Mel, a staff member at Chesterfield Animal Shelter, crouched over a guinea pig cage, clearing out feces and old blankets. She was working in the shelter’s Rabbit Room, the space dedicated to rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters. Around her sat boxes of hay, blankets and other supplies. 

 

There were three rabbit intakes in October of this year, compared to the six in October of last year. There have been just 73 rabbit intakes for the entire year, which is a stark difference in comparison to the 139 total rabbits taken into the shelter in 2020. But this decline in numbers is an outlier in the shelter.

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Mel, who asked to use only her first name, currently works at Chesterfield, one of L.A.’s six animal shelters. She attends Los Angeles Community College and  previously worked at West LA animal shelter but said that South LA provides more of a tight-knit community among the staff. But the shelter is not without issues. 

 

For years, LA has been criticized for their lack of attention to public animal shelters. In June, overcrowding overwhelmed all six LA animal shelters. At the San Pedro location, there were 186 dogs and just 80 kennels, as reported by ABC7. In early June, Mayor Karen Bass picked Staycee Dains as the general manager for the Animal Services department. Dains was previously the director of Animal Care Services for the city of Long Beach and worked as a shelter operations manager at San Jose’s Animal Care and Services for a decade. Bass’s hope is that Dains is able to smooth things over between staff and volunteers and mitigate the crowded shelter conditions.

 

As of the end of September, euthanasia rates for cats and kittens have already surpassed the total of last year, as reported by L.A. Animal Services data. So far, there have been 413 cats euthanized this year and 680 kittens euthanized. To compare, in 2019 (pre-pandemic) 388 total cats and 446 kittens were euthanized. There are no statistics for rabbit euthanasias available on the data. 

 

One reason for the uptick: more kittens being born.

 

Back in the Cat Room in Chesterfield, ginger tabby cats batted around colorful feather-adorned toys. Kittens, grouped together in twos, mewed from inside their metal cages, batting their paws out of the bars in order to get attention.

 

“I can tell you that the kitten season for this year in Los Angeles has been out of control,” said Toni Barrett, the executive director of Kitty Bungalow. The nonprofit cat rescue often takes cats from the shelter and adopts them out through their organization. 

 

Los Angeles County requires cats (and dogs) to be spayed or neutered by 4 months of age. Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) provides vouchers for reimbursements when animals are taken from shelters to be spayed/neutered at outside clinics. 

 

Residents who have adopted cats, dogs or rabbits from any shelter location are able to fill out a spay/neuter voucher application. Low-income residents of L.A. can apply for a $70 certificate for cats or a $125 certificate for a rabbit. According to L.A. Rabbit Foundation, “costs vary between $125 for a low-cost neuter to $1,500 for a spay done by an exotic specialist.” The vouchers do not count for stray or feral animals, as well as animals associated with rescue programs. 

 

“I think right now there's a huge shift in Los Angeles and in animal welfare in general about removing these barriers for people to get access to adoptions, to medical help for their already owned pets or spay and neuter services, which the vouchers are really great for,” Barrett said.

 

Dains reported that 26 clinics are accepting spay/neuter vouchers including the ASPCA and CAMP Clinic Jefferson Park during the Nov. 14 board of animal services commissioners meeting. 

 

Rescues in L.A. have stepped up to take some of the load off the shelter. Earlier this month, the Stray Cat alliance aided the shelter. LAAS had asked the organization to take four juvenile cats and kittens with ringworm from the Chesterfield shelter and they ended up taking those four plus nine more.

 

“Animal welfare, especially in L.A., is a team effort. It’s a collaboration. We're constantly working with the shelters, other rescues, our community,” Barrett said. 

 

Every once and a while a sneeze would echo through the shelter Cat Room. Many of the cages were marked with a blue sticker with the letters U-R-I printed on them. One of the volunteers, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from shelter staff, said that it stood for Upper Respiratory Infection. In cats, the disease is quite transmissible, which is why volunteers always ask that the public don’t touch the animals unless they are seriously considering adoption. 

 

Outside the room a noisy cat looked with wanting eyes up at the volunteer. 

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“He’s our rat-catcher,” she said. 

