HanktheDog Blog

"Mandatory evacuation orders won't ever work until we have enough shelters for Floridians and their dogs, cats and birds. Leaving an animal to face certain death is not an acceptable compromise" - Lucy Morgan, St. Petersburg Times

The television had lots and lots of terrible Katrina stories about humans. Humans on roofs. Humans hanging from helicopter ropes. Fighting, shooting and looting humans. Angry humans and thirsty humans and abandoned humans. Most of all, suffering humans. I hated it. I've heard that people hate to see animals suffer. The same is true for dogs. We just hate seeing humans suffer. It frightens and disheartens us. Our tails wag slowly, uncertainly. We want to be reassured.

But reassurance was hard to come by, even hundreds of miles from the suffering. Mike said, "The apocalypse will be televised," whatever that meant. He ground his flat teeth for a while and then sent money over the Internet somehow. Then he ground his teeth some more. He complained to me and, when Molly was home, he complained to her. Then Molly in her wisdom did reassure me in a cooing voice, though Mike just pounded the furniture. "You're scaring the Labrador," she scolded. It was true.

Sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of a pet. I saw a dog in a boat one time. Another time I saw a boy carrying a big tupperware container full of live orange tabby cats. But where were the rest of the animals, I wondered? There should be more animals.