Warning: What you are about to read is a true story. It is tough to read.
A co-worker has lots of family that lived in New Orleans, including a husband and wife who both worked in a hospital.
As Hurricane Katrina approached, staff was told they could bring family and pets to the hospital. This couple brought a cat and a small dog.
Conditions deteriorated after Katrina passed by. Water rose to the second floor, forcing evacuation of patients to higher levels. The generators quit. Patients were carried on stretchers to the rooftop and evacuated by helicopters. You know similar stories from watching CNN and other news outlets.
But perhaps you haven’t heard everything. Looters entered this hospital and stole jewelry off of patients lying in their beds. Everyone was afraid. The staff, of course, was unarmed.
Finally, days later, pontoon boats arrived to take away the staff and their families. But, no pets were allowed in the boats.
Hospital staff were making the choice of putting their pets to sleep rather than leaving them in the hospital alone, without food or water, at the mercy of looters. They did this final act with tears, often hysteria.
The husband and wife held back, unwilling to sacrifice their pets, saying “no” to every rescue boat that arrived. Finally the last boat arrived to take the last people out of the hospital. Rescue teams by that time were beginning to understand that pets mattered. They had seen the trauma of leaving pets behind.
Waiting worked. The couple were allowed to leave with their pets. She held the cat in a pillowcase, holding it cross-armed against her chest. He held the dog the same way against his chest. Once on dry land, they were crammed like sardines with some 40 other people into a U.S. Army truck. Fortunately, they were not taken to the Convention Center, but to the airport. Here they knew an employee who gave them an office to sleep in for the night. The next day the couple and their pets ended up in a friend’s home.
A happy ending to a grim tale. Between this story and everything said on television about people all along the Gulf Coast ripped from their pets, you must be thinking about your situation, even if you are sitting on high ground and dry at the moment.
Now is the time to talk about this with your family. If disaster strikes, are you staying with your pets? Is there a relative or friend who would take you and your pets? What are your options? What are your priorities?
Katrina showed the world what many pet owners have known for a long time. Pets are not property. They are family. They are not possessions. Pets are a commitment to “have and to hold”. Would you leave your child behind? No, didn’t think so.
We don’t learn very fast. Katrina went away. Hurricane Rita arrived. People were told to leave their pets and flee. A photo from the Dallas Morning News shows Christopher Thomas, age 11, with his arms wrapped around his dog Harley. Christopher is crying. Residents are pleading with him and his mom to leave the dog and evacuate the Lake Charles, Louisiana area. He doesn’t want to go.
I’m with Christopher.
My family matters to me, both the two-legged ones and the four-legged little dears. They are my top priority. Everything else is background noise.
Yet, come the next disaster, people like you and me will still be asked to choose between leaving and staying with pets. It is a terrible decision that no one should have to make.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Marion County, Florida has a mobile pet unit, ready to be set up in times of disasters, in a compound right next to a human shelter. Cats and dogs are in labeled cages. Owners, next door in the shelter, come to feed them. It works. That is one solution. Can you come up with others?
If your community doesn’t have a Pet Disaster Preparedness Plan, you be the hero, you make it happen, bend ears. Set up a disaster plan for pets. Remind your commissioners that pet owners vote. Then go hug your pets, and consider adopting one of the pets abandoned in the recent hurricanes.
Lucy Tobias is a freelance writer in Ocala, Florida. She has two dogs and four cats.
Column note: for those who read about Emily, the deaf cat and the subject of an earlier column, her mouth tumor got worse very rapidly and finally she could not eat. Emily was put to sleep on Monday, Oct. 3. She spent the last few hours of her life curled up on my lap, her favorite place, before we took her to the vets. Emily is sorely missed.