Hurricane Katrina Left Me With Nothing

It’s Friday, and Hurricane Katrina, more than 2000 kilo­me­tres away, has thrown cold winds and scat­tered show­ers over parts of Southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. As I step out­side to grill some­thing on the bar­beque, the cats quick­ly run to the screen door. They tem­porar­i­ly for­get that they’re ene­mies, that they nor­mal­ly can’t walk past each oth­er with­out a swipe or a hiss, and sit side-by-side to care­ful­ly smell the damp wind com­ing through.

People name hur­ri­canes after their for­mer lovers. The head­lines are always the same:

After cheat­ing with co-work­er, Hurricane Camille leaves 250 dead from Louisiana to Virginia

$400 mil­lion dol­lars in dam­age and 1145 fatal­i­ties as Hurricane Gordon weaves through the Caribbean and takes half my CD col­lec­tion with him before dis­ap­pear­ing in his Camaro.

The cats know that some­thing has hap­pened. They can tell that this weath­er is com­ing from some­where else, and that many have been affect­ed, the way some dogs know that their own­ers are dat­ing the wrong peo­ple and won’t stop defend­ing them with their lips drawn back in a snarl.

But all the cats can do is sit and sniff.

3 comments

  1. My cats always knew wheather was act­ing fun­ny. they would get real­ly upset a few hours befor rain start­ed to fall, one night they were act­ing real­ly strange, mak­ing very odd nois­es and hid­ing, the next morn­ing there was a minor earth­quake (some­thing that nev­er hap­pend in Israel).

    I real­ly miss them.

  2. They are alive and well, last time I heard about them, liv­ing with me ex. I don’t see them any­more, one of the low­est break up moments was when a cou­ple of months after he moved out I went to his apart­ment to pick up a book he took by mis­take and they did­n’t rec­og­nize me.

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