Hurricane Harvey and our Future

The last couple of weeks has been incredibly tragic with the onslaught of Hurricane Harvey on  Southern Texas. My thoughts have been with the families and the animals in community and hope that they have overcome the challenges that this storm brought along, with Hurricane Harvey and our Future.

Seeing all of the posts about Houston Strong are very emotional and inspiring. I am hopeful that many lessons were learned with Katrina and I think many people brought their pets with them when they were evacuated. However, for community cats there aren’t many options.

Community Cats have no options when a storm comes. In the Northeast every winter community cats are faced with tremendous challenges during snow storms of several feet. Cats are thought as the ultimate survivor and that is what we always hope for. One of my takeaways from a tragic event like this is that we should prioritize spay/neuter even more for our community cats so that we will have fewer of them in our communities over time.

Hurricane Harvey and our Future

With Hurricane Irma moving in Florida, I worry that our weather will continue to be more extreme, our heat will be higher, our storms stronger, our winds faster, our snow higher, and the cold much colder….  These are natural worries. But then we have the potential for man-made disasters.

Today is 9/11. I remember specifically where I was when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was in the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society’s first shelter discussing checking out the cats in the shelter and a cat’s health with our veterinarian. The office heard on the radio about the horrible incident. The unbelievable became believable. Lives were taken and changed forever. Images of these incredible service dogs and their handlers working so hard to assist. Unfortunately, we continue to live in a world where the unbelievable can be believable.

What are the lessons learned? Always make sure you can be prepared for anything for your own pets.  For community cats? Reduce the numbers, have sturdy, high and weather protected shelters for our cats. What do you think we should help our community cats during these tragic situations. Please comment on our Facebook page.

It is times like these that I am so thankful to all of you who are out there saving, feeding, trapping and advocating for our community cats, in tragedy and every day.

Purrs, Stacy