CARING FOR HOMELESS PETS

Re “A Painful Debate for Animal Lovers,” Aug. 27: People often don’t know that the local humane society or SPCA is not the same thing as the city pound. The pound (now often known as Animal Care and Control) is an arm of public health and safety, and is legally obligated to take in every animal. Humane societies, on the other hand, are chartered specifically to protect animals. It is not necessarily their mission to take in every homeless animal.

In our home state of Utah at this time of year, Best Friends AnimalSanctuary is gearing up for the annual Utah’s Week for the Animals. This week of animal care and education includes all the major humane societies, animal control facilities and shelters, plus schools, veterinarians and animal lovers. Nobody is bickering over “kill” or “no-kill.” We all have our functions, and we all work together to bring about a time when there are no more homeless pets.

FRANCIS BATTISTA

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

Los Angeles Outreach

“Foster Felines” (Aug. 25) certainly illustrated the need for volunteer foster parents for newborn kittens at animal shelters throughout Los Angeles. However, you write that the city Animal Services foster program “is the first of its kind in Los Angeles,” which is inaccurate.

Since its inception in 1877, well before the birth of city animal services, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles was unofficially fostering newborns, as well as housing abused and battered people and children. In the 1980s, SPCALA officially opened a volunteer-based foster program in Los Angeles for newborn kittens and puppies left motherless or too ill to fend for themselves. Today the SPCALA’s foster program also includes adult animals.

SPCALA fosters over 400 animals each year, animals that surely would have died without the extra help of dedicated volunteers and staff. More important is a reminder that only through sterilization can we as a city and as a society see a change in the millions of dogs and cats killed because of overpopulation. Please spay and neuter your pets.

MADELINE BERNSTEIN

President, SPCALA

Los Angeles