Press Releases - The Humane Society and Adoption Center at PAWS

Animal rescues lift human spirits
Many kinds of creatures need a hand

September 10, 2005
Atlanta Journal Constitutional
By Gayle White

     Pass Christian, Miss. – The animal rescue team has come back for Nice, the cat.

     Tramping through the debris left by Hurricane Katrina around the white clapboard house, they see his fresh prints in the dark brown mud. They’ll return with a trap, trying to coax him in with a can of Friskies.

     If things go well, he’ll soon join Danny, the poodle-mix dog, at an animal shelter in Hattiesburg, Miss., about 80 miles away.

     Eventually, they’ll be reunited with their person, Rebecca Kutos. She’s in Rome, Ga., at her sister’s house, trying to sort out her life after the hurricane destroyed her home, her car and the Isle of Capri casino in Biloxi, Miss., where she was a dealer.

     Finding Kutos took a bit of detective work – just part of the job description of a dedicated group of volunteers and professionals from several states working under the auspices of the Humane Society of the United States in this storm-ravaged area.

     Since the first handful of workers arrived immediately after Katrina, and escalating effort has rescued more than 100 animals. Among them, besides the usual variety of breeds of dogs and cats, are six horses, an iguana, a hybrid bobcat and even Callie, a sea lion from Marine Life in Gulfport.

     Some animals have been surrendered by their owners, who can’t care for them in the storm’s aftermath. If the owners agree, they’ll be put up for adoption.

     Strays or displaced pets are usually reported by search-and-rescue teams, law enforcement officers, clean-up and restoration workers, or neighbors. They’re being house in Hattiesburg for 30 days to give their owners a chance to find them.

     In one Biloxi home at week’s end, the animal searchers found five dogs alive, but some discoveries have been grim. At another Biloxi home, where neighbors said no one had been for 10 days, a team found six kennel crates with dead pit bulls inside.

     Judy Roe, a Gulf Coast search-and-rescue worker going door to door with search dogs in Pass Christian to find human beings found Danny and got a glance of Nike.

     She called Dee Thompson-Poirrier, director of animal control for Okaloosa County, Fla., who is heading the Humane Society’s animal rescue operation on the Mississippi Coast. At the house where Danny was found, Thompson-Poirrier picked up a soiled envelope with a return address label. Inside was a card, signed “Love and XXXXXXs, Mom.” She tucked it into her pocket.

     Thompson-Poirrier and her team took Danny to be evaluated and housed temporarily in an $80,000 state-of-the-art trailer owned by Humane Society volunteer Ronnie Graves of Bushnell, Fla.

     Graves, who has a prosthetic leg because of a train accident, is in the prosthetics business for humans and animals. He bought the trailer and rig and outfitted it with a generator, washer/dryer, portable toilet and shower, freezer and barbecue range. The Humane Society furnished the kennels.

     Graves saw the need during animal rescue efforts in Florida after Hurricane Charlie last year. He had it ready to hit the road at the beginning of this year’s hurricane season.

     When Thompson-Poirrier had a chance to examine the envelope in her pocket, she called her ex-husband, who traced the Louisiana address. A sheriff’s deputy left a message at the house.

     A man called to tell Thompson Poirrier how to reach Kutos. She was ecstatic at the news.

     Volunteers say stories like that help answer the question they’ve all heard – why spend time and money on animals when humans are in dire straits?

     Helping animals helps people, explained Sheri Evans of Sumter County, Fla., who’s overseeing the intake process.

     “We want to take care of animals to help their people get back on their feet,” said Sheri Evans of Sumter County, Fla., who’s overseeing intake operations and the field operation.

     Hearing that Danny is safe and that Nike has been sighted gave Kutos a boost after her harrowing hurricane experience.

     Hours after they were trapped in the attic by Hurricane Katrina’s rising water, she and her sister Laurie Moody, saw hope in an approaching Coast Guard helicopter.

     Kutos ran to the window, waving a flashlight.

     A Coast Guardsman came down, broke through the roof, and boosted them upward in a wire basket, one by one.

     Danny and Nike were left behind.

     After spending the night at a Coast Guard facility, they took a taxi to the Mobile, Ala., airport, rented a car and went to Rome to be with their sister, Abigail Pontiff. They still wore their filthy clothes. Kutos had only her wallet.

     Hearing that Danny has been rescued and Nike has been seen is “like a miracle,” she said. “I had such a guilty feeling about leaving them up there alone. There’s no way to accept something like that.”

     As for the card Thompson-Poirrier picked up, it has pictures of cats on the front. On the back was an insignia – from the Humane Society of the United States.