The phone call came from my mother the night before St. Augustine evacuated for Hurricane Irma: \u201cBrian! I don\u2019t have any dry cat food to leave Missy Daisy and Little Joe! I only bought wet food in cans! What was I thinking?!? They don\u2019t know how to use the can opener yet!\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure where the mix-up occurred. The cats weren\u2019t going with my mother when she left for the hotel. The stacks of cat food cans would be worthless. Even worse, when she finally realized this, there was no Friskies to be found anywhere. The kitty food shelves were bare. <\/p>\n
These was desperate straits!<\/p>\n
Now I was being dispatched on a secret commando mission to find cat food: \u201cCVS HAS SOME! I JUST CALLED! REMEMBER \u2026 MISSY DAISY DOESN\u2019T LIKE SEAFOOD \u2026 ONLY BEEF!!!\u201d It sounded like something from a war movie. Some frantic soldier on the front line calling in artillery fire to keep the swarming enemy at bay. <\/p>\n
I pointed at my daughter: \u201cYou\u2019re coming with me. I want sanity on my side.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t hopeful. Either that we would find cat food, or that we would survive the experience. That morning I had stood in line at Publix waiting for them to open so I could get bottles of water. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what it means to be Floridian,\u201d I remember thinking, and then wondered if it would be like a gladiator arena once we all got in. <\/p>\n
This night there were no lines at stores. Nor were there people. All the people had already stripped the shelves bare. They were sitting at home watching The Weather Channel while eating canned peaches and feeding their cats freshly-bought Friskies. <\/p>\n
As we drove to the store on quiet streets, I remember thinking, \u201cThis is what it means to be my mother\u2019s son.\u201d<\/p>\n
You learn a lot about what is and what isn\u2019t considered emergency provisions by what\u2019s left on the shelves. Purple Gatorade never sells. Vienna Sausages never go out of style. And kitties? Well, they love them some Friskies. <\/p>\n
There were only two packages left: Surfin\u2019 & Turfin\u2019 Favorites and Tender & Crunchy Combo. Tender & Crunchy looked like it had carrots in it. CARROTS! Missy Daisy definitely wouldn\u2019t eat that.<\/p>\n
We stood in line at the cash register while my daughter called her grandmother. She tried to be as quiet and inconspicuous as she could. But my mother wouldn\u2019t hear a meteor if it landed in her backyard.<\/p>\n
My daughter sounded like a soldier on the front line: \u201cGRANDMA EVIE \u2026 THEY ONLY HAVE SURFIN\u2019 & TURFIN\u2019 \u2026 OR TENDER & CRUNCHY COMBO \u2026 NO BEEF!!! \u2026 CAN YOU HEAR ME?!?\u201d\t<\/p>\n
She repeated this 17 times. I finally cursed and said we were getting them both. \u201cIf it\u2019s good enough for the cat on the bag, then it\u2019s good enough for Missy Daisy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Embarrassed, we both smiled at the cashier. We worried he would ask us something like, \u201cSo, you have a cat, huh?\u201d and I would answer, \u201cUm \u2026 actually \u2026 no\u201d leaving his imagination to run wild. He would forever tell the story of the cat-less man and his daughter who came for hurricane provisions and left with two bags of Friskies. The last two in all of St. Augustine. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The phone call came from my mother the night before St. Augustine evacuated for Hurricane Irma: \u201cBrian! I don\u2019t have any dry cat food to leave Missy Daisy and Little Joe! I only bought wet food in cans! What was I thinking?!? They don\u2019t know how to use the can opener yet!\u201d I\u2019m not sure where the mix-up occurred. The cats weren\u2019t going with my mother when she left for the hotel. The stacks of cat food cans would be worthless. Even worse, when she finally realized this, there was no Friskies to be found anywhere. The kitty food shelves were bare. These was desperate straits! Now I was being dispatched on a secret commando mission to find cat food: \u201cCVS HAS SOME! I JUST CALLED! REMEMBER \u2026 MISSY DAISY DOESN\u2019T LIKE SEAFOOD \u2026 ONLY BEEF!!!\u201d It sounded like something from a war movie. Some frantic soldier on the front line calling in artillery fire to keep the swarming enemy at bay. I pointed at my daughter: \u201cYou\u2019re coming with me. I want sanity on my side.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571,558,8,569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-nutshells","category-florida","category-parenthoodandchildren","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1648,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/1648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}