As hurricane Harvey whallops Texas and flood Houston to a truly remarkable degree, comparisons to hurricane Katrina are inevitable. There have been some deaths due to Harvey, but nothing – at least so far – comparable to the more than a thousand dead in Katrina. Plus, the Cajun Navy is there in force rescuing people… but I notice a lack of reporting about all the folks being rescued by the Antifa Navy. Maybe their efforts are being held in reserve…
Another difference: in Katrina, hundreds of thousands of pets were simply abandoned. Many died, many were re-homed. At the time I was puzzled… I can understand the panic that comes with having to pack up and split in a hurry, but leaving pets behind? OK, pets like fish and lizards I get, but abandoning cats and dogs? Nope. Just… nope. These creatures are, as I’ve said before, On Our Team. You don’t leave team members behind. A lot of it, I suppose, was due to rescue services not letting people take their pets, a situation that has fortunately changed: as I type this, a bit on CNN shows a fire department boat going door to door in a suburb (there’s a phrase you don’t read too often) collecting families… and their pets. A police officer was shown helping a family find their freaked-out cat, another family loaded their dog onto the boat. Good on all y’all.
The coverage certainly seems to suggest that Texans are doing a better job of taking their pets with them when they leave.
A man carries his dog from his flooded home as he is rescued from rising floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey in Spring, Texas. pic.twitter.com/CM4gAubroJ
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 28, 2017
Harvey and Pet Owners
Plus:
List of animal shelters and rescues in the path of Hurricane Harvey
Plus: it’s interesting to see humans coming to the aid of *non* pet animals. A popular story ove the last few days has been that of a Coopers Hawk that took shelter from the coming storm in a taxi:
What’s spiffy is that the taxi driver took the hawk in and provided aid and comfort to this wild animal. See the updates on the guys YouTube channel. The hawk turned out to be injured in some way that prevented flight; after a few days it was transferred to the care of a wildlife center.
Where I live the chances of a flood are pretty slim. More likely are things like fire and earthquake and ashfall from supervolcanos. But I would *like* to think that if the time came to bail I’d take the time and effort to gather up the cats. Fortunately I’ve not had to put that to the test, but I’m reasonably sure that any disaster that gives me more than a few minutes warning is going to see me stuffing cats into crates.