I have a terrier mix that spent Katrina chained up on a 2nd story deck. She doesn't handle thunder,wind,heavy rain or cats at all to this day. When she was rescued she was up to her neck in water and the rescuers thought that maybe cats had tried to use her back as a safe spot going by the scratches and gouges on her. Since she came out of New Orleans we named her Nola.
We dodged Katrina but Rita was rough, we were part of the rolling road block that came out of Houston (61 miles in 2 1/2 days). So many pets were put out of cars, I never want to see anything like that again
The people were afraid that their pets would die because of the heat so they'd turn dogs,cats,birds even livestock loose.
We bugged out with 4 vehicles and our furkids. Everyone-human & furkid- came through safely in our crew...but I've never cried so much in my life seeing all those pets wondering what was going on and why their humans left them on the side of the road
A young man from Beaumont with 2 horses was beside me for several hours,he told me that he'd gotten them through Katrina and he was going to keep them safe during Rita...his mare overheated in the trailer and collapsed and died before he could get her out. When I had to move on,he was sitting on the floor of his trailer holding her head in his lap and crying.
Hurricane season is coming up quickly and I hope that we all learned and remember our lessons from these storms