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    Who will win bigly from Trump tariffs? | Brief letters

    After Donald Trump raised a range of tariffs, the US stock market tanked (Report, 4 April). If Trump rescinded these, within weeks the stock market would bounce back. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know in advance when that was going to happen? Somebody could make a great deal of money.John KinderRomsey, Hampshire In the past, we referred to the ABC of the cost of living crisis: Austerity, Brexit, Covid. Now, it seems, we have to add D for Donald and E for Elon. I don’t want to think about what F might stand for.Ruth EversleyPaulton, Somerset Re your article (‘She treats everyone with a deep growl’: can you train an angry cat to be more sociable?, 30 March), sometimes it just requires patience: in his 20th year my adopted feral cat Twix finally gave up being antisocial and climbed on to my lap for a cuddle, and there he remains at every opportunity, living his best life.Rosemary JacksonLondon Re your report (Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike as piles of waste grow, 31 March), we can now acknowledge that, like medical staff, binmen are essential frontline workers, without whom public health collapses? The solution to the impasse? Attlee got it right. Stuff their mouths with gold.Jenny MittonSutton Coldfield, West Midlands I hadn’t noticed seat heights on Mastermind (Letters, 1 April) but I comment every week to my wife about the amount of manspreading, to the extent that when we board a bus or train, we often say quietly to each other: “A few potential Mastermind contestants here.”Ray JenkinCardiff More

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    ‘An underground thing’: what happens to a pet when its owners are targeted by immigration raids?

    On 1 February, Kyle Aaron Reese saw a Facebook post from an old school friend urgently looking for someone to adopt a dog named Benny. Benny’s owners had just been deported after an immigration raid in New York City; faced with high costs and uncertainty, they hadn’t been able to take Benny with them. Reese did not have to stare long at the photo of the jowly bulldog’s silly smile before jumping in his car to go pick him up.“Everything about what I learned about that dog made me want him more,” said Reese, who is 39 and lives in Brooklyn.Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign started just days after his inauguration. Officers from federal law enforcement agencies have carried out raids in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Diego, Denver, Miami, Atlanta and other large cities, stoking fears in communities across the country. More than 8,000 immigrants have been arrested, NBC reported.Undocumented people are staying home from work and school, drawing up plans in case they are separated from their children, and tracking confirmed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids on social media. Some are also worrying about what will happen to family pets.View image in fullscreenEnlace Latino, a public service journalism outlet for Latino immigrant communities based in North Carolina, published a piece shortly after Trump took office titled: “How can I plan for my pets’ future if I am detained or deported?” Steps include finding a trusted caregiver who agrees to watch after the pet, setting aside money for the pet’s care, and writing detailed notes about the pet’s breed, diet, medications, vaccinations and veterinarian.Benny’s owners, who declined to comment, left Benny with a close family friend, who used Facebook to permanently place him with Reese.“It’s almost like an underground thing,” Reese said of local efforts to re-home pets after Ice raids. “There’s no network in place, because we didn’t realize this was an issue. But people are really stepping up.”No one knows how many pets have been separated from their families due to Ice raids. A representative for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wrote in an email that “it’s too soon to identify any specific trends” in animal shelter admissions due to immigration raids.Flatbush Cats, a Brooklyn non-profit that traps, neuters and releases stray cats to reduce the population of street cats, also runs an adoption program; Reese is a volunteer there.“We’re hearing heartbreaking word-of-mouth stories from one neighbor to the next,” said Will Zweigart, the group’s founder. “This morning, one of our volunteers was crying her heart out on the way to the clinic with a cat that belongs to some neighbors she knows are being displaced by a landlord who was creating unfavorable living conditions for them because he knows they’re undocumented and not in a position to fight back.” They made the painful decision to re-home the cat while they look for safe housing.When established immigrant advocate organizations and local-level rapid response groups are focused on preventing detentions, deportations and family separation, concerns about adopting out animals might not seem like a priority. Still, leaving a pet behind can be devastating, and knowing it will be properly looked after may provide some comfort to immigrant owners. “Pets are family,” Zweigard said.View image in fullscreenNaomi Pardasie, 28, is a naturalized US citizen, but her husband is not. In January, five Ice agents came to their apartment door. The couple did not let them in, and the agents waited outside for 45 minutes. Rattled by the encounter, Pardasie’s husband stayed home from his construction job for two weeks.The couple decided to voluntarily head back to Trinidad, where they’re from, in April. They’re bringing their cats – Oatmeal, Olive, Onyx and Zoboomafoo – with them.“They’ve been with us since they were born,” Pardasie, who works as a housekeeper and bartender, said. “I’ve known their moms, their dads, their moms’ moms and dads’ dads. I watched them come into this world, and it would be hard to just leave them here.” She is currently raising money to pay for their airfare and required vet visits.“Animals come into our lives for a reason,” Pardasie said. “It’s scary to know that people who don’t have the money to get their animals into another country have to leave them behind.”The US’s animal shelters are full. Last October, Animal Care Centers of New York, the city’s largest shelter, announced that it would no longer accept dog surrenders due to overcrowding.“Animal shelters should be a lifeline for communities in times of crisis, but with chronic overcrowding, they’re often unavailable when they’re needed most,” Zweigart said. “The same thing happened in Los Angeles with the fires – the animals had to be transported somewhere else because local shelters were full. This highlights where we’re headed: as more and more people are displaced for different reasons, we’re not able to take care of animals.”Reese, who adopted Benny the bulldog, says that when institutions fail, communities can step in. “When people are deported, what happens to their animals is such a small part of the bigger issue,” he said. “But if we can take care of the animals, that’s something we can do when we feel like we have little control over everything else.” More

