NASHUA, N.H. — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney often touts a long list of campaign promises on the trail, elaborating at length on each and pointing to a towering “to do” placard onstage that boasts of even more. But on Monday, one issue clearly took him off guard: America’s growing population of cats, dogs and other pets.

“I’d like to ask you a question that has not been asked throughout this whole campaign of any candidate so far,” Karen Bill, executive director of the Humane Society for Greater Nashua, said following the former Massachusetts governor’s speech to local business leaders, where he drew loud applause moments earlier for calling for an end to illegal immigration.

The dining room at the Nashua Golf Club, crammed with several hundred voters and more than two dozen journalists, fell silent.

“There is an extreme overpopulation crisis of pets in this country. Millions upon millions and there’s very few solutions,” she said, before asking how he would resolve the issue “outside of giving each (illegal immigrant) a cat and a dog as they go back home,” she said as the room erupted in laughter.

Romney, who typically fields questions with businesslike efficiency and was tagged earlier in the campaign for stories about putting his dog in a kennel tied to the roof of his station wagon during long family trips, for a moment was clearly stumped.

“I don’t know how many pets there are in this country. I have to be honest with that,” he said. “I was pretty well briefed for the debates the other night,” he added to whoops of laughter.

But he eventually took up the challenge and said he would handle the problem of pets much in the way he tackles other policy issues: he would form a committee, seek outside advice from experts and tackle it seriously.

Bill asked if she could get a job on his White House “pet committee”. Romney agreed. “There are government jobs going here right now,” he added to another round of loud laughter.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mike Segar