I thought I was SO CLEVER. In the time that I’ve been lecturing about fire and reading emergency preparedness websites, I realized that storing the cat carriers in the garage was not going to work. My husband and I moved them to the hall closet and patted ourselves on the back for being a little bit better prepared. We discussed plans for gathering the cats and getting out, etc. We had a plan.
Then we made pizza. Ok, to be fair, my husband made pizza and I was going to do all the eating, but that’s not my point. My point is he set off the smoke alarm while I was sitting in my thinking chair with a cat on my lap, knitting. That cat, on hearing the smoke alarm did exactly what you’d expect. She launched herself like a little furry rocket and was halfway across the house in a dead panic before I could even start moving to put my knitting down. Then both cats came racing back through the office in a terrified loop of blurry panicked catness and by the time I reached the offending smoke alarm over the door, they were finishing a lap around the living room before diving downstairs to hide behind the filing cabinets where they cannot be reached.
Good thing the damn cat carriers are in the hall closet. If that had been an actual emergency with a fire setting off the alarms, there’s no purpose in having cat carriers at all – we’re never going to get hold of them. For now, we have agreed that we need to re-think our plan. All this to say that emergency preparedness is not just making a “go bag” and sitting back, smug that you got it done. It must include constant re-visiting and strategizing, practicing and praying that you never, ever have to use it.