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    CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Transmission Between Cats and People

    The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.The table was the lone mention of bird flu in a scientific report published on Wednesday that was otherwise devoted to air quality and the Los Angeles County wildfires. The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday, and is not included in the versions currently available online. The table appeared briefly at around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the error might have occurred.The virus, called H5N1, is primarily adapted to birds, but it has been circulating in dairy cattle since early last year. H5N1 has also infected at least 67 Americans but does not yet have the ability to spread readily among people. Only one American, in Louisiana, has died of an H5N1 infection so far.The report was part of the C.D.C.’s prestigious Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which, until two weeks ago, had regularly published every week since the first installment decades ago. But a communications ban on the agency had held the reports back, until the wildfire report was published on Wednesday.Experts said that the finding that cats might have passed the virus to people was not entirely unexpected. But they were alarmed that the finding had not yet been released to the public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Bodhi, the ‘Menswear Dog,’ Dies at 15

    A Shiba Inu of uncommon sartorial panache, Bodhi modeled for Coach and was the subject of his own fashion lookbook.Bodhi, a Shiba Inu whose smartly tailored sport coats and luxurious knitwear helped make him the rare canine men’s wear influencer, died last Monday. He was 15.To hundreds of thousands of fashion enthusiasts who followed him on social media, Bodhi was known simply as the Menswear Dog. His owner, Yena Kim, announced his death Monday on Instagram, alongside an image of Bodhi wearing an arresting striped turtleneck.Bodhi was seldom underdressed. For more than a decade, he modeled herringbone overcoats and pageboy caps, buttery cashmere vests and tortoiseshell glasses. In each image, his dignified snout poked out from beneath caramel-colored fur; it was more typical to see him photographed in a bow tie rather than a dog collar.“Listen, he wore it well,” said Lawrence Schlossman, the co-host of the fashion podcast “Throwing Fits.” “It was always the right Oxford, the right knit tie, a beautiful raincoat with the collar popped.”Mr. Schlossman became familiar with the Menswear Dog account on Tumblr in the early 2010s, as the preppy look modeled by Bodhi gained traction in mainstream fashion. He once layered a raglan-sleeve coat over a white button-up and realized that he was inadvertently channeling the dapper Shiba Inu.“I can only imagine that wherever he is, he’s still getting ’fits off,” Mr. Schlossman said.

    View this post on Instagram A post shared by Menswear Dog (@mensweardog)
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    California County to Pay $300,000 Over Butchering of Girl’s Goat

