PET 'GUARDIANSHIP' MAY ENTAIL SOME LIABILITY.

Byline: Samantha Kimmel Local View

THE Los Angeles City Council has done it again: It's eyeing a proposal that's gone and riled up the villagers.

What is this proposal that's caused certain groups to set forth in full cry, waving torches and pitchforks?

Does it have something to do with the fact we are in a serious drought and President Bush is threatening to put those of us who are H2O-dependent in further peril by slashing our Colorado River water rations?

Nope.

Is it something about our dwindling police force and the city's incredibly expensive efforts to lure back officers who fled our jurisdiction for greener, much less violent and certainly less weird pastures?

Not a chance.

It's about puppies. Puppies, kitties, hamsters, turtles and Korean pot- bellied pigs. It's about what we call these animals in our lives.

A city commission has proposed changing the wording on all official documents from ``pet owner'' to ``pet guardian.'' In fact, the Animal Services Department has started using the new wording.

Yikes! Zounds! Jeepers! What will our wild and crazy bunch of leaders come up with next?

Actually, to me this sounds like the first completely rational, nonpartisan, nonpolitical trick thing the council has done in a donkey's age - I mean, the life span of a fellow creature of the equine persuasion.

What's wrong with it? Altering one word - 'owner' to 'guardian' - seems to be a serious and right-headed attempt to get human beings to realize that in sharing one's life with the four-footed, the winged, the scaly, the gilled or the shelled means the human has certain responsibilities above and beyond being the owner of a piece of property that happens to be alive.

Your ward needs things from its guardian, and those things are a warm place to sleep, food to eat, medical attention and, every now and then, a good slipper to throw up in.

So where's the problem?

Funny you should ask. Seems there are several animal rights groups that have managed to work themselves into perfect tizzies over this.

Says one Phyllis Daugherty, president of Animal Issues Movement (a nonprofit rescue group), ``Why are we wasting time and money - taxpayer time and money - on something for which we have no evidence will improve life for animals?''

Daugherty even thinks the word change will boomerang on us and make it harder to make people responsible for their treatment of animals.

Huh? This will not change any existing laws. If someone drop-kicks Fluffy through the goal posts of life, he or she will still be arrested for animal cruelty, do jail time and pay a hefty fine. Not to mention Fluffy will get a new home, many many miles from the sadistic creep who would do something like that to a cat.

Now, for Charles Ober of the Cat Fanciers Association in this case there are many, many unknowns.

Wow. And you thought the Catholic Church resisted change.

So what are these unknowns that might come leaping out of the closet of revolution and harm our animal friends?

Why, say some in these watchdog groups (are they allowed to say watchdog, by the way? Seems to be a slight on our Canus Americanus), it might give animals new legal rights, including the right to sue their guardians. This startling new power, it seems, would also frighten off people who wanted to adopt a kitty from the pound.

But here's what I'm thinking: if Nanny Goat can pick up the cell and dial 1-800-NeedALawyer to sue you on the grounds that the groats are grisly, well, more power to her. Also, she'd get her own talk show.

How are things going in places that adopted this new, daring language alteration, like all of Rhode Island; Berkeley; Sherwood, Arkansas; West Hollywood; Amherst; and, for pity's sake, that hotbed of conservative thinking, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin? Solid. They're as good to go as the day before the word change.

To date, not one guinea pig, goldfish or Norwegian ridgeback has showed up at the law offices of Larry H. Parker, demanding that its guardian be deposed.