Foster Kittens

* Martha Willman’s foster felines article (“Cat’s Cradles,” Aug. 23) certainly illustrates the need for volunteer foster parents for newborn kittens at animal shelters throughout Los Angeles. However, Willman writes that the Los Angeles City Animal Services 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 (spcaLA) 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 includes adult animals too sick for shelter life who need extra TLC for recuperation before being placed for adoption.

MADELINE BERNSTEIN

President, spcaLA

Studio City

Editor’s note: The West Valley foster kitten program is the first to be operated by Los Angeles City Animal Services. In addition to spcaLA, similar programs are sponsored by the Glendale Humane Society and other private, nonprofit groups in the Los Angeles area.