Seriously?

I preface this by noting that I am a cat owner twice-over, and a cat lover, though I am sure by referring to myself as an owner rather than a caretaker or facilitator or companion or wet nurse or whatever, there are those out there who consider my cat OWNING to be tantamount to enslavement, and to them I say only "Pffft!"

But notwithstanding my status as a person who sleeps in close proximity to domestic animals (unless they choose not to sleep near me; they're not chained to the bed or anything -- the chains are used only for willing women), I think this House bill is patently absurd.

After the bureacratic nightware we've gone through, which has not only slowed the pace of recovery along the Gulf Coast but has also certainly cost hundreds of lives that might have been saved given more effective and proactive disaster relief, and given the scapegoating of the slow response upon various federal state turf wars and the like, can we really afford to impose yet another condition on state eligibility for federal assistance?

And on predicated on cats and dogs?

This is what happens when the television news focuses favors the inane and fuzzy over the difficult. No doubt, lots of people have pressed legislators to do something about the lack of disaster preparation directed toward ensuring domestic animals are provided for, and no doubt, as the article notes, that some people stayed behind simply because they were unwilling to leave their companion animals alone in the storm . . . but seriously, folks, hasn't it become painfully obvious that FEMA and domestic disaster resonse generally requires more than planning that ensures that fluffy gets on the bus?

Has it occurred to anyone that some people don't take terribly good care of their animals, that others are severely allergic to them, and that rescues and sheltering arrangements inevitably put people -- and now would put animals -- in painfully close quarters? Do we see in the evidence coming in from Katrina that disaster planners are so flush with funding and so overly prepared to handle whatever nature or al Qaeda throws at them that we can really afford to force them to rededicate already insufficient resources to the rather complicated problem of involving household animals in evacuation plans?

For f=*k's sake, people -- can we keep our eye on the ball as yet another Cat 4 storm bears down on Louisiana?