1/8/08 Good Evening Mayor and City Council members. My name is Susan Wise & I am President of Catnip & Carrots Animal Bunch, your local animal welfare organization. With more than 358 million pets in the United States residing in 63 percent of American households, we are delighted to be able to present Chief Neu II & Asst. Chief Centers of the Monroe Fire Department with 7 complete sets of specialized animal respiratory masks – one for each truck & EMS unit in their fleet. Each set consists of 3 various sized masks with air tubing and they attach directly to the responding units onboard oxygen tank or the adapter can be quickly removed and the mask attached directly to a breather bag. They are manufactured by McCullough Medical in New Zealand & are reusable, easily cleaned and carry a generous 2 yr warranty from their US supplier, SurgiVet – a world leader in veterinary critical care equipment. These masks can not only help resuscitate a cat, dog, rabbit or even a bird or hamster from carbon monoxide poisoning or smoke inhalation from a household fire, but they can be instrumental in reviving a Police dog or search & rescue animal injured in the line of duty from accident, gunshot wound, chemical fumes, etc. With natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the recent devastating wildfires of Southern California, we are becoming more & more aware of how these tragedies affect not only us, but those of our pets. As evidence in New Orleans, many of us are reluctant to leave a pet behind and will risk our own lives to help save them. More than a few of us consider them as children but their value to our many senior residents is even more far reaching – often times they are their only companion and offer much needed love and emotional support. With the recent passage of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS Act of 2006), pets have finally become recognized as an integral part of our family and are no longer considered “just animals”. On their behalf, we are proud to offer this life saving equipment to Monroe – and hope you never have need to use them! Thank You. We’d like to thank newly-elected Councilman Tracy Shell for his support, as he was instrumental
in putting everything together for us to get these masks donated tonight.
He will be a true asset to Council and our community. | 
