When floodwater entered Jordan and Aston M.’s home in Connersville, Indiana, the family’s first decisions were about who could get to safety. Their three young children and one cat went to Jordan’s grandparents’ nearby home, farther from the flood zone. A volunteer with a local cat-rescue organization offered to foster the couple’s three other cats. Jordan and Aston stayed behind because they did not want to leave without their four dogs.
The August 11 flooding had sent water from the basement up to two feet above the home’s main floor, damaging furniture, heirlooms and other belongings. The family’s pets were safe in different places, but the dogs still needed somewhere secure to stay while the couple dealt with the damaged house.
The practical answer arrived the following week. After Jordan noticed ASPCA vehicles near her neighborhood, she approached the responders and asked whether they could help. The organization provided two large dog kennels, tarps, shade cloths, bowls, treats, wet dog food and cat litter. The four dogs—Reina, Ace, Ronan and Josie—were moved to Jordan’s grandparents’ backyard. The family’s bearded dragon, box turtle and pink-toed tarantula remained safe in their enclosures.
It was not a complete evacuation or a clean return to normal. It was a temporary arrangement that matched the family’s immediate circumstances: children with relatives, cats in foster care, dogs in a safer backyard and two adults continuing to assess the home. But the supplies gave Jordan and Aston one less urgent problem to solve while they began figuring out what came next.
A response built around specific needs
The Indiana household was one part of more than a week of ASPCA disaster-response work in Indiana and West Virginia. The organization said it had been asked to help flood-affected shelters and communities with daily animal care, supplies and emergency evacuations.
In Fayette County, West Virginia, flooding cut off vehicle access to the county animal shelter. On August 20, WVVA reported that ASPCA responders moved nearly 20 shelter cats to the organization’s animal recovery center in Columbus, Ohio. Medical, behavioral and shelter professionals were expected to care for the cats there until they were ready for adoption.
An ASPCA account published August 26 described the West Virginia effort as an evacuation of more than 20 homeless cats and dogs from a disaster-impacted shelter, alongside longer-term recovery support. The two accounts use slightly different descriptions of the animals and total, but both document the same essential response: animals were removed from a flood-isolated shelter and taken to a facility prepared to care for them.
That distinction matters. Moving shelter animals during a disaster is not simply a matter of getting them into vehicles. They need carriers, a destination, staff, food and medical or behavioral attention. The Columbus recovery center provided a place where the cats could remain under professional care while the shelter’s access and operations were affected by flooding.
Small supplies can change the next decision
For Jordan and Aston, the help came in ordinary objects: kennels, bowls, food and protective materials. Those items did not repair the flood damage or resolve the family’s housing situation. They did, however, address the immediate care of four dogs whose safety had shaped the couple’s decision to remain.
The ASPCA reported that the foundation of the Indiana home remained intact and that Aston had begun repairing the storm-damaged property. Jordan described the family’s approach simply: taking things one day at a time. The family was still dealing with lost belongings and a disrupted routine, but the dogs had a safer place to stay and the pets who could not travel with them were accounted for.
The West Virginia cats faced a different version of the same problem. A shelter that people relied on for animal care had become difficult to reach, so the cats were moved to a professional recovery setting instead. Their next step was not adoption that day, but continued care until adoption became possible.
Neither response erased what the floods had damaged. What they did was narrower and more useful: they kept animals fed, sheltered and supported while people worked through the next decisions. In a disaster, recovery may begin with a large operation, but it often becomes tangible through smaller things—a kennel in a backyard, a foster placement, a carrier headed to a recovery center and a safe place for an animal to wait.
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