"Imagine severe weather is about to strike your neighborhood and you have to evacuate in the next 30 minutes. What would you do to prepare to leave? What would you take with you and why?"

Growing up, the fear of having to evacuate my home and deciding which belongings I cherished enough to take with me was never a thought growing up in NYC. The thing that I’ve worried about was a thunderstorm while walking home from middle school. There are times when I’ve wondered what I would do if I were in a fire, but I’ve never wondered what I would take with me if I only had 30 minutes to collect what I value enough to take with me. I don’t live in a capacious apartment building, but the problem would be that I live in an apartment building, because if I’m evacuating, everyone else would be too, so I have to think of what I can gather in a timely manner alongside the 30 minutes. Many people in my apartment have animals as well, many dog owners who I see almost every day walking their dogs and leaving their poop on the street.  If I only had 30 minutes to prepare to evacuate my home and gather my items, the thing that I would take is my cat.  

My cat has never been really kind to me; even when he was a kitten he was always rude and treated me with disdain, latching onto my ankles and biting into my skin, not letting me pet him unless he was ready to go to bed and wanted to specifically sleep in my bed. My cat's carrier doesn’t zip properly; the zipper becomes faulty after a few months of having it. Every time I need to take him somewhere, I get duct tape and tape his carrier together.  I don’t think that I’ll have time to do that though, with my family rushing me to get everything and be ready. My cat doesn’t like it when I carry him for too long, only when he hasn’t seen me for a period of time.  My cat is the least friendly animal that I know, but I can’t help but feel in awe and responsible for him. I have raised my cat since he was only a few months old. I had to get a baby bottle from  the 99 cents store and use the kitten formula my uncle brought from PetSmart to feed him until he was ready for wet soft food.  In a way, to me he's like my baby, not a very nice baby, but he's my baby. I don’t think that I could ever live with myself if I left my cat alone in a dangerous situation; even if it would be pragmatic to gather my items and leave my cat, I wouldn’t do that to him. I guess you could say that I feel almost maternal towards him even if he isn’t actually a human child or a child in general. 

In a life or death situation with only 30 minutes to take what I cherish most, I would pick my cat every time. My cat has always been my place of comfort even if he isn’t very affectionate, but I am always there with him. My cat is stuck with me, and I'm stuck with him no matter what. I’ll always care for him, especially in a scenario where I can only save a few things in a short amount of time, because if I knew that I had the opportunity to save him and I didn’t, the guilt would never stop; I wouldn’t be able to stop imagining what he would be doing in severe weather. One of the most important things to me in my life is my cat, because he came to me when I needed him most after the loss of my childhood pet.  If you love and cherish something enough, you would be willing to do anything that you could to take it with you in a life or death situation too.