Reunion

I've decided to make this the go-to place for warm and fuzzy animal stories. Because if all I report on is Bush Administration plans to twist the knife even further into the backs of those who lost everything, I'm going to lose my mind.

Here's the latest on Bill Harris and Miss Kitty:

I spoke with Harris by phone several hours ago as he lay in a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital, where he is being treated for internal bleeding apparently related to his chronic kidney condition.


“I was shook,” Harris says, describing an earlier phone call when Red Cross workers told him that the cat he credits with saving his life during his hurricane ordeal had been found alive earlier in the day. “I just didn’t have any idea anyone would do that for me. … I’m kind of crying right now.”

And after hearing a description of the cat trapped by an animal control officer and an animal rescue volunteer in his ruined condominium in Slidell, La., Harris has no doubt that it’s Miss Kitty.

“She’s the only one in the whole neighborhood,” he says of the brown and gray cat.

Harris got another piece of fabulous news during the same phone call. His mother, Jane, is alive and well in a Slidell nursing home. Andrew and I visited the nursing home where she lives Thursday afternoon, when she told us that that the residents ended up staying put during the hurricane and had no problems.

And her son has some story to tell about how he survived Katrina’s powerful storm surge and ended up becoming an Internet celebrity.

Amid all the death and destruction wrought by Katrina, Harris’ story struck a chord with us and with readers of Katrinablog, generating a flood of e-mail offering prayers, suggestions on strategies for locating the cat and postings that matched her description.

And, yes, there were some wondering why we are making so much fuss about one man and his cat.

That’s not an easy question to answer. The best explanation I can come up with is that that the dramatic story of their ordeal and the poignancy of Harris’ search for the cat he credits with saving his life by leading him to the chair that he stood on for three days in his flooded condominium somehow made him and Miss Kitty a symbol of hope amid all the despair left in Katrina’s wake.

More here. And do read the comments as well.

Yes, Bill Harris and his miracle cat are a symbol of hope. But it's more than that. Everyone involved in this story, from the Noah's Wish workers who placed the trap, to the Red Cross workers to made a point of locating Harris and notifying him that his cat has been found, to MSNBC reporter Mike Brunker, who's done the legwork and the reporting, have understood that hope and miracles and goodness and acts of kindness take place one person at a time, one dog at a time, one cat at a time.

This is something the Cub Scout parents described in an e-mail I received this morning don't understand:

My son joined the Cub Scouts, and we had a meeting tonight. We were thinking about projects for the boys, and I suggested collecting school supplies for displaced children and sending them with a letter signed by all the boys in my son's den. Yes, it's a drop in the bucket, but the lesson the kids would learn would be, I thought, invaluable. Only one other parent thought it was a good idea. I heard, "It's too much trouble." "The government is already helping those kids." "Where would we get big enough boxes?" "I don't want to spend any money." "What difference would it make if seven kids send stuff?" Never mind that most kids here have more school supplies than they can ever use. I offered to supply boxes and donate the postage, but no.

The people who worked to reunite Bill Harris and Miss Kitty are the America I believe in; the America I grew up believing is the one for which we should be striving. The people who name political cronies to head up FEMA, who want to stiff workers of wages to further enrich Halliburton and other companies, and who want to cut programs that help people so that a few hundred of the richest families in the country don't have to pay estate taxes -- and the parents described in that e-mail -- are not that America. They are an America that is greedy and venal and short-sighted; an American where "Out of many, one" has been replaced with "I got mine and the hell with you."