Disasters for Cats

This week I experienced Hurricane Sandy.  Up close and personal.  For me this meant being riveted by the news and the non-stop weather updates and meteorologists giving us a detailed analysis of the path of the hurricane's progress up the US East Coast and the obligatory personal account from the various beaches as they were pelted with rain and wind with poor satellite feeds just to give it added credibility.  If those images weren't scary enough, every now and then pieces of the "famous boardwalk" would drift past a reporter for added measure.  Fortunately for my family, we only suffered a flickering of power and two days of closed businesses and schools while our neighbors to the north suffered extreme devastation.  I am praying for them and the terrible conditions they will endure in the days, weeks and months to come cleaning up the damage.

While we hunkered down expecting the worst we looked at the cats to determine how they were reacting to this storm.  When the wind was whistling through the house and making the shutters bang and cedar shingles shake, the cats ears were alternately rotating and eyes grew wide as if to say..."WTF??!!!"  Tigger was pretty chill, he didn't do a lot of panicking and preferred a stance of laid back acceptance.  It was as if he was prepared for whatever fate came--if it was his time, well, so be it.  He is pretty much always in a demeanor of calorie conservation.  Why expend energy when he can either be eating or sleeping, right?  Now Toonsis and Pepper were a different story...

Pepper is a wild raving lunatic.  She is now the happy age of one year.  Which is the human equivalent of a wise teenager.  Think about it.  There's no such thing as a wise teenager.  She over-reacts to everything, including being fed, stroked, looked at.  The first whistle of 45mph wind gusts and she was history.  We didn't see much of Pepper until later.

Toonsis is a weird kitty.  Of course when you name a cat after an SNL skit you are bound to end up with a character, but she's really funny.  Last month I found her in front of the sliding glass door chattering at a chipmunk she saw staring at her from the other side.  She was so upset looking at that rodent on the other side and not being able to get to it that she reminded me of how I feel when I'm in an Apple store looking at all the expensive toys there.  I haven't seen the chipmunk in weeks, but EVERY DAY she goes to that door and stands there waiting for her little friend, chattering, and staring at me anxiously as if to tell me she knows it was there and where did it go?  She is practically a STALKER at that door every day waiting for that nonexistent chipmunk.  She will leave the door for 10 minutes but then race back from across the house to make sure she didn't miss its return.  Psycho-cat.

So, anyway, Toonsis was hiding under a desk during the storm.  Poor poopsie.  We let her sleep under our bed during the worst part of the windy night, but once things calmed down, she went back to her sliding door post.  Just like a little sentinel.  I hope that chipmunk is ok.

What makes me sad is watching some of the footage of the abandoned pets during the storm.  How do people do that when they had so much warning about the hurricane? And thank God for the rescue workers who came in and found them.  I hope all my readers out there know as winter approaches how unbelievably dependent cats really are on their owners for love and shelter.  Don't think you can leave your kitty on a farm or in the woods and just 'cause they have claws they can fend for themselves.  That is a real disaster recipe.  Domesticated cats used to being fed and loved won't know what hit them.

I hope all your fluffy family members are safe out there and that you haven't had to endure any disasters heavier than dirty litter boxes.  God Bless.