Animal Victims Of Katrina A Priority For Local Woman

By Nancy K. Crevier

Karlyn Sturmer has a message for pet owners everywhere, spoken in a voice hoarse from days of shouting over the barking of hundreds of dogs: “Everybody must have an evacuation plan for pets.”

Ms Sturmer returned recently from an eight-day stay in Slidell, La., where Noah’s Wish, a California-based animal disaster response and rescue league, set up house to care for animals displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Ms Sturmer is on the board of advisors for The Animal Center in Newtown, and has spent the past five years as a humane trapper in town, mainly recovering feral cats.

“It’s a national approach,” she says. “I call it trap, neuter, release, and most importantly, manage or maintain.”

An activist and social worker by vocation, as well as an animal lover, it was only natural that she would join Noah’s Wish volunteers from all over the nation when August’s fierce hurricane devastated the town of Slidell and the lives of its inhabitants and the creatures that lived there.

The local animal shelter in Slidell was able to move its boarders to safety during the storm, but the shelter itself sustained so much water damage that it is unusable. Added to the burden of caring for these shelter animals is the added impact of abandoned pets, stray animals, injured wild animals, and colonies of feral cats that need help.

Noah’s Wish, which is a nonprofit organization, is able through public donations and the dedication of volunteers like Ms Sturmer to provide shelter, veterinarian care, and sustenance to pets, and to guide pet owners through the confusion that follows such a disaster as Hurricane Katrina.

Says Ms Sturmer, “Noah’s Wish will be there from the beginning [of a disaster] to the end, until the animal shelter is rebuilt. Noah’s Wish can provide funds to rebuild. Money is pouring in, and every day, truckloads of supplies are arriving. We never turn a pet away; we just keep building.”

Experienced volunteers and Slidell animal control officers have worked side-by-side to search for homeless animals, rescue them, and bring them to the safety of the temporary shelter set up in a huge warehouse donated by the Slidell Public Works Department. Taken from neighborhoods buried under six inches of sludge, the animals are scared, dehydrated, starving, and sometimes injured. Veterinarians who volunteer their services provide immediate medical attention.

“It was so heartening, the way we worked together with the community,” Ms Sturmer goes on to say. “Slidell was happy to have Noah’s Wish there. Police, search and rescue teams, city employees, pilots, and the army reserve were all working together. Everybody was taking care of everybody else. It was a collaborative effort.”

Arriving in Louisiana with her tent, sleeping bag, and three days worth of food and water on September 2, Ms Sturmer, who was wearing a shirt identifying her as a rescue volunteer, was inundated with stories from distraught pet owners before she even reached the warehouse. She soon realized that along with caring for the pets surrendered by their owners and the stray dogs, cats, snakes, and squirrels in the warehouse, that her contribution to the effort would lie in tracking down and aiding feral cat colonies in the city.

From 4 to 9 pm each night, after an eight-hour day of building cat shelters, rehydrating suffering cats and dogs, cleaning cages, and tending to injured animals, she set out to identify areas around town for a special type of animal rescue.

“I had to think about where a cat would go. They were scared and wild. Most couldn’t be trapped. We had to employ a different kind of rescue effort, just leaving food where they could get it.”

By the time Ms Sturmer returned to Newtown, there were more than 300 dogs and 200-plus cats in the care of Noah’s Wish. Many of them are pets that she hopes will be reclaimed once their owners settle into new quarters.

“We [Noah’s Wish] can keep the pets as long as needed,” she emphasizes, and supplies and food can be provided when owners and pets are reunited.

To those who might criticize the donation of funds to aid animals when thousands of human beings continue to suffer from the storm, Ms Sturmer says, “Helping with Noah’s Wish helps people. People feel guilty when they have to leave pets behind.” Knowing that their pets are being cared for is a relief to pet owners who have to abandon what is essentially a part of the family.

The operation in Slidell will be a much longer situation than any other Noah’s Wish has undertaken. With the possibility of 30 to 50 new pets taken in every day that Noah’s Wish is in operation there, proper funding is crucial.

“Supplies are not the best thing to donate,” suggests Ms Sturmer. Monetary donations can be made online at www.noahswish.org, or sent to Noah’s Wish, PO Box 997, Placerville CA 95667. If time is a donation you have to offer, the website offers information on volunteer opportunities.

Having seen firsthand the sadness and horror of pets left behind in a disaster, Ms Sturmer can only urge pet owners to think about how they would evacuate their pets in an emergency. “It can happen to any of us,” she says. “Have everyone in the house, the house sitter, whoever, know the plan. Have a carrier for each pet.”

“Don’t leave them behind,” she pleads. “If you do, please open the door and let them out. There’s nothing worse than going into a home and finding a cat drowned at the top of a window where it tried to get out of the way of rising water.”