The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) rescue team has moved on from Laguna Beach in the Philippines to Santa Cruz, a district of Manila, that was particularly hard-hit by Typhoon Ondoy (the same as Typhoon Ketsana).
There are 27 communities there, with seven of them still under water that ranges from knee-deep to chest-deep.
Santa Cruz officials led the team on a tour of three of the submerged communities. Everywhere there was devastation. The typhoon struck about two weeks ago, and since that time the cats and dogs who managed to get onto the rooftops have been stranded there.
Rich Crook, manager of Best Friends' Rapid Response and part of the IFAW rescue team, reports that many of them have had absolutely no access to food or clean water. “One of the things keeping me here,” he said, “is knowing that our team is providing care to animals that literally have no other resource. They don’t have food. They don’t have clean water. And they are in desperate need.”
While they were on the tour, they were able to give food and water to those animals that needed it most. They picked up the worst cases — those animals that looked like they might not be able to last much longer. These animals are now with the Philippine organization PAWS (The Philippine Animal Welfare Society), who are taking wonderful care of them and who will make sure they have everything they need to recover.
The policy is, where possible, to provide food and clean water to the animals, but not to remove them unless it’s necessary for the animals’ survival. In many cases, they are on the rooftops of their homes, and their people will be able to return to care for them.
Tomorrow morning, the team will head back out as soon as it is light to rescue and give food and water to more animals.
The Flying Kitty
Anna Cabrera, of PAWS, has been going along with the team and has been out in the rescue boats nearly every day. It has been difficult and very exhausting work for everybody, with the reward being the knowledge that animals are being helped.
There was a bright moment the day before yesterday in Laguna when a tiny kitten who was on a rooftop suddenly spotted Crook. Apparently the kitten had a sixth sense that told her that Crook was a rescuer because she flew off the roof by herself to land in Crook’s arms — and so rescued herself!
Cabrera writes, “The team composed of PAWS, IFAW and WSPA [World Society for the Protection of Animals] went to Pansol, Laguna on October 7 to try to distribute relief goods to both people and animals stranded in the second floor of their houses or on their rooftops.
“This was only one of the two days that I wasn't with the team. They were out on a boat, surveying one of the most flooded areas in Laguna. They had reached a section where there are a lot of shanties submerged in neck-deep water and Rich and the team had started distributing human relief items (we always bring human relief goods together with the animal relief goods).
“The minute the boat pulled over to the side of the roof, a gray tabby kitten bounded, no, ‘charged’ was the word that the witnesses used, towards the direction of Rich. The kitty had started her run from the far end and literally flew off the roof straight into his arms!
"The minute she landed, the kitty nestled in the space between Rich's life vest and his shirt and started purring.
"If the kitten had hesitated in her leap for even a split-second, the team swore that she would have missed Rich completely and would surely have landed in water.
"The kitten seemed so sure that Rich was a rescuer. ‘It all happened so fast,’ IFAW volunteer and firefighter, Brenda Stanton, said.”
They called her the “flying kitty.”
More work ahead
Cabrera adds that the rescue team “pulled out about 18 animals stranded on rooftops and other floating debris — including two ducks in the middle of Laguna Bay and a turtle buried in mud in Provident Village, Marikina.”
There is more work to be done to rescue more animals in the days ahead, and to give food and water to stranded animals until the floodwaters drain away and people can come back to their homes and their animals.
Thanks to Anna Cabrera of PAWS and Anna Gonce of Best Friends for their contributions to this story.
How you can help
Top photo: PAWS / Unloading the kennels of rescued animals from one of the boats
Third photo: PAWS / a flooded neighborhood
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