We live in Miami. It’s a fact of life down here that a couple of days every year you’re going to have to shut down and abandon everything. Every business is different but we like to think veterinary medicine is extra-special. What do we do with our sickest patients? If the big one hits and patients are in the hospital with no one to care for them…we’re f-----.

So, every year, we clear them out. We send them to emergency facilities or send them home. This year, no one wanted to go to the e-hospital. Not one of the parents of any of my five hospitalized cases wanted to deal with the up-charge for basic monitoring services on their pets.

For my sake, not to mention that of my patients, I was hoping everyone would take their pets to the e-clinic across the street (it’s not as if the place is far away). But everyone grabbed my cell phone number instead. That’s where my sake comes in. Oh well.

So now it’s Monday morning and the storm has mostly passed—a dud, actually. I only received three calls after hours yesterday. Not too bad.

Still, I think if I were the owner of a sick pet I would not have passed up the chance to hospitalize my pet—just in case. But there’s something about a storm here that makes us all crazy: lines for gas, raiding the water, ice, and battery sections of the supermarket, etc.

I guess the lunacy extends to our pets, too.

Perhaps it’s that no one wants to be caught in a big one with no control over where our pet is. Katrina taught us a lot about this. We now make hurricane plans for our pets, discuss whether or not we’d refuse to accept rescue if our pets could not come with us, etc.

Maybe that’s what’s on the collective mind of my clients as they whisk their still-sick pets home for a night of hunkering down. I should be more understanding of this. After all, I’d never leave my Sophie Sue behind—ever.