    The girl and her family reached a settlement after accusing the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office of unlawfully seizing a pet goat that was sold and slaughtered.A California county’s sheriff’s office agreed to pay $300,000 after it seized a 9-year-old girl’s pet goat, which was later slaughtered, according to court documents made public Friday.Jessica Long, the girl’s mother, sued the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, the Shasta District Fair, which auctioned the goat, and some of its employees in 2022 for taking “a young girl’s beloved pet goat” to be sold and slaughtered, despite the family’s efforts to spare the animal, according to court records.Ms. Long bought the goat for her daughter, who called him Cedar or Cedes, so the girl could participate in a 4-H program, according to the family’s lawyer, Ryan Gordon.Ms. Long’s daughter, who is identified as E.L. in the lawsuit because she is a minor, initially raised the goat to be auctioned at the Shasta District Fair in Northern California.But as auction day approached, the girl, who had been feeding and walking with the goat on a leash everywhere, became attached to Cedar and did not want to sell him.The fair ignored the family’s pleas and sold Cedar for $902, of which the fair was owed $63 as part of the sale.The family offered to pay the fair the money it was owed, and as the dispute continued, offered to pay the full auction price. Fair officials refused to withdraw the sale, however, according to court documents.As the family attempted to keep Cedar, fair officials threatened criminal theft charges.During the dispute, Ms. Long took Cedar to a farm 200 miles away in Sonoma County to be kept safe, the lawsuit said.Two Shasta County sheriff’s deputies drove to the farm and seized the goat, though it remains unclear who got the deputies involved, Mr. Gordon said. Law enforcement did not have a warrant to search and seize Cedar from the farm, he added.Cedar was eventually slaughtered but where his remains ended up is still unknown, and the winning bidder never paid the $902, Mr. Gordon said.In settling with the girl and her family, Shasta County admitted no wrongdoing. The lawsuit against the Shasta District Fair and some of its workers remains pending. Representatives of Shasta County and the Shasta District Fair did not immediately return requests for comment.“They can never get justice for Cedar, he’s gone,” Mr. Gordon said. “But this is a good first step.”The money will be held in a trust until Ms. Long’s daughter, who is now 11, is a legal adult, he said.In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Gordon, who is the co-director of Advancing Law for Animals, a nonprofit law firm specializing in complex cases of animal law, said the sheriff’s deputies were “not the judge” and had no right to deem who was Cedar’s rightful owner.When Ms. Long’s daughter learned of Cedar’s fate weeks after he was taken, she ran to her bed and cried under her covers, Ms. Long said. More

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    Fur and loathing: do America’s ‘childless cat ladies’ hold the key to the US election?

