i didn't know a fur kid was an *item*

[Guest guest]

maybe if you replaced the word *pet* with child...wonder how that would sound...

 

Katrina Evacuees Distraught Over Lost Pets

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Writer

 

Monday, September 5, 2005

 

 

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(09-05) 08:40 PDT ATLANTA (AP) --

 

 

As Valerie Bennett was evacuated from a New Orleans hospital, rescuers told her

there was no room in the boat for her dogs. She pleaded. " I offered him my

wedding ring and my mom's wedding ring, " the 34-year-old nurse recalled

Saturday. They wouldn't budge. She and her husband could bring only one item,

and they already had a plastic tub containing the medicines her husband, a liver

transplant recipient, needed to survive.

 

 

Such emotional scenes were repeated perhaps thousands of times along the Gulf

Coast last week as pet owners were forced to abandon their animals in the midst

of evacuation.

 

 

In one example reported last week by The Associated Press, a police officer took

a dog from one little boy waiting to get on a bus in New Orleans. " Snowball!

Snowball! " the boy cried until he vomited. The policeman told a reporter he

didn't know what would happen to the dog.

 

 

At the hospital, a doctor euthanized some animals at the request of their

owners, who feared they would be abandoned and starve to death. He set up a

small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog kennel.

 

 

" The bigger dogs were fighting it. Fighting the gas. It took them longer. When I

saw that, I said 'I can't do it,' " said Bennett's husband, Lorne.

 

 

Valerie Bennett left her dogs with the anesthesiologist, who promised to care

for about 30 staff members' pets on the roof of the hospital, Lindy Boggs

Medical Center.

 

 

" He said he'd stay there as long as he possibly could, " Valerie Bennett

recalled, speaking from her husband's bedside at Atlanta's Emory University

Hospital.

 

 

On Saturday afternoon, she said she saw a posting on a Web site called

petfinder.com that said the anesthesiologist was still caring for the animals.

 

 

Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy, who was helping with relief efforts

Saturday, said some evacuees refused to leave without their pets.

 

 

" One woman told me 'I've lost my house, my job, my car and I am not turning my

dog loose to starve,' " Kennedy said.

 

 

Kennedy said he persuaded refugees to get on the bus by telling them he would

have the animals taken to an exhibition center.

 

 

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals picked up two cats and 15

dogs, including one Kennedy found tied up beneath the overpass next to an

unopened can of dog food with a sign that read " Please take care of my dog, his

name is Chucky. "

 

 

The fate of pets is a huge but underappreciated cause of anguish for storm

survivors, said Richard Garfield, professor of international clinical nursing at

New York's Columbia University.

 

 

" People in shelters are worried about 'Did Fluffy get out?' " he said. " It's very

distressing for people, wondering if their pets are isolated or starving. "

 

 

The Bennetts had four animals, including two beloved dogs.

 

 

They moved to Slidell, La., in July when Valerie took a job at an organ

transplant institute connected to Lindy Boggs. Lorne, a former paramedic, is

disabled since undergoing a liver transplant in 2001.

 

 

On Saturday, as Hurricane Katrina approached, both went to the hospital to help

and took all four animals with them.

 

 

They fed their guinea pig and left it in its cage in a patient room. They

couldn't refill its empty water bottle because the hospital's plumbing failed

Sunday, they said. They poured food on the floor for the cat, but again no

water.

 

 

" I just hope that they forgive me, " Valerie Bennett cried.

 

War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.