How to keep a cat from having to build a raft during the next hurricane

Tallulah Trice saw the animal from a distance.

Floating toward her on a raft made of seagrass.

Dead.

Hurricane Matthew had just passed, and Trice, director of Beaufort County Animal Services, was outside her Lady’s Island home and operating on very little sleep. She’d managed just a few hours a night since the governor had called for a coastal evacuation four days earlier and none as the storm had assaulted the county.

But she wasn’t hallucinating.

There was an animal.

On its side.

Drifting her way.

Trice had been trapped on her street for a few hours as she waited for the tide to take back the water that blocked her passage to the rest of the county.

She couldn’t get to work.

So work came to her.

The raft and its passenger soon got caught in a copse of trees, and Trice went to check it out.

There, lay a chubby cat with butterscotch fur.

Most likely someone’s pet.

Covered in vile red ants.

He had been bitten so many times that his lower back was now a rough terrain of excrescence.

But the cat was breathing.

He was alive.

And he would become Trice’s first post-storm rescue — one of hundreds she and her staff, with the assistance of Hilton Head Humane Association and the ASPCA, would make over the next few days.

Trice’s stories from the past few weeks are many — sometimes they’re cute, mostly they are not.

Mostly they are a grim statement of people’s lack of practice and preparation when it comes to their pets and hurricanes.

Post-Matthew, animal control found dogs abandoned in cars, chained to trees, left on porches, drowned; horses in bad shape or trapped in floodwaters; reptiles left cold by a loss of power; roosters, goats, peacocks, turkeys, a lovebird, a pet rat; loose pigs and an unloose pig snoozing on a couch as if nothing had happened.

Oh, and chickens.

“We didn’t know there were so many chickens in the county,” Trice said just over a week later and still marveling at all the scratch her office had to buy in a pinch.

The calls for rescues and wellness checks came pouring into her office after Matthew.

And they went something like this: “I didn’t take my (pets … usually cats, sorry cats) with me, and I’m worried about my babies. Could you please check on them?”

The staff at animal control spent the days after the storm breaking into homes (the legal and with permission way) to remove pets whose safety had been compromised by storm damage and to feed pets whose owners had guessed wrong on the length of the evacuation and the food and water necessary that might be necessary to cover it.

The animals were left behind because their owners couldn’t find or afford a place where they’d be welcome or because their owners worried how they’d do during a long car ride.

In some cases, though, their owners just couldn’t be bothered to keep them safe, as evidenced by the resulting animal cruelty charges.

Evacuating is already a stressful decision.

Do I stay? Do I go? Where do I go? How much is this going to cost me? What about this cat, bird, dog, snake, rat, couch pig? Where are they sitting in this packed car? Why are there no pet-friendly hotels anywhere? How long will this evacuation be anyway?

A number of people stayed behind simply because they couldn’t bear to leave their pets.

The night before the storm, late and as the rain and wind were picking up, Trice and emergency personnel stood outside a ramshackle garden shed on St. Helena Island and pleaded with the woman who lives inside.

You need to evacuate, they told her.

Not without my dogs, she said.

Trice brought the animals home with her, so the woman could be taken to a shelter.

The world doesn’t work the way it should, of course. If it did, people wouldn’t have to live in garden sheds.

On a more general-population level, though, they wouldn’t get pets they can’t afford.

More than that, they wouldn’t own pets they don’t have an evacuation plan for.

Pre-Matthew, my dog/cat evacuation plan was “Ummm … Baby Bjorn? Two Baby Bjorns?”

Post-Matthew, it’s much more realistic and informed.

Before the next storm threatens, call the county shelter — or Palmetto Animal League or Hilton Head Humane Association — and ask for advice on a pet evacuation plan.

They know what they’re talking about, and they have connections with other shelters in the region.

“Put some food and water out and hope for the best” is a plan, sure.

But now is the time to come up with something better that keeps pets safe and doesn’t needlessly tie up county staff or put their lives at risk.

“Ask for help,” Trice said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

The floating cat, by the way, is doing OK.

Now whose is he?

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 4:41 PM with the headline "How to keep a cat from having to build a raft during the next hurricane."