Hurry October

(Press Cat says, What? You think I need to go on a diet? I've had trauma; serious trauma.)

By last night, Ernesto’s track had been shifted east, but we are going ahead with first-stage preparations in case there’s a shift back. At this point, that means doing the things we should have done before, like pre-staging certain items up at the lake house (i.e., litter boxes, litter, and cat food), and buying a couple of extra cat carriers. See a theme here?

Last year we evacuated with only five of the family’s six cats. Press, our super shy, ex-feral, pale ginger tom (he loves to be petted as long as you’re sitting down and let him come up to you—reach for him and he’s gone), couldn’t be caught and was left to endure a weeklong nightmare in a flooded house (fortunately the house has two stories and I’d also put out food and water on the second floor, “just in case”). This year we have knock out pills. We’ve also acquired a little waif named Missy that we started feeding after Katrina and that my mother has now adopted. So, seven cats. I need a bigger car.

I’ve organized my manuscript materials, but I’m still going through papers. One of the things I’ve yet to replace is the big four drawer file cabinet that drowned in Katrina, so half my files are still in the storage room up in Baton Rouge, half in Iron Mountain boxes here, and nothing has been filed for a year.

Of course, the garage is still filled with rebuilding materials, which means there’s no place for the garden furniture, etc, that was stored in there last year. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. But the most dangerous time here for hurricanes is from mid-August to the end of September, so we still have some tense weeks ahead of us. Hurry October.