Despite Exoneration, Cat Doctor Still Hurting From Cruelty Claim

Life is touch-and-go at T.H.E. Cat Hospital of Irvine these days.

Tom Elston, the reigning veterinarian, is back doing what he loves best--operating on small, furry animals, dispensing advice to their owners and occasionally scraping the plaque off sharp little feline teeth.

But the hospital lobby, once teeming with mewing patients, is a lot quieter now. Elston, 50, is more circumspect in his dealings with those who do come. And his once-sterling reputation as one of the premier cat doctors in the country has been tarnished by events over which he says he had no control.

“We may be forced to close our doors,” says Elston, who opened the animal hospital and kennel--at one time among Orange County’s busiest--in 1993.

At the root of the problem is a question that tears at the very heart of the veterinary calling--is this healer of animals a man who also abuses them? Specifically, did he get so mad at a patient that he stomped on it, swung it by the tail and choked it until its tongue turned blue?

A former employee swears that he did, even though there were no injuries.

Elston denies it, characterizing his actions as legitimate attempts to restrain an out-of-control animal that were misunderstood by an inexperienced observer. A court of law ultimately agreed with him. Yet before being exonerated, the feline veterinarian--one of about 45 certified cat doctors in the country and a nationally recognized pioneer in the field--had his license suspended for several months.

The interruption caused a 30% dip in a practice that once saw 400 animals a month and caused concern among fellow practitioners who feel that it could just as easily have happened to them. “It’s been so demeaning,” Elston says of the ordeal. “Things have gotten way out of hand.”

The ordeal that could put him out of business began on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday in 1996. One of the kennel’s boarders that day was a cat named Mickey, a black male that needed medication. “I went to get him out of his cage and he freaked out,” Elston recalled. “He started throwing himself against the side of the cage, escaped, ran frantically around the treatment room. . . .”

Eventually the vet was able to regain control by grabbing the cat’s tail, pinning the animal underfoot and, finally, holding him by the scruff of his neck, he said. In the process, he said, both he and an aide were badly bitten. “At that point,” Elston said, “I had control of him and was determined that he wouldn’t get away.”

But a part-time hospital employee saw it differently. Vanessa Charfen, then 15, was a high school student who idolized Elston and wanted to be a veterinarian. What she observed that day, however, left her deeply surprised and upset.

“Right after it happened I just took off, went into the bathroom and cried to myself for quite a while,” Charfen, now 17, recalls. “I came home that night in tears and didn’t know what to do.”

What she did do was call the Irvine Police Department, which sent two animal control officers out to investigate. The matter might have ended there, but for a similar incident witnessed by a young driver for the city’s animal control department a few months later.

The driver was delivering an animal to the veterinary hospital when he saw Elston giving chemotherapy to a cat. When the cat tried to escape, the driver said, Elston held it by one leg and at one point smacked it. Elston agrees that he grabbed the cat’s leg, but denies hitting it.

In any case, the second complaint was enough for Irvine police to turn the case over to the district attorney’s office.

After being charged with misdemeanor cruelty to animals in Harbor Municipal Court, the veterinarian agreed to a plea bargain, which he now says was a major mistake. In exchange for pleading guilty and agreeing to take a course in anger management, Elston said, the court promised that the conviction would be dismissed. That eventually happened, alleviating his concerns regarding a permanent criminal record. But then news of the guilty plea reached the California Veterinary Medical Board in Sacramento.

“Cruelty is something that sets off alarm bells,” said Susan Geranen, executive officer of the board which licenses veterinarians statewide. Only a handful of such complaints against veterinarians are filed each year, she said. “It’s the worst violation for veterinarians. Animals can’t tell you what’s going on, so when someone does and there’s a conviction we have to move forward.”

Acting under state guidelines that eliminate the need for further investigation once a conviction has been entered, the board immediately suspended Elston’s license pending the outcome of the case. That triggered a civil hearing before an administrative law judge who decided that although Elston was not guilty of criminal cruelty toward animals, he had acted below the standards of his profession. The judge upheld a temporary suspension of Elston’s license.

Elston appealed to the Superior Court, where in November, a judge absolved the veterinarian of all guilt.

The testimony against him, the judge ruled, was not credible because neither of the cats involved had sustained any injuries. Yet while waiting for the case to be settled, Elston had been forced out of practice for 100 days--a pause potentially devastating to any career.

“The allegations didn’t make any sense,” his attorney, Richard Vilkin, said. “I don’t know why these charges were brought forward--it shouldn’t have happened.”

In all, the cat doctor says he lost about $200,000 in gross income and owes another $100,000 in legal fees. And the negative publicity, he said, has seriously besmirched his reputation. “It wasn’t much of a vacation,” Elston said of the more than three months he spent in forced premature retirement. “It seriously put my life on hold.”

To help get it back on the move, he recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Irvine and several of its animal control officers charging them with filing “false and/or misleading police reports” that resulted in the actions against him. A Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, or the city’s earlier investigation of the complaints against Elston.

And fellow veterinarians say the case has raised fears that what happened to Elston could happen to anyone.

“All of us have restrained aggressive animals in ways that we would have preferred not to,” said Gayle R. Roberts, one of nine veterinarians--virtually the city’s entire population of animal doctors--who signed a letter supporting Elston. While putting an animal underfoot to control it is unusual, she said, it is not necessarily abusive. “When you have a totally aggressive animal you have to restrain it in ways that will prevent it from hurting others, and that could look frightening to a novice,” she said.

Daryl R. Mabley, owner of the Arbor Animal Hospital in Irvine, agrees. “Before they gave him the veterinary equivalent of a death penalty,” Mabley said, “he should have been judged by his peers. That wasn’t done. From what I understand, I don’t think Tom stepped over the line.”

Back at the cat hospital, meanwhile, “Dr. Tom,” as some of his customers call him, says he’s thankful for the patients that have remained.

“I really like him,” Sherry Lunday, a pet owner from Yorba Linda, said during a recent visit with her two 13-year-old cats, Tuxedo and Racu. “He’s the first vet who, when he gave them their vaccinations, didn’t make them flinch. He is very calm and gentle, and the cats like him.”

Not everyone, however, likes the outcome of the case. Geranen, of the veterinary medical board, says she stands by her decision to suspend Elston’s license and agrees with the administrative law judge. And Vanessa Charfen, whose call to police started the whole ball of yarn, says that the experience has left her disheartened.

“I don’t know what I can tell people to make them believe me,” she said. “I feel like I’m in a room screaming and nobody can hear.”