Peevish Pets

After a week of going away events, we hit the road Saturday, driving along the Gulf Coast to Destin, then hitting Savannah, and now reaching Williamsburg, where we're staying with my friend Lisa. A good trip so far, us in our packed cars, harassing each other by walkie-talkie.

The cats are already home. We put them on a plane Friday. As you can imagine, they were not happy to find themselves shoved into their cages and tossed into the backset of the car for yet another plane ride. (Thus, the title.) Simon, the veteran traveller, was silent, accepting of his fate. Bourre? Not so much with the silent or accepting. A lot of whining. A lot. At the cargo place, there were at least six other animals in cages and they were silent. Bourre? Screaming. I felt like the mother of the bad kid at the park.

It's not cheap to ship them this way. Plus they have to go to the vet and get shots before you can send them. And I had to express mail their medicine and ship a supply of their special food to Philly ahead of me. But it's worth it. One, because I would have killed them after hours together in the car. And two? People like me, we are suckers for our pets.

(Sidebar: Pet suckerage is big in my family. This Thanksgiving, the big conversation around the dinner table was, "If your loved one killed someone, would you help them hide the body?" ((Side sidebar: This is after dinner with Jordan's family, where the main conversation was national politics in light of the recent Democratic sweep into Congress. I'm willing to bet some Pompilios didn't even know there had been an election.)) Pretty much universally, we agreed to help each other hide evidence. Except for my sister. She was adamant that she would rat us out to police because killing was wrong, a stance that actually infuriated my mother. To torture my sister, I kept coming up with options where maybe killing was OK, like someone attacking you with a knife. She said, "Well, if someone was attacking Max (her cat) with a knife, I would kill them." I said, "And then that would be OK?" She said, "Yes." She will do anything for those cats. I can't wait to see that case in court. )

A lot of people will tell you they didn't evacuate before Katrina because of their pets. Shelters weren't accepting animals. (And, in one case, I had journalist friends who evacuated BECAUSE of their pet. Because they didn't want to leave her home alone. She repaid their love a few days after the storm, when they were trying to get back into the city, by eating the only food they had when they were out of the car. Go, Stella!) I witnessed some heart-breaking scenes as National Guardsmen separated people from their pets, leaving the animals on the streets and herding the people into trucks. (There was one photo that ran in the Inky of a man named Tom Cruise, his face in pure anguish, clutching his dog as the Guardsman waited. I always wondered what happened to him but I lost his email address after the storm.) One day, a week after the storm, I was downtown when a man wearing a fire department shirt came up to me with a brown ball of puppy fluff. He'd found the dog wandering around New Orleans Centre, a mall next to the Superdome. He asked if I could take the dog and I said no. I've always regretted that.

Also during the second week, I was working on the porch of my friend Steve's house when I was assaulted by a hungry black cat. She literally jumped on my lap, on the computer, and began purring and nipping my hands. I had to call my story in when she was there and the receptionist at Knight Ridder Washington quickly dubbed her "Knight Ridder Kitty." "You have to bring her home," the woman told me from the luxury of her desk in her air conditioned office where they probably had fancy things like "boxes" that could transport an animal. I left the cat, but not before generously sharing my photographer's packet of tuna with her. (He wasn't pleased.) (Whatever.)

Even now, when you drive around NO, you notice the markings on homes that refer to pets. Almost all of the houses are marked with the familiar X which details when and how the house was searched, by which unit of the military or policing agency, and if any human bodies were found. Others have additions like, "ASPCA 10/1, one dog inside" or, on one house in the Upper 9th Ward, "Two dead dogs inside" or, like a house in the Lower 9th Ward, "Dog on roof," or on another house nearby, "One dog, one cat, one bird inside." There are "Cat outside, 10/12, left food" scrawlings and "No dog found" notices spraypainted on walls, turning some houses into noteboards. (My sister: "Don't tell me these things! They make me so upset." Meanwhile, i'm cruising by houses where the numbers indicate two human bodies were found inside.)

Some people left their pets in their homes because they'd gone through hurricanes before and they figured they'd leave with a few days belongings, hit the beach or a friend's house elsewhere, then head home. As a former New Orleanian, I can't count the number of times I was told -- by the media and meterologists -- that the city was doomed. And every time, that storm didn't hit or it wasn't bad and the experts were wrong. I was on the plane, going to NO before Katrina, reassuring people that things would be fine, fine. To be on that plane, I had to cancel what might have been my first date with Jordo, a movie outing he probably saw as innocuous and I saw as the start of a great romance. I told him, "No big. I'll be back in a few days." And I wasn't home for two weeks.

I wrote a story about an elderly woman who was displaced by the storm. A story I didn't tell was about her beloved cat, Poupon. She went to stay at a hotel during the storm, something a lot of people do because they're high and seemingly stronger. She left her baby behind, convinced he'd be fine. Then the levees broke. Poupon survived in the house for weeks, apparently floating around on her piano when the water filled their Gentilly home. When a friend finally got into the house weeks later, Poupon was alive, but weak and ailing. The friend called Poupon's mom, who was in a Texas hospital, on the phone and she sung him a Brahms lullaby as she'd done every night they were together. Poupon died soon after. As she says, he heard her voice and knew she was OK so he could let go.

One of the last houses I helped gut before I left was in the Lower 9th Ward. My friend Vikki was with me and we were working for Rhino (Rebuilding Hope In New Orleans) again. (Hey, Vik! Great work!) Before we went to the house, Katie, our leader, was telling us a little about the homeowner. And, she added, the family had had a dog named Katie, which she thought was cute. It was a random, side comment but foreshadowing like no other.

So we're emptying in the house of its contents, Vikki and I in one of the front rooms, when Vikki stops and tells me to look. And there's a dog skull. And dog's collars, one I think was red and the other was one of those white flea fighters, were still there. And there was the rest of the dog, including the skeleton and a stretch of skin with short brown fur. We just kinda looked at each other and the dog and were like, "Oh God, what do we do?"And what we did was pick up the dog's remains and throw them out, adding them to the pile of debris with all the furniture and the clothing and knick knacks. The collars jingled when I picked them up, a familiar sound to anyone who has pets. (Later that day, Vikki dangled my car keys near my ear and I turned with a jump, thinking she was dangling Katie's collars. I think finding that dog upset me more than I realized.)

Did we do the right thing, just throwing the dog away? Should we have saved the collars for the homeowner? I don't know. We weren't sure if the homeowner was going to come by as we worked, but I practiced scenarios in my head if she did. If she asked something like, "Did you find any of my dog's things?" I planned to say, "A lot of dogs ran away once the water went down," allowing her to think her dog had fled and not died a probably horrible death. It was a lie but I was ready with it.

From what I understand, my cats -- safely home in Philadelphia, awaiting our return -- are two pissed off balls of fur. I can't wait to see them.