Our Hurricane Roommates

The local animal shelters have really stepped up to help out the shelters on the coast.  Lots of local rescues had multiple transports to the coast to then take animals to partner rescues up north.  Some of the shelters in areas with mandatory evacuation orders were able to send all of the animals in their care to other shelters.

This represents so much progress.  For years, many of the shelters on the coast had no choice but to euthanize a lot of animals ahead of catastrophic storms.  Now, thanks to rescues in multiple states reaching out to help, that’s not nearly as common.  There’s still a very long way to go, but there’s definite progress.

The shelter we adopted Duke, Tara, and Cookie from asked for temporary fosters for all of their animals until next Friday, due to the bad weather we’re expected to get from Florence.

Initial forecasts had the remnants of Florence arriving in our area tonight, and into tomorrow.  Now the forecasts have Florence, currently moving at two miles per hour, arriving tomorrow night into Monday, and basically stalling against the mountains.  They say we’ll start getting some wind and rain tonight, but our major impacts will be later.  We’re told our area will likely receive six to twelve inches of rain, with some areas getting up to fifteen inches of rain.

Malmo, a.k.a. Motimer

The shelter is in a flood prone area, so they wanted the animals out in case it floods there.  If it doesn’t flood, they can be a stopping off point for animals being transported up from the coast, or from the coast or midlands of South Carolina.

It has been quite some time since we’ve done any fostering, and while we’ve made the decision to never bring another dog into our home, we still want to foster cats as we’re able.  This seemed like a good time to make the leap, and get back into it.  Every animal out of our local shelters frees up space for an animal from the coast, and generally allows the rescues here to divert more resources to helping the shelters on the coast.  We signed up to temporarily foster two cats and were told we’d be matched with two cats based on our application information.

We went to pick up our cats after work on Thursday, and were sent home with Malmo and Copenhagen.  They’re about 10 months old, and full of energy.  They also seem to be very bonded.

Neither one of us are very fond of their names, so we’re calling them Mortimer and Charlie while they’re here.  Cats don’t exactly come when they’re called most of the time, so we don’t think it’s doing any harm.

Copenhagen, a.k.a. Charlie

We’re currently keeping them separated from the rest of the pets, so they’re in our bedroom.  Thursday evening they only really came out to eat, and spent the rest of the time under the bed.  We heard them wrestling, and playing with some of the toys.  They just didn’t seem very sure of us. 

By Friday evening they were starting to warm up to us, and started to come out and let us pet them.  They’ve also decided that sleeping in the bed and cuddling with us some is kind of nice.  They definitely like the food here, and they seem to love the toys we’ve given them.   

We have no plans to go anywhere this weekend since the weather is supposed to be so bad, so we’ll be able to spend a lot of time playing and cuddling with them.   It’s not a bad way to weather the storm.