Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned
By: Cathy Scott / Narrated By: Olivia Searfoss
Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
Man! Sooo many memories! And I thought I was okay, until I started crying
Don’t get me wrong. Pawprints of Katrina is a book of animals saved, with only bits about animals lost and dead to give the reader/listener a sense of the scope of the devastation and hopelessness that rescuers faced.
But it’s like this, see… I was obSESSed with what was going on. And the way my mind works? It was, like, the animals! The ones left behind! They’re trapped in houses, dying slow and agonizing deaths. They’re out in the Absolute Nothingness the environment has become. Help! Somebody, please!
And the pictures started showing up on the internet, of those far gone, possibly too far gone to live. Of those who didn’t make it. Of corpses. It was so much that, feeling helpless where I was in central Texas, I did what I could and started supply drives for groups like Pasado’s Safe Haven; I sent supplies to Waveland, Mississippi’s shelter; I begged, borrowed, pleaded with companies for help. I LIVED on internet groups like, NOLA.com which was people trying to help. Basically, by the time Hurricane Rita hit, I’d developed a fine case of PTSD.
And THAT wasn't helped until I went to New Orleans myself in February of 2006, and hooked up with Best Friends Sanctuary, running an operation out of Celebration Station which cared for the rescued, which shipped them to shelters to make room for more rescues, which just so totally rocked.
And Pawprints of Katrina, while giving a shout-out to some of the other groups, is mostly about Best Friends’s efforts, and I remember some of the people who're spoken of here, and I remember some of the animals (RED!!!!) who’re written about, their stories finally told. Except for one person who gets kudos in the book but who, in reality, was a feckless idiot (No, REALLY: She WAS!!! She was so bad, she was specifically asked to stay home when the Lebanon animals were brought to the Sanctuary!), I listened with great fondness, great respect, and joyful admiration. It was like I was back at Celebration Station, crashing in my sleeping bag, sleeping through leg cramps, waking up early so we could go through the morning routines which, given the amount of animals, stretched into afternoons, doing the scrubbing up, then doing the evening routines… which stretched into nights, then getting things set up for the next day. I met AWEsome people!!! And, as I was working with the cats, I met some AWEsome cats too.
Don’t expect much from the narration. Olivia Searfoss neither adds nor detracts from the story. I will say this, however: When she tells of the early days of rescue and of all the volunteers went through, including swarms of “Love Bugs”—well, I really got the sense of the conditions all were living in/working through.
This book covers the early days, the setups in Tylertown, later in New Orleans, and goes all the way to the end where Louisiana kicked out all out-of-state rescue groups. Ahhh, but then it goes on for a few epilogue-style story endings for some of the animals, for some of the people. It’s a “feel-good” book, heavy on the hope, with stories of reunions (And by the way, I saw a dog sooooo happy to be reunited with her owner; and I saw a couple who drove all night to get to Celebration Station cuz they found their cat listed on Petfinder.com. And if you think a cat is bland about its owners? You should’ve seen this cat hugging the woman and nuzzling the man!).
So all in all, I loved the book. It had me so happy, feeling so positive, that I hit YouTube to view Hurricane Katrina Animal Rescue videos cuz I thought: Hurricane Katrina? I can remember that with love. Alas, there are some, music swirling, that showed pics of animals, as though the fact that a photo was taken meant they were saved. When I know the photographers went on, and those animals probably died.
And THAT’S when I broke down and sobbed.
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