    When writer and artist Alice Maddicott’s beloved rescue cat died, she was understandably bereft. Dylan was a proper character, she says, the kind of gregarious cat that follows you to the pub or for a walk. But mourning him made Alice, who was then in her late 30s and single, feel faintly self-conscious. What if people thought she was a mad cat lady, weeping spinsterish tears for her pet?“If I’d had a dog, there would be no stereotype. But as a single woman approaching 40, it could be seen very differently,” says Maddicott. Curious about the origins of such a kneejerk prejudice, she started digging into its history. The research became a book, Cat Women, reclaiming an insult long used to belittle older women (especially non-compliant ones) or frighten younger women into settling down, lest they end up like the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons: once a high achiever, now a burnt-out drunk.But as Maddicott points out, it’s an objectively ridiculous insult. There’s no such thing as a “crazy cat man” and single hamster owners aren’t considered a threat to the patriarchal order. Only cat ladies touch a nerve, because only cat ladies immediately conjure up the idea of witches.In medieval times, the devil was believed to give cats as gifts to women inducted into witchcraft, Maddicott explains: so strong was the association that at the Bideford witch trials in 17th-century Devon, one woman was accused after a cat was seen slipping in through her window. “Probably an eccentric older woman feeding a stray, but that was used to condemn her.” Single women, unrestrained and also undefended by any man, made dangerously easy scapegoats if sickness came or the crops failed. Thankfully, people no longer believe in witches ruining lives out of spite. Or do they?Three years ago, the then aspiring Republican senator (and now vice-presidential candidate) JD Vance complained on Fox News that America was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He named then vice-president Kamala Harris, secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg (who is gay) and the young New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as politicians who supposedly had no stake in the future they were legislating for.The idea that if you haven’t given birth, you don’t count, was hurtful to many doting stepmothers (as Harris is) or adoptive parents (like Buttigieg). But most incendiary of all was the idea that not having children renders a person a bitter, vengeful husk, desperate to drag everyone else down with them. Polling this summer, after those comments were dug up and recirculated, found two-thirds of Americans disagreed that not having biological children was a hindrance in a president; even among Republicans, only 15% agreed.View image in fullscreenThough Vance now insists he was merely being sarcastic, for many women on both sides of the Atlantic, those words summed up a strand of politics that seemingly values them mainly for their ability to procreate and views their right to choose with suspicion. Though powerful women have long been shamed for not being mothers – “deliberately barren”, the former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s opponents called her – in the current climate, attacks on childless cat ladies have a sharper edge.In both the US and Europe, rightwing parties are weaponising female fertility as a political issue, tapping into a potent mix of misogyny, economic anxiety and overtly racist angst about being “replaced” as the dominant culture if white women don’t start breeding more enthusiastically. Though falling birth rates across the developed world are an undeniable economic headache – shrinking populations mean fewer young workers to fund pensions for the old and, typically, lower growth – populists focus on the way a dwindling workforce leads to more imported labour. Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orbán has claimed the west is “committing suicide” by not making babies; in Germany, the far right AfD called in its manifesto for “larger families instead of mass immigration”. Elon Musk, the X owner and Donald Trump donor, tweets in apocalyptic terms about impending “population collapse”.Yet still, the baby drought persists. Around one in five British women don’t have children by the end of their fertile years – the Office for National Statistics doesn’t keep equivalent statistics for men – and this year deaths overtook births for the first time (outside a pandemic) since the 1970s. Almost half of Americans under 50, meanwhile, are childless. Or should that be childfree? For this year of shaming women has also been a year of women refusing to be shamed: older women reclaiming witchy insults like “hag” and “crone”, while younger ones resist what they see as a Handmaid’s Tale future of curtailed rights over their own bodies.Like the cat-eared pink hats that anti-Trump marchers wore in 2017, referencing his boasts about grabbing women “by the pussy”, in 2024 a “Childless Cat Lady for Kamala” T-shirt or sticker is now a gleeful statement of defiance. When Taylor Swift identified as one in her Instagram post formally endorsing Harris, it felt like something of a Spartacus moment – arguably even more so when Elon Musk responded with a creepy tweet offering to get her pregnant.What’s different about Swift isn’t merely that she, too, is unmarried, childfree and a cat owner at 34; it’s that she makes it look like a blast. Rich, powerful and taking her pick of trophy boyfriends, she lives closer to what would once have been called a rakish bachelor’s life than a spinster’s – though these days spinsterdom is a story told very differently.In Kate Winslet’s recent feminist biopic Lee, about the pioneering Second World War photographer Lee Miller, there is a scene in which Winslet’s Miller and Vogue magazine editor Audrey Withers ask each other if they’re planning to have children. “God no,” says Withers, cheerfully. “Oh God no,” echoes Winslet’s Miller. It’s a bonding moment in the film which implies neither could have done what they did – in Miller’s case following the US army’s advance across Europe and documenting newly liberated concentration camps; and in Withers’s case battling the censors to publish her images – if they’d had families at home. Though Miller did eventually have a son after the war, the film doesn’t duck the fact their relationship was difficult and ultimately lets her work take centre stage. It’s how great men’s stories are often told, drawing a veil over domestic shortcomings, but more rarely women’s.View image in fullscreenOnce upon a time in Hollywood, childless women could be mad, murderous bunny boilers – in films like Single White Female and Fatal Attraction – or at a push Bridget Jones, terrified of dying “fat and alone”. Now they can be Carrie Bradshaw, reimagined in And Just Like That… as a sexy fiftysomething widow with a fluffy rescue cat, or even Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the eternally childless doll who (according to her creator Ruth Handler) “always represented the fact that a woman has choices”. Though the film has a darker side, with the Kens’ angry revolt against the Barbie matriarchy echoing a backlash many young women say they’re experiencing in real life, the Barbieland both sides seek to control is a hedonistic land of parties and beach days where nobody is spending their Saturdays bleary-eyed at soft play. The toymaker Mattel has always resisted pleas to give Barbie and Ken children; instead they stayed forever aspirational Dinks, an 80s acronym for Dual Income No Kids now gleefully revived by millennials.