Ultimate Story of Survival.......

Since I've graced you with a Katrina Poop story, I figured you should know how we got there!

So here's the ultimate story of survival:

On August 29th, 2005 we woke up to a storm of enormous proportions. We were awakened by a phone call at 4:30am by my cousin, our original intentions were to just board up the house and wait it out, we had plenty food, water and a generator so we were ready. But our plans were altered but the shear size of the storm. This was the "big one" , the mother of all storms, our worst fear living on the Gulf Coast. And it proved to be just that.

We packed up 7 kids, 2 dogs, 1 ferret, 1 cat and 3 adults and we were ready to go. We had been given reservations at a hotel in Houston that took animals, so that's where we were headed for the classic three day storm vacation. Once on the road, but not very far out we decided to take the cat and the ferret back to the house and put them upstairs, they would have plenty of water and food and of course the company of each other. They weren't the best of friends, but they weren't the worst either. So off we went, 3 cars and everything else we could possibly fit, bye, bye New Orleans.

Once on the road, we realized that this was going to be the longest trip of our lives. We stopped as little as possible, sang, laughed, listened to the radio as much as possible and laughed at the radio announcers as they chronicled each and every minute as the storm started to bear down on New Orleans. The analogies they used were getting to be a form of entertainment for us. "Storm of biblical proportions", "on the razors edge", "catastrophic event" and the list goes on and on. I know that doesn't seem funny right now, but while driving with 7 kids, 2 dogs, 3 adults, and 3 cars for 18 hours it was hilarious. We laughed so hard at times we could hardly breathe. But on we went, for miles and miles and miles at the break neck speed of 15 mph on the highway. At one point I had to go to the bathroom, so I told my cousin to drive and I jumped out of the car, ran to the mini-mart alongside the road, went to the bathroom and ran back to the car, they had only passed up the store by about 20 or 30 feet. Since that seemed to work, that was how we all went to the bathroom, because we didn't want to loose our place in the car line.

We finally arrived in Houston at 5 am on the morning of the 30th, checked into our rooms and immediately started to watch the television to see what was happening to our city. Wow it was beyond imagination, the wind and rain were terrible, but most of all the people that had stayed were in great danger. We felt very blessed at that moment to have had the greater sense to leave.

We tried to make this a vacation for our kids and not let them know how very worried we were, so we started to look around to see what there was to do, and we found tons of stuff.

But in the meantime, we figured out our sleeping arrangements. Since there were so many of us they put us in 2 separate rooms, but also on 2 separate floors! John and I and some of the younger kids were on the 3rd floor and the older boys were on the 2nd floor. Ouch, I knew this was going to be trouble. On the first night I got a phone call at around 2am from my oldest son, one of his brothers threw up on him, I ran down the stairs, the dog following, and tried to clean up the mess. I called down to room service, and they pretty much laughed at me, extra sheets? clean up? What? There were so many people in the hotel there were no extra sheets, so being a mom of 7 at the time, that was no problem, we made a new bed out of the bedspreads. This is an easy task for a busy mom, I have to do this all of the time at home, sheets are not washed and an accident occurs, mom has to get creative and make a new bed. So that's just what we did, made a new bed. After the major clean up, I had to take the dog downstairs to the bathroom, why not right? We finished the dog potty time and went back up the stairs to the third floor and tried to go back to sleep. TV on all of the time, trying to figure out what was going on.

As I laid in bed and started to drift back off to sleep, another dreaded phone call, another throw up!!! ARGH! So I went prepared, I took our bedspreads, and anything else I could find to make yet another bed. Ran down the stairs again, dog followed again, cleaned up the mess, made a new bed, the hallway looked like a dump in the inner city, but I just could not run around the hotel with the dog and sheets full of vomit. So I left them in the hall for the cleaning service, why should I have all the fun! This I believe was the last throw up session, but the dog had to go out again, so down we ran, made doggy poop, ran back up the stairs and this time got to sleep, for about 2 hours before it was time to get up and try to eat some breakfast.

This is how we got started on our very long journey home post-Katrina.

A Katrina Poop!

I was reliving a Katrina moment just the other day, and one of our most memorable instances came to mind, so I, of course, have to place it here in my memory bank I.E. "my blog"!

We left our home on August 28th, 2005 with Katrina right behind us...there were 10 of us, and 3 dogs.  We left our cat behind with tons of water, and equal tons of food thinking we would be home in three days (as usual).  If any of you have ever evacuated for a hurricane, three days is the norm.  We also left a ferret in the house to keep the cat company!

Well, without going into too much detail, since most of America knows what happened in the Katrina aftermath, we did manage to get our cat from the house 11 days later!  All I could do what thank our Good Lord that he was alive, not very well, but alive!  I brought him to the nearest Veterinarians office in New Iberia close to where we were staying.  They cleaned him up, and put him on an IV to rehydrate him and get him back to his good old self.  He was a bit weak, but made a fantastic recovery.

We continued to live in New Iberia for a time, and Coco became more and more like himself, grouchy, fat, and making sure we still knew that HE owned US!

But as time went on with the cat I came to realize that as I was cleaning out his litter each and every day there was NO poo in there, the vet did tell me that it might take a while before his body went back to normal, since he had been without food and water for such a very long time.  Not a problem!  I was willing to do what I needed to get him back on his 4 little feet.

After a couple of more weeks in New Iberia, we had to move on to yet another location....our time on the road consisted of 9 moves with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret that we rescued along with the cat.  Most of this I did by myself, since my hubby was back in New Orleans already working on Katrina damage.  So I loaded the car, with kids, our "stuff" and a litter pan for the cat, just in case, and got ready to leave to head to the Northshore (Lacombe, Louisiana) to live in a convent!  Yep you read that right, A CONVENT!, with nuns, with 7 kids, a cat, a dog, and a ferret!

As we drove out of the driveway to head to the "convent" my kids asked if we could stop to pick up some drinks and snacks to make the drive, so of course, I told them yes!  We made the stop at a local drug store, I left the kids and the animals in the car and ran inside to get some incidentals for the trip.  When I walked out of the store, I noticed all of the kids had jumped out of the van and were screaming and dancing around holding their noses....YOU GUESSED IT!....Coco had decided at that point it was time to get rid of 3 weeks of food, and water stored in his little body....the stench was overwhelming!  So there I was in the parking lot of the drug store with a bag and a pooper scooper, scooping out the first of many more poops to come!  I drew quite a crowd!  People asking if they could help!  I just thanked them, scooped out the poop, jumped in the smelly van and we drove for miles with the windows down just so that we could breathe!...It was not one of our better trips, but we did manage to make it to the convent and unload before the cat unloaded again!!!!