Betcha never thought you'd read this here

This is animal week. No, it's not one of those made-up national holidays. It is a made-up-for-the-purposes-of-writing-a-column holidays. If everyone else can make up holiday, so can I.

For some reason this past week has had more than its share of animal-related incidents and coincidences. Here are a few:

• The hurricane kitty

Millions of Internet users electronically navigated their way to the photographs that told the story of Hurricane Florence. There are hundreds of pictures, each conveying more than a thousand words, that's for sure.

But one photo that touched so many hearts was the one showing a man, a bedraggled hurricane survivor, drenched with rain and floodwater, with a kitten, drenched with rain and floodwater, sitting on the man's shoulder.

The photo reminded me that our own Missy Kitty gets sopping wet from time to time when she's caught in a sudden downpour and heads for our front door.

Whenever Missy Kitty gets wet, she likes to be dried off with paper towels. I'll swear she sometimes begs to go back outside so she can get wet and come in for another rubdown. Maybe that's just my imagination.

If you haven't seen the photo of the hurricane kitty -- now named "Survivor," it's worth a visit to the computerized ether for a look-see. You won't be disappointed.

• Pets in a storm

Of all the disasters that one might fear or prepare in advance for, none, to me, could be worse than a flood. Fires, tornadoes and earthquakes destroy. So do floods, but floods leave behind a disastrous mess that has to be cleaned up. Anyone who has battled muck and mold knows how bad it can get.

Other victims of hurricanes, other than humans, are the pets, farm livestock and wild creatures that must either find high ground or perish.

Not to diminish the heroic efforts of so many to save the lives of those who can't fend for themselves, such as nursing-home residents and hospital patients, but there also are heroic efforts in times of disaster to save animals.

A wet puppy reunited in the arms of its owner represents, for many, the joining of loving hearts that transcends tragedy.

• The deer in our yard

Anyone who has bothered to read this column over the years is well aware of my never-ending -- and futile -- effort to keep marauding squirrels, raccoons and white tail deer away from flowers, shrubs and garden vegetables.

That was then. This is now.

We now live in a beautifully landscaped neighborhood that is carefully tended. And the patch of woods, along with a mature hedgerow, provides exactly what a deer needs, obviously, or we wouldn't see so many of them.

For most of the summer we might have five or six deer, mostly does and fawns, come through the yard at dusk. They show no fear.

Recently, our visitors have included some bucks with promising racks of antlers. They have decided that there is enough grain from our backyard bird feeder that falls to the ground to make it worth their while to pay a visit. They show no fear.

Here's the amazing part, for us: The deer do not bother the flowering plants and vines around our house. It's as if the Deer Council of the Greater Cape Girardeau Metropolitan Area got together and decided the Sullivans had fought a good fight and now it was time to leave them be, let them have their begonias and clematises.

If that's the case, we say thank you. More than that, we can finally stop saying all those mean and nasty things about deer. After all, the bucks that have been spending some time in our yard are magnificent creatures whose gray fur glows in the dusky light.

I'll be you never thought you would see those words in this column.

See? The world hasn't come to an end. Yet.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.