Farm harbors pets for owners displaced by Sandy

• SPCA and animal groups rescued the pets from the island a week after Sandy
• Seer Farms harbors animals that need temporary placement while their owners are in crisis
• Most pets were reclaimed by their owners, but more are expected to flood the sanctuary

JACKSON, N.J. — Six years ago, Laura Pople came up with an idea to help pet owners displaced by Hurricane Katrina keep their animals.

Today, Pople is again helping hurricane victims and their pets. This time, the victims live nearby her Jackson-based animal sanctuary.

After superstorm Sandy destroyed parts of Seaside Heights and displaced its residents, life remained on the barrier island. Dogs, cats, rabbits, turtles, birds and other pets remained in the deserted homes.

Without heat or dry places to hide, many were cold and frightened, said Larissa O'Donnell, who volunteers with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She and other SPCA and animal group volunteers rescued the pets from the island a week after Sandy flooded homes and destroyed neighborhoods.

Many pet owners, unaware of the severity of destruction the storm would leave in its wake, left a few days worth of food and water for their pets before they evacuated inland.

"No one expected they wouldn't be able to return, and (that) a rescue of this magnitude was involved," said O'Donnell, who lives in Howell.

Of the animals rescued from the island, 118 came to stay at Pople's Seer Farms or its network of foster homes.

At the Jackson farm, Pople lifted a deaf, white cat with blue eyes evacuated from a Seaside Heights home. Pople is still trying to locate the owner.

"She's a sweet cat," Pople said. "We want to get her back with her owner."

Unlike traditional animal shelters, Seer Farms harbors animals that need temporary placement while their owners are in crisis.

As a past American Red Cross shelter worker who volunteered in states affected by Hurricane Katrina, Pople was moved by the appeals of people forcefully separated from their pets during disasters.

Cocoa's owners are in a similar situation. The brown-and-white male dog will stay at Seer Farms while his owners rebuild their flood-damaged home in Brick, Pople said.

Seer Farms found foster homes or housed about 270 animals before the superstorm. Most of the pre-Sandy animals stayed as their owners recovered from economic hardship, domestic violence, or health emergencies. But the October storm created an explosion of need, and the ranks at Seer Farms and its network swelled to 320 pets, Pople said.

The conditions on the barrier island were "absolutely horrific" when rescuers arrived to evacuate the pets, said O'Donnell on Wednesday while helping at Seer Farms.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "Until you see something that disastrous, you're really at a loss for words."

Two weeks since the storm, most animals were reclaimed but their owners, but Pople expected more animals to flood the sanctuary.

"This pace is going to accelerate over the next week to 10 days as people try every other option and come to grips with the fact that they're going to have to separate from their animals," said Pople. "We're still going to see sporadic intakes for probably another month as whatever temporary arrangement people have made grows cold."

For example, many owners have relied on kennels to hold their pets but cannot afford to do so long term, O'Donnell said.

"There are people who don't know that they have an option, and are feeling like their only recourse is to surrender their animal to a shelter or put it down," Pople said. "I want them to know it (help) is just a phone call."