I've been reading Poppy Z. Brite's Livejournal since the New Orleans flood--she lived in New Orleans and evacuated with, I think, a dog and one cat. As I recall, she had something like 26 cats, 18 of which have been rescued and reunited with her (they're still hoping to find the rest). In this entry she quotes an email from a reader who says that her (Ms. Brite's) plight caused her (the reader) to come up with a plan for getting her own animals out should the need ever arise.

Ms. Brite says: "Still: we allowed ourselves to accumulate far more animals than we could realistically evacuate, because, like most New Orleanians, we didn't believe in our hearts that The Big One would ever dare to hit our beloved city."

Even before I read this entry, her situation had caused me to decide that, if I can help it (I realize situations may change), I never want to have more animals than people. Right now Bob and I could each take charge of one cat, and, I guess, realistically, if one of us had to evacuate both of them, we could, but any more than that would be unmanageable.

Just something else for the emergency list in my head, I guess.