“We’re DINKs. Of course we are already planning our European vacation next year,” says TikToker @johnefinance, in a chirpy post last December that racked up over 290,000 likes. “We’re DINKs; we spend our discretionary income on $8 lattes,” his partner giggles. Social media is still awash with #dinkcouple posts bragging about how much more money, sex and sleep they get compared to haggard new parents, recasting childless life as the opposite of sad and empty. Unusually, the trend brings young men’s perspectives into a debate normally (and exhaustingly) focused on women. But it also reflects polling released by the Pew Center thinktank earlier this year showing the most common reason childless Americans under 50 give for not being parents is that they just don’t want to.TikTok’s Dinks are young, and maybe not ruling parenthood out forever. But for now their lives arguably look a lot more fun than being a tradwife, those sourdough-baking, God-fearing, home-schooling mothers of multiple children whose retro social media content is – depending on your view – either a bit of guilty escapist fantasy for tired working women or a sinister attempt to drag women back into the kitchen. This summer a British newspaper interview with uber-tradwife Hannah Neeleman (aka @ballerinafarm), in which the writer wondered how exactly she’d ended up sacrificing a ballet career to have eight children and why her husband kept answering questions for her, triggered days of debate about whether she was being secretly oppressed or whether (as Neeleman’s fans argued) this was a hit piece by a writer who doesn’t have kids.Cut through all the noise, however, and there is one clear signal: neither the tradwife nor the Dink camp seem to think having it all is an option any more. You can’t have kids and a career in ballet; you can’t have a thrilling social life and children. You have to choose, with the implication that either way, something is lost. If there is a sadness to Neeleman talking about giving up on her professional ambitions, there is a faint whiff of financial distress around some of those Dink reels, too; a sense they’re blowing their cash on bucket-list travel destinations because the idea of buying a family home (while paying nursery bills that cost more than a mortgage) seems wildly out of reach.The second most common reason childless Britons aged 35-44 gave for not having children (after thinking they were too old) was a split between “I don’t want the impact on my lifestyle” and “the cost is too high”, according to YouGov. But for those on tight budgets, the two are related. It may be no accident that Britain’s last mini-baby boom was in the early Noughties – fuelled by cheaper childcare, longer maternity leave and rising prosperity – or that it fizzled out with the 2009 recession.On both sides of the Atlantic, women who do want kids some day are tired of being blamed for their childlessness by politicians who seemingly won’t meet them halfway: who instead of building cheap houses for first-time buyers or slashing their nursery bills, suggest (in Vance’s case) that grandparents could help out for free. But for some women, there’s an added worry that politicians cajoling or shaming women into having children may eventually turn to forcing them.For American women under 30, abortion is now the number one election issue, according to an October poll by the health policy researchers KFF. Two years ago, the overturning of Roe v Wade – the landmark ruling underpinning legal abortion in America – left the way open for an all-out assault on reproductive rights. At campaign rally after rally, Harris has hammered away at fears of what a Republican administration might do. She often quotes Project 2025, the infamous leaked wishlist for a second Trump term drawn up by a rightwing thinktank, which argues for giving foetuses legal rights and scrapping funding for contraceptive services.In Europe, too, rightwing governments in Hungary, Italy and Poland have tightened abortion law, though furious female voters helped propel a pro-liberalisation Polish government into power last year.For now, Britain seems to be on a much more progressive path. The prospect of curbs on abortion in this parliament looks at first glance remote, though the Labour MP Stella Creasy – who has been aggressively targeted in her constituency by anti-abortion activists – argues complacency is dangerous. “If the election hadn’t been called, it’s not clear that we wouldn’t have seen the first rollback on rights in 50 years,” she says, pointing to a backbench attempt to reduce the legal time limit from 24 to 22 weeks in the dying months of the last Conservative government.But the Tory MP Miriam Cates – who once argued that dwindling fertility rates are “the one overarching threat” to western society – lost her seat in July, while the Tory leadership favourite Kemi Badenoch says she isn’t convinced governments can make women have babies.America’s fate, however, still hangs by a thread, with a stark divide emerging particularly among the young: women for Harris, angry young men for Trump.Whether she wins or whether she loses in the coming election, it almost certainly won’t be because (along with every other occupant of the Oval Office in history) Kamala Harris hasn’t physically given birth. Most Americans say this election is still about the economy, stupid. But what is clear from months of arguing about childless cat ladies is that being one is just another American story now.When the pollsters Ipsos went looking this summer for female voters with no kids at home, but with a feline companion, the surprise was all the ways in which they were pretty much like everyone else: mostly suburban, disproportionately white, mostly with some college education, no richer or poorer than average – and in almost a third of cases, Republicans. They’re living behind the same white-picket fences as everyone else, shopping at Target, working nine to five, just getting on with life. And the clearer that becomes, the harder it is to pretend that every childless cat lady is a witch.View image in fullscreenFeline friendshipCat lover and author Britt Collins on her furry companionsI never imagined that childless cat ladies would become a political force and a whole new demographic. Over the years, I’ve heard all the snarks: mad, lonely, obsessive – the old witch-hunting slurs that have dogged outlier women forever. Am I miserable by the choices I made? Hell, no. Here’s the thing, cats rock and I don’t have to defend my choices. If I wanted kids, I’d have adopted one.The only time I felt lonely was in the last year of my marriage when I lost my sense of self. I’ve had boyfriends since I was 15, always cat men, and I still adore my two long-term exes with whom I spent my 20s and 30s. I’ve raised dozens of strays with them and had the best of times. However, these days, my ideal man is a gay vet. I’m happy with my mogs, enjoying the deep, uncomplicated love and pure joy of feline friendship.Still, I’ve had strangers tell me that giving up on relationships, as I moved into my 50s, is no way to live. Women and the cats they love have long been maligned, somehow seen as lesser-than or unfulfilled. Carving out my own little universe, I’ve filled it with cats and creativity. I’ve travelled to more than 35 countries, looked after big cats, baboons, bats and various wild orphans, written two books, ghostwritten and edited others, edited and created magazines, run a sell-out cat festival, directed pop videos and completed the screenplay adaption for my book, Strays, that has sparked interest from Hollywood producers. I do what I want, when I want – enjoying the privileges historically afforded to men.Journalist and activist Gloria Steinem, who’s had many felines over the decades, credits them as her teachers ‘when it comes to a strong will and self-authority’. When Steinem was asked how to raise the next generation of feminists, she said: ‘Like cats. They tell you what they’re going to do, and that’s that.’Cats, with their punky attitudes, have taught me defiance and everything else worth knowing. They are sensualists, things of beauty, who’ve inspired artists for centuries. Lennon, McCartney, Bowie, Dylan and many of the greatest rock stars were all crazy-cat ladies. Us cat people of all political stripes may not agree on everything, but we don’t let it get in the way of what matters most.Strays: A Lost Cat, A Homeless Man and Their Journey Across America by Britt Collins is published by Simon & Schuster More

