Shelter issues first help request

If Ruby is any indication, the floundering economy really does hit the most helpless the hardest. Ruby is responsible for nine newborns who each have a chronic respiratory problem, just like she does.

But that’s where DiAnna Pfaff-Martin and Community Animal Network swoop in. Ruby is a cat with nine kittens rescued from a shelter by the network.

“When you rescue from death row, they come out sick,” said Pfaff-Martin, the founder of the nonprofit organization that rescues, rehabilitates, houses and adopts out animals from the streets and from other organizations and shelters that euthanize.

The kicker is, recently, the network can’t pay all the bills.

Pfaff-Martin founded Community Animal Network in 1996 and served primarily Costa Mesa and Newport Beach.

Since then she’s expanded to most of Orange County, but this is the first year she has had to actively campaign for donations.

“This is the first time I’ve put a stamp on an envelope and sent something out to ask for money,” Pfaff-Martin said.

In the heyday of 2006, the organization would adopt out about 10 animals a week; in 2007 about four or five.

Now, organization officials say that because of the economy and the construction in front of Russo’s Pet Experience in Fashion Island — their normal adoption display location — they never know if they’ll even find a pet a home.

In the past, high adoption fees have covered their community involvement, which includes picking up the tough-to-adopt animals from other organizations.

Part of their sustainability is because they charge $300 to adopt a kitten, $350 for a bottle-fed, hand-raised kitten and $175 for adult cats.

“Our prices, they’re like the Neiman Marcus of cat rescue,” Pfaff-Martin said, but kittens are really the ones who pay the bills.

Those bills are the ones the nonprofit runs up taking care of the animals they don’t think anyone would otherwise want to adopt and covering medical and care-giving costs for the animals in their foster homes.

Pfaff-Martin tells the story of two Labrador retrievers who had about $1,800 in veterinarian bills each because of skin, eye and ear conditions. Both were adopted out for about $100.