Ltrim- or modifying the title.

I have a category called In And Around Town followed by the post date so ie.
Heard Around Town, Jan. 19, 2012
This is perfect for the post page, but what im looking to do is that
on the posts page or category page is to ltrim or modify the title to just show “Jan. 19, 2012” Ive been playing around with ltrim, but cant seem to get it to work.
something like..
<?php $the_title = ltrim (the_title(“”,”0″)); ?>

anyone point me in the right direction?

regards