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    Hurricanes Spur Pet Adoptions Nationwide. Should You Get a ‘Storm Dog’?

    Amid major disasters, shelter animals are often sent to other states. And people are more likely to foster and adopt. Here’s what to know.Just days after Hurricane Milton hit Florida last week, about a dozen shelter dogs from a small town in Hendry County had already been flown to Texas. Several dozen other animals, from Pinellas County, had been taken by truck to shelters in Massachusetts and New York.They were part of the country’s latest diaspora of storm animals, dogs and cats scattered across the country by back-to-back hurricanes — Milton and Helene — which wreaked havoc across a vast swath of the United States this fall.Who transports these shelter animals and how does it work? Here’s what you need to know.Shelter animals often end up in faraway states after a disaster. Why?There are Harvey cats in California and Maria dogs in New York.If you have ever heard someone say their dog was rescued from a storm thousands of miles away, you might have wondered how they ended up so far from home.It comes down to a coordinated effort between shelters and national groups like the Humane Society, the ASPCA and the Best Friends Animal Society, as well as smaller public and private agencies.Year-round, these groups work to send animals from shelters facing overcrowding and low adoption rates to ones in other parts of the country where there is more space, and greater demand. When disaster strikes, the pace picks up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Hurricane Milton Leaves Many Florida Animals in Limbo

    Hurricane Milton has displaced people all over Florida. It left thousands of shelter animals in limbo, too.On Friday, animal shelters in Florida were struggling to handle an influx of animals after the storm and scrambling to relocate them, sending some as far away as Massachusetts.Temporary evacuation centers for animals had opened, including one at Alaqua Animal Refuge, in Florida’s Northern Panhandle, which began receiving animals from coastal areas at risk of flooding. Even small shelters were taking in animals, wherever they had spare kennels.“Many shelters were over capacity before the storm,” said Sharon Hawa, senior manager of emergency services at Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization that helped coordinate the transport of around 250 of Florida’s shelter animals this week.In an event like Milton, Ms. Hawa said, shelters usually receive animals picked up by people who are concerned that the strays could die in a storm, as well as ones that get separated from their owners during the storm.“Then there are animals that have already been part of their shelter population,” Ms. Hawa said, adding, “You’re talking about potentially 50, 60, 70, maybe 100 more animals.”On top of that, some shelters suffered property damage. “There are shelters where people are having to wade through water to get there to see if their shelter can even be operational,” Ms. Hawa said.In the lead-up to the storm, people in Clewiston, Fla., about 80 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, brought in several stray dogs to the city, said Thomas Lewis, the police chief. Soon, the city’s animal services, which was only set up to handle 14 dogs, had more than 50. And Clewiston was in the direct path of the storm.Mr. Lewis wanted to save the animals, a mix of pit bull mutts and small dogs, and worked with Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League, in West Palm Beach, to relocate more than 40 of them.Nearly all were taken by truck to West Palm Beach. From there, 10 of them were flown to Panama City Beach, and from there, they continued their journey to the Humane Society of North Texas.Chief Lewis said it was good that they had been relocated, since the town was hit by tornadoes. But he wondered what would happen to them next. More