LA Times: Time Is Running Out for Stranded Pets! Please read and ask

[rumpel]

the media to broadcast that something has to be done quick!

Thousands of dogs, cats and other animals left behind by hurricane evacuees are slowly dying as rescuers struggle to save them.

By Reed Johnson and Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writers

NEW ORLEANS — Peter Block was waiting patiently for an emergency bus to Baton Rouge with his two black Great Danes, Venus and Serena, and Jasmine, a border collie mix.

Half his house, near the 17th Street Canal, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, Block said. The rest was swept away when a levee broke.

In recent months, Block's father and two sisters died of cancer. Now, with $116 in his pocket, Block is hoping to start a new life somewhere else with his dogs.

"It's what I live for," Block said as he nuzzled and petted his three canines. "My girls."

These are tough times in the Crescent City for both man and beast. Though Katrina's floodwaters are slowly receding, the storm and its ruinous aftermath have turned even the simplest tasks — getting some sleep, scrounging a meal not tainted with E. coli bacteria — into Herculean labors.

That's as true for the thousands of human survivors who still haven't fled their ravaged city as it is for the hundreds of dogs, cats, birds, reptiles and other pets that have been left behind to fend for themselves. Some are still grimly hanging onto life. They sit forlornly on the rooftops of flooded homes, slowly starving to death as rescuers in boats ignore them, looking for people instead. Some have even tried swimming to boats, only to be rebuffed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-et-pets8sep08,1,1662938.story?coll=la-headlines-nation