STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

I got all choked up.

On September 4, 2005, U.S. Air Force Lt. Nathan Brosheal held a kitten that had been rescued and airlifted to Louisiana's New Orleans International Airport in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the city on August 29.

Near New Orleans a small oil-slickened dog was seen wandering in Chalmette, Louisiana, as cleanup crews recovered oil from a ruptured refinery tank on September 6, 2005. Tens of thousands of barrels of oil had spilled and mixed with receding floodwater from Hurricane Katrina.

Three dogs waited for rescue in Pass Christian, Mississippi, on August 31, 2005, one day after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast town. The dogs were later saved by a local police officer.

Surrounded by litter left by refugees, a dog remained tied to the railing of a highway ramp in New Orleans on September 3, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina. Like many of the city's newly stranded pets, the dog may have been refused passage by rescuers as they evacuated its owners.

In one such instance reported by the Associated Press the previous week, a police officer took a dog from a sobbing young boy as he was waiting to board an evacuation vehicle. The officer had no idea what would become of the dog, he told an AP reporter.

A dog consumes a man's corpse near a breach in a New Orleans levee on September 6, 2005.

In nearby Biloxi, Mississippi, packs of abandoned dogs were attacking cleanup crews, according to the September 7 edition of the Biloxi Sun Herald. Even docile pets can become dangerous when stressed by heat and disorder, a veterinarian told a United Press International reporter.

Jeff Eyre, a volunteer with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), leashes a pig found beneath Interstate 10 in New Orleans on September 6, 2005. The lost swine was taken to a facility for abandoned animals in the city.

A New Orleans resident waded along Canal Street with a dog he rescued on August 30, 2005, the day the local levee system failed and flooded the city.

Two dogs played on top of a pool table at Cajun's Pub in New Orleans on September 6, 2005. Despite Hurricane Katrina and the susequent flooding of much of the city, the pub still had not closed its doors and continues to serve drinks to the few customers that remained in the neighborhood.