Catnip Nation's October Report: What Happens to Cats After a Natural Disaster?

In August I brought you the third installment of a series of posts by Tina Traster, Producer and Director of the documentary film Catnip Nation. This month Tina gets us thinking about what happens to cats after a natural disaster. Do cats get left behind? Do dogs and livestock get more attention? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

Dawn

Where Are The Community Cats After A Natural Disaster?
We’ll never forget the images of Texans rescuing their cows from flooded fields in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey last month. Today, as I scroll on my Facebook page, my heart stops when I see the picture of a man carrying a dog on his shoulder, trying to escape the ravages of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The man was also trying to save his horse.


Animal lovers worry terribly about the fate of animals during and after natural disasters. We’ve seen so much tragedy during the last month. What occurred to me recently, as I’ve been absorbing the post-disaster images, is that news cameras hardly, if ever, show us footage or photographs of rescued or abandoned cats.

I’ve been wondering why.

Is it that animal rescue groups focus on dogs and other livestock? Is it that when people evacuate they only take their dogs? Perhaps it’s because people fleeing danger might have a cat in a carrier and that’s not as photogenic.

Or is it that cats are seen as animals who can care for themselves? Perhaps first responders view cats as independent enough to ride out a storm, to get to higher ground, and even to fend for themselves in the aftermath? Certainly this would be true for community cats.

So it was interesting to note, on the days leading up to Hurricane Irma in Florida, the Internet chatter about the famous six-toed Hemmingway cats who reside in the writer’s house in Key West.

Residents of the Keys were told to evacuate, as that part of Florida was expected to be hit hard. Fretting folks on Facebook weighed in: What’s going to happen to the Hemmingway cats? They’re iconic. I recall one post said that the cats would likely be alright because the house had thick walls.

Turns out they were right. Even the New York Times the next day reported: “Hemmingway’s Six-Toed Cats Ride Out Hurricane Irma in Key West." I was relieved to read that the 54 cats, many of them descended from a white polydactyl cat owned by Ernst Hemmingway, were herded (a feat in and of itself, no doubt) into the thick-walled Spanish Colonial-style house/museum to ride out the storm. Ten employees were with the cats during the hurricane. The NYTimes reported this as if it was surprising – but nobody reading this blog was the slightest bit surprised that these cat caretakers hunkered down with their feline charges because we know what it feels like to be “owned” by our cats.

The Hemmingway story got me thinking about all community cats, and what they must endure during and after a catastrophic storm. Obviously, the Hemmingway cats have far more protection than an anonymous colony somewhere in Boise or Poughkeepsie. That’s exactly why we need to work harder on two fronts. We need to TNR every colony across the land and winnow down these populations. And we need legislation to make community cats everyone’s business so when a storm comes, we can do more to protect them before and after.

Catnip Nation was recently on location with Brian Hackett, president of the New Jersey Humane Society of the United States. He had just returned from flooded Texas on an animal-rescue mission. Many sheltered cats were airlifted to make room in the shelters for more animals that were being found in the streets. When I asked how many of those animals were cats? he said, “some.”

Thank you, Tina, for another thought and conversation provoking topic. If you'd like to support the documentary film Catnip Nation, click here. You can also spread the word about the wonderful work they are doing to make a difference in the lives of feral cats. And don't forget to follow them on social media! 

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Please weigh in. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Tina Traster is a socially-conscious, award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker. Her 30-minute documentary, This House Matters, is an examination on historic preservation in the Hudson Valley. The film has screened at the YoFi Film Festival, the Kingston Film Festival, the Hoboken International Film Festival, and the Nyack Film Festival. Traster's work has appeared in scores of newspapers, magazines and literary journals including The New York Times, The New York Post, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Redbook, Family Circle, Parade, Time Out New York, Audubon, Ski Magazine and many others. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Rescuing Julia Twice: A Mother's Tale of Russian Adoption and Overcoming Reactive Attachment Disorder. Since 2006, Traster has written the "Burb         Appeal"column for The New York Post.