 

Chester (named after the shelter) is a stray cat that roams around the shelter. She placed some wet and dry food in front of the Cat Room door and the brown and black tabby came up to eat. His white paws stood out against the gray of the concrete. Those inside stared at him through the glass. Unfazed by the more than 200 dogs barking from kennels just feet away, he finished his food quickly. 

 

Having a “rat-catcher” is not uncommon. Especially with a recent bill being passed outlawing the use of a popular rodenticide, some are turning to cats to do the job instead. 

 

“We take undersocialized or feral cats from L.A. Animal Services,” Alma Vera, the director of programs and operations at Kitty Bungalow said. “We put them in bars, wineries, homes, all kinds of amazing places.” She explained that these cats go on to serve as working cats, catching mice and rats. 

 

“I wish I could trade places with these guys because they sometimes live in multimillion dollar mansions, overlooking the pacific ocean,” she said.

 

When walking out of the shelter doors, a cat volunteer at the shelter pointed across 60th Street at the bus yard. A little brown dog stared at the shelter from behind the gate just a few yards away. She said that people often “dump” their animals across the street when they can no longer care for them. The scruffy pup stared out of the gate, starting to cross the street until a car drove by. A scrawny white cat with a long thin tail was also meandering in between the buses. Both longing to come inside. 

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But some take a different approach when choosing to surrender their animals. Olaf, a small white terrier, sat in South L.A. resident Jasmine Fisher’s lap inside a black Infiniti SUV parked outside of the shelter on Nov. 16. 

 

“Right now the landlord doesn’t allow animals and we have to let him go and find somewhere,” Fisher said. 

 

Jasmine Fisher and Marlena Lene say goodbye to their white terrier, Olaf (Photo by Nicki Berelson)

 

During a board meeting held on Nov. 28, Commissioner Larry Gross announced the successful approval of a motion aimed at safeguarding tenants who adopted animals during the pandemic. The motion passed through the Neighborhoods and Community Enrichment Committee and is now with the Housing Committee for a second referral.

 

Fisher and the woman sitting in the driver’s seat, Marlena Lene, said that they are bringing Olaf back home because the staff at the shelter gave them a time to come back and drop him off. She is confident in the shelter’s ability to place her dog in a good home. 

 

“I’m familiar with South L.A., they treat their animals well,” Lene said, noting, “They take good care of them.”

 

Vera agreed with Lene’s sentiment. 

 

“I know firsthand that the staff that work there are animal lovers. They really care. You know, it's just that animal shelters are unfortunately just a resource for people dumping animals,” Vera said.  

 

Berrett criticized people who bash the shelters online and challenged them to do more in terms of fostering or volunteering instead of being “keyboard warriors.” Berrett added that a lot of the criticism aimed at the shelters is unwarranted and that the people working in them are doing “the best that they can.”

 

Shelter staff and managers did not respond to requests for comment at time of publication.

 

Adrian Perez stood under a tent outside the shelter on a sunny Friday afternoon. He is the director of mobile clinic operations at the Community Animal Medicine Project, a nonprofit that provides medical services to the pets of underserved communities. He said residents of the area are often faced with a very difficult question,

 

“Do I get vaccines for my pet or do I get groceries?” Perez asked. The reduced cost of shots, sometimes as low as $15 a pop, ensures that people aren’t faced with having to make that decision. 

 

Lorena Rodriguez lives around the Chesterfield shelter. She has previously adopted dogs and cats. She often looks at posts of animals in need of homes on the Nextdoor app. 

 

“I prefer to come and adopt because they need a home. If you don’t adopt them, they’re gonna kill them,” Rodriguez said.

 

According to the most recent (October) statistics, about 3,747 cats and kittens died in care, went missing, stolen or escaped, or were euthanized across all the shelters in L.A. That is about 11 animals per day. However, this number accounts for just about 5% of the outcomes of these animals. The remainder get adopted out by the public or rescues, returned to their original owners, or released. 

 

Olivia Braggs is Rodriguez’s daughter and a student at San Francisco State University studying to be a veterinarian. The mother and daughter pair waited patiently outside the shelter for their paperwork to be processed. 

 

“I could have the choice to go online and buy a dog. But I prefer to come here to save their life,” Rodriguez said.