Helping the Pets That Sustain Us

Every loyalty, love, frolic and helplessness of creatures great and small is with veterinarian Alice Villalobos, her Coast Pet Clinic and its residents.

There’s King, an 18-year-old cat, 20 pounds of smoky fluff retired to his basket after a draining career as a feline blood donor.

“He’s given 10 gallons,” Villalobos said.

The clinic’s lobby is guarded by Trinket, 18, long in tooth, short on courtesy, quick on the nip.

“Our welcome wagon and the world’s oldest marmoset monkey.”

A pinfeathered waif, all beak and bead eyes, arrived this week. It might be a mockingbird. But right now, life for Curly is a boarding cage, a heat lamp and all the eyedropper meals he can gulp.

Then there are paying outpatients. Isaac, a venerable Great Dane, and a chicken called Butterball Brown. Mel Torme’s cat. Ali MacGraw’s retriever.

All joined by a deadly denominator. Cancer.

Yet all with a chance--because this is Villalobos’ clinic and she’s pushier than most. That has made hers the only veterinary clinic in Southern California offering radiation treatment for animal cancers.

Without Villalobos, without her General Electric machine purchased used from a New York hospital two years ago, animals survive only weeks following diagnosis.

With it, with an average series of 10 radiation treatments, a pet will be given up to 18 months of healthy life. And happy life.

“Animals don’t have the computation power of humans,” Villalobos explained. “They don’t have the concept of impending death, the mental anguish. The animal is simple in its instincts. Happy or sad. Sick or well. With radiation they are happy and well.”

Man’s inventions, however, are more temperamental than his best friends. In February, Villalobos’ radiation machine quit in mid-treatment.

Its burnout destroyed the full effectiveness of the Animal Cancer Center, a critical, applauded branch of Villalobos’ three-clinic (Hermosa Beach, Garden Grove, Woodland Hills) operation.

In more graphic terms: The failure ended treatments for 12 animals. Two owners could afford to send pets to another treatment center in Northern California. Most of the other animals have died.

At that time, Villalobos was still in debt from forming her $150,000 center built entirely on donations to her Peter Zippi Fund for Animals, a nonprofit memorial to a friend. The lead-shielded building was never a money maker, owing to her decision that to be equitable, billings could only be 60% of actual cost.

Yet by more scrounging and borrowing, by cannibalizing junk units, by volunteer labor, the center has repaired its old radiation machine. But only to 50% capacity.

“We can only offer soft radiation for superficial tumors,” Villalobos said. “That’s forcing us to turn away patients. We need to find $140,000 for a new machine. Or raise $20,000 to fix the old one.”

How? By applying another human technique to animal problems. If Jerry Lewis and Danny Thomas can appeal for people ills, reasons Villalobos, why shouldn’t there be fund-raisers for ailing pets?

Today it comes to pass. At the customarily private Magic Castle in the Hollywood Hills. Where, for a tax-deductible $50 a head, there will be several silent auctions and magic shows and a luncheon with celebrities. MacGraw. Ed Asner. Sally Struthers.

Yet in balance, in consideration of Third World hunger, with thoughts of the domestic homeless and our health care discrepancies, why a charity to save animals?

“We’re saving human grief,” countered Villalobos. “Pets are child substitutes and people have strong bonds for their animals. It goes beyond replacement. They want that dog or that cat who slept on the bed for 15 years.

“They feel very tormented if they cannot help their pet. You know, there hasn’t been one animal in this clinic that hasn’t had human tears shed over it.”

Peter Zippi Fund for Animals , Magic Castle, 7001 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, today, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., donations at door ; (213) 372-8881.