Fleeing Floyd

This post is written today in honor of our family cat, Eloise, who passed away last week at the ripe old age of 18. She lived a full life, as evidenced by the following true story which she participated in.

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In September 1999, due to various transitions in our family, my sister and I found ourselves housesitting (and cat sitting) for our Mom in Savannah, GA. At the time, my sister and I were between homes and Mom was in Europe on a hike about to meet the man she would later marry. As my sister, Jenn, and I were homeless we also had our pets with us - the total in the house being 6 cats and 1 dog. Sounds like a lot but the house was pretty spacious. Blitzen, Eloise, Henri, Hector, Sophie, Lucy, and Wilma (the dog). And me and Jenn.

We were enjoying ourselves in this lovely coastal home overlooking a marsh when some friends from NY called one night - "Are you watching the news?". No. "There's a hurricane coming and you need to evacuate." Alrighty, then. We turned on the TV and the local news was on red alert - everyone must evacuate, Hurricane Floyd is going to hit the Georgia/South Carolina coast. Everyone.

We ran around the house putting away objects that might become projectiles should the glass doors on the house be smashed. We contacted Mom briefly to ask what we should pack in the car - important papers in a box and the rest of it would have to stay. To her credit, she didn't require us to pack all of her possessions - good thing, because the car wouldn't hold it all - what with the 6 cats and 1 (large) dog. Oh boy.

My sister furiously called around to hotels further inland and the best we could do was a motel in Augusta, GA - about 3 hours away. We packed up the car (thank God it was a station wagon!) and headed out. More like crawled. 10 hours of crying cats later, we got to Augusta. The country's 2nd largest evacuation had kinda clogged the roads. Hmmm.....lesson learned by FEMA??

We finally arrive at the motel and when Jenn checks in she discovers that there is a $25 per pet charge - per night. That would be twice our bill and half our income- thankfully, to enter the rooms at the motel you went from outside - no toting anything through the lobby. So under the cover of darkness, and with several trips, we managed to get everyone into our room. Two double beds proved to be sufficient - everyone had a place to sleep. After awhile we got kind of bored and started playing badminton (we had the forethought to pack rackets and shuttlecocks before we left Savannah). That proved mildly entertaining to our sacked-out companions.

The next day we realized we had to leave our room - taking everyone with us - since housekeeping was going to come by. So back in the car went our menagerie and we began to drive around Augusta. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where we could see the car from our table. Went to a museum for a short visit - the city had made all museums free for the evacuees. And then we drove around trying to figure out what to do next.

The radio stations were in full evacuation mode - "thousands of people homeless, big storm coming" - and they kept asking people to drop off supplies at the local storm shelters. Heeding their pleas we went to the grocery store and stocked up on diapers, shampoo and baby food and headed off to one of these shelters. As we were walking into the shelter with economy size diaper packages a local TV crew filmed us. Later on that evening we ended up on the 7 o'clock news - "Locals help out hurricane victims". Ironic, given that we're from NY.

All the while we were sending emails to everyone to let them know we were okay - and on TV! Mom would get these emails at each stop along the hike and read them to her companions at dinner. Endless entertainment.

After another night in the motel we were free to go home - and in just under 3 hours we were back at mom's house. Lots of tree branches everywhere but otherwise everything was intact. Except the one dish that Jenn broke while trying to pack Mom's valuables safely away. But you can hardly blame that on Floyd.