Patricia Jones, a spokeswoman for the ASPCA, said the agency has been "slammed" with phone calls from people worried about pets." She said many calls are coming from pet owners who can’t get back into their apartments.
Pictured right: A Lower East Side resident retrieves his cat from his apartment, but those people who can’t gain entry to their homes are frantic about the fate of their pets."Sometimes the owners feel so guilty that they abandoned their pets," said Jennifer Olsen of the ASPCA. "We have to counsel them, too. But it is so gratifying to see them when they reunite with their pets after all this time."
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals), swiftly responded to the crisis in New York. They sent three vehicles from Norfolk, Virginia to "ground zero" of the attack. Staff from PETA's Community Animal Project and Domestic Animal Investigations and Abuse project arrived in the city determined to gain access to three recently vacated apartment buildings.
"People who are not able to return to their homes may have lost a great deal," says PETA's Daphna Nachminovitch. "We don't want them to lose their animal companions too."
UAN/EARS (United Animal Nations/Emergency Animal Rescue Service), founded in 1987 for the primary purpose of rescuing forgotten or lost animals due to disasters, assisted with the animal relief efforts in New York. The rescue team met with the New York Humane Society, the New York Center for Animal Care and Control, and the Waggin' Tails boarding facility near ground zero to coordinate needs and assist in placement and adoption of lost pets. They also assisted a group called City Critters by feeding and trapping feral cats in the Battery Park area who had previously been looked after by local caregivers.
Meanwhile, fortunate cats, dogs, rabbits and reptiles silently thank those groups responsible for rescuing them from the unstable buildings and reuniting them with their concerned families.
New York - Though she still has no permanent address and is still wearing the donated T-shirt and shorts she received following an abrupt evacuation from her hotel at 3 World Trade Center, Alison Schmid was ready to adopt not one but two cats over the weekend.
Schmid was walking Saturday on the upper west side when she happened upon two rows of caged cats displayed on a sidewalk. Some of the felines had been displaced by the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and were up for adoption.
Schmid lost her 17-pound white-haired cat Tuffy Schmidlap when the World Trade Center Marriott collapsed, and she was aching to find new companions.
"Animals are wonderful companions to have in a time like this," said Schmid, who moved to New York from northern California on September 4th and was staying at the Marriott while she looked for an apartment. "You can never replace a pet you love like Tuffy, but I do think getting new cats will help me feel a little better."
Volunteers for the New Yorkers for Companion Animals, a non-profit rescue mission, persuaded Schmid to wait until she finds an apartment to replace Tuffy. They were having little trouble placing the cats, even without her help.
Since the attack on New York, animal shelters throughout the area have reported an overwhelming response from animal lovers who have offered everything from foster homes to food and other supplies for pets affected by the disaster.
The outpouring of generosity has resulted in a spike in adoptions at the city's shelters and rescue missions involving not just animals affected by the attacks, but those in need of homes before then.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates the attack affected 800 pets, which were killed, orphaned or displaced. The society and New York's Center for Animal Care and Control so far have dealt with about 500 animals, rescuing them from evacuated areas, reuniting them with their owners or finding them foster homes.
In the first days after the attacks, animal rescue workers used ventilators to protect their lungs from the dust and acrid smoke that covered lower Manhattan as they climbed as high as 35 stories in darkened and evacuated apartment buildings to recover animals.
Among the rescued were dogs, cats, snakes, geckos and even a Manhattan rat that was a classroom pet at an elementary school near ground zero, said Deborah Sindell, an ASPCA spokeswoman.
Battery Park orphans:
Most of the pets belonged to residents of the Battery Park City complex and other evacuated downtown neighborhoods near the World Trade Center. In some cases, the city shelters were given permission from families of missing people to enter apartments to retrieve orphaned animals.
Pictured right: With a face mask still around his neck, Eric Miller breathes easier knowing that his cat "Hamilton" is safe. Miller had not seen Hamilton for a few days after which time the superintendent of the building had been checking in on and feeding the cat. Miller had been evacuated from his apartment on North End Street, only blocks from the World Trade Center Towers. They were reunited with the help of the ASPCA on friday, 14th September.Last week, the ASPCA bought full-page advertisements in New York newspapers asking neighbours and friends of victims of the terrorist attack to check up on any stranded pets.
At the ASPCA shelter on the upper east side, a glass corral that was packed with cats before September 11th had only a few battle-scarred scrappers remaining by the weekend. The Center for Animal Care and Control also was reporting many more adoptions since the attack, which destroyed the World Trade Center complex.
Assisting the ASPCA, Gwendolyn Wood, an animal behaviour specialist at Rockefeller University's Pet Project, said the recent efforts to rescue and recover animals are unprecedented.
"This is the kind of tragedy that has brought out so many people who want to help, and I hope I never have to see anything like this again," she said.
Pet lover on a mission:
People came from all over the country to help. Soon after the attacks, Rebecca Morris made a 1,100-mile trek from her home in Hazel Green, Ala. USA, to Manhattan to adopt animals orphaned by the attacks. ASPCA officials asked her instead to help find homes for four large, hard-to-place dogs that had languished in shelters for as long as six months.
Two of the dogs Morris took have only three legs each; another has a badly injured back. The other was so hyperactive that Morris thought it needed to be enrolled in obedience school before she could find the animal a home.
"I know these aren't World Trade Center dogs, but that's OK," Morris said by phone from Alabama. "I think everybody needs to do their part in helping out after this tragedy."
Patty Adjamine, director of New Yorkers for Companion Animals, said she has noticed people impulsively adopting animals since the attacks.
Pictured left: Broadway producer Robyn Goodman has a dog but has adopted Rudi, who is named in honour of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.Robyn Goodman, who was depressed and feeling vulnerable, is among them. Goodman, a Broadway producer, was taking a walk with her dog Bess on the Saturday afternoon following the attacks when she happened upon volunteers from the companion-animals group showing pets for adoption in front of an upper west side pet-supply store.
Bess gravitated to a cage containing a 7-month-old female black feline with a white stripe extending from its neck to its stomach.
Unable to resist, Goodman decided impulsively to adopt the cat, which had been rescued from the city pound.
"It's hard for a lot of New Yorkers, because we want to do something to help and there isn't currently a need for more volunteers," said Goodman, who named the cat Rudi in honor of New York's mayor. "This helped me feel like I helped save a life," she said.
