One of our good friends up in Minnesota had a son that was getting married.  Now we have known these people for over 25 years, heck, we were willed their two kids if something happened to them, so of course we couldn’t refuse to attend the wedding ;).

We purchased an airline ticket, we were going to leave on September 7th and return on September 11th, barely 5 days.  I figured I put out an extra litter box and food for Mr. Smokie and he’d be fine.

There was rumblings about a hurricane that was coming awful close to Florida.  On the Monday before we were due to leave, we were at the gym, walking on the tread mills, watching the weather on the TV’s.  They showed the “spaghetti” forecast….Gary and I looked at each other and laughed.  There were so many lines covering Florida you couldn’t even see the state.  Holy Crap!  Doesn’t look goof for the old home stead.  Especially as this was a category 5 hurricane and the weather people were saying it was the biggest one they had seen.  So that day we went home, started getting the condo building ready for the hurricane.  We pulled all the patio furniture and put it in the storage closets.  We made sure there weren’t any garbage can’s outside etc.  Pulled in all the hoses etc, etc.  We went to bed and the next morning I wake up.  Gary is already up listening to the weather.  “We have to drive to Minnesota and take the cat, he’ll never survive if this place floods”.  So began our preparedness for the hurricane.