Everything turned out okay here. The storm was very mild here. With the 3 dogs, 3 cats and 2 small kids here, we were vedy grateful. 12 hours of lost electricity and fraying nerves from all the noise and chaos of 2 barking Collies and 2 loud kids was the worst of it.
Not evacuating turned out to be a very lucky decision.
My friend with the 3 cats was going to evacuate to Beaumont (crazy woman), when the storm was predicted to hit southwest of us. She had reservations at a hotel and everything. Thank goodness we talked her out of that.
I've another friend though that evacuated to Livingston. They got much worse weather there then here, so they need to release water from the dam. There's going to be flooding along the Trinity River from 41'-17'. So now they're evacuating Livingston. Haven't gotten to talk to her, so hopefully everything turned out okay for her.
That's the tricky part about evacuating. You can end up in a worse situation. From what I've gathered from the news, all the deaths related to Rita here in the Houston area are during evacuating, not the actual hurricane.
My friend with the cats is still here and now that there's not so much commotion here, they're calming down. I'll try to get some pics tomorrow maybe. The kitties did good overall, especially compared to the Collies, but the best behaved award goes to Murph. He's been an absolute angel.
He only had one bad Rita incident. I took him out to pee during the beginnings of the storm. Just as he lifted his leg, a gust of wind blew in and tipped him over. :) Didn't get any pics of that, because it was dark, but here he is happy to be out and about the following morning:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8..._hurricane.jpg
Here's a pic of Gull with the damage we suffered from Rita:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...ull_stick5.jpg
Hope it turned out just as well for all the other Pettalkers effected by Rita.
Par...
