Judy Pugh, whose home was destroyed by the tornadoes that swept through Tuscaloosa, Alabama on April 27. The ferocious twister left at least 39 dead in Tuscaloosa alone.
Pugh cheerfully told local station WIAT that she rushed to the hallway with her three cats when the mile-wide tornado hit. The roof fell on top of her, but miraculously she and two of her cats were all in one piece. “I tried to get to my hands and knees but I couldn’t. I heard the young men calling ‘Ms. Judy, Ms. Judy, are you in there?’” she recalls.
Pugh was telling the station reporter about how much she missed her third cat Cadie, whom she hadn’t been able to find for three weeks, when the cat walked right up to her during the interview. “I have everything I want now. I have all three cats,” she said.
And then there’s the dog who crawled his way home:
“He‘s got 2 broken legs and they’re distal radial ulnal fractures, they’ve not been able to be in alignment so neither one of them have healed so he had to crawl on 2 broken legs to get home,” said Dr. Barbara Benhart, staff veterinarian at the Birmingham-Jefferson Co. Animal Control Shelter.
“This is probably the most dramatic we‘ve seen as far as an injury in an animal that’s survived this long,” said Phil Doster, also with the shelter. “It’s kind of tapering off, the amount of animals we’re seeing because of the storm. For an animal just to show up on someone’s porch after this time was pretty remarkable, especially with the condition he’s in.”
Mason‘s owners asked the shelter to take him because they’re not able to care for him while they try and piece their lives back together, and now Mason’s amazing tale gets better with the help of a donation from the Vulcan Park Animal Care Clinic.
“He called and asked if there was anything he could do, last week, and this dog appeared today and so I called him, and never a hesitation, he offered ‘bring it on over and he’ll see what he can do,” said Dr. Benhart.
Now with a little luck and a lot of love, Mason may become a mascot for storm survivors on four and 2 legs.
