiter punting them either,” says Bruck, who has a hula skirt for Miss Dixie, and who is considering throwing a luau for the dog’s dancing debut.

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But just how far will people go to save an ill pet?

The Whitman family went the distance. In 1992, their 22-pound cat, Herb, needed a $16,000 kidney transplant. They flew him from their Albany, Ore., home to the All Care Clinic in Fountain Valley for the operation. Herb lived three more years, requiring about $1,600 worth of medication a year. Tom and Jill Whitman, now 42 and 35, had a joint income of about $70,000 at the time. They decided with their daughter, Heather, now 5, to sacrifice vacations to save Herb.

“You can’t sum up in words what he brought to our family,” says Jill Whitman, who added that next year the family will take its first vacation since the ordeal began. “When Heather was sick, he would lie with her and not move even to eat. If I had a bad day and was crying, he would lick my tears. He was like a reincarnated person.”

Sharon Fargus abandoned the sharks in the corporate world a couple of years ago to work at home, where beagle Gus and feline pals Fred and Lili are her colleagues.

“Their loyalty is much more unconditional than human loyalty,” says Fargus, 43, who lives with her husband, Jeff, et al., in a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica.

“All they are really concerned about is playing and love,” says Fargus, who is taking a Zen-like approach to raising Gus, with “The Art of Raising a Puppy” (Little Brown and Co., 1991), written by the monks of New Skete monastery in Cambridge, N.Y. A quote introducing the first chapter sums it up: “A dog is better than I am, for he has love and does not judge.”

Fargus says it is her pet’s unquestioning devotion that so enthralls her.

“Gus follows me and adores me. I wanted that constant companion. He’s really protective, and if he thinks there is something wrong with Mommy he gets really upset. They live for you.”

The Farguses just built Gus a 6-by-3-foot digging pit ($170) on the patio (fenced in with a fountain for the kitties) and buried his toys in it.

“It’s a good outlet for him,” she says. “He is the joy of my life. He is in puppy kindergarten right now. We don’t want him to be too regimented, but do want him to be safe and not run into the street. It’s the closest thing I can imagine to a child.”

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How Popular Is Your Pet?

Here are America’s favorite household pals:

* Cats: 60 million, the fastest growing group of pets.

* Dogs: 57 million.

* Pocket pets (rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils and, uh, hedgehogs): 12.3 million.

* Fish: 12 million fish tanks.

* Birds: 8 million.

* Reptiles: 7.3 million.

* Ferrets: 7 million.

Source: American Animal Hospital Assn.’s 1994 North American pet owner survey and Shelters That Adopt & Rescue, a national ferret rescue group based in Virginia.