My friend and inspiration Michelle Pendergrass posted a status on Facebook today lining out just a few of the times she was discriminated against or belittled for being female. With the news buzzing lately about killer Elliot Rodger it’s hard not to find yourself in these kinds of discussions in the flesh-to-flesh world as well.

It’s really important to talk about all this, I think, to share our experiences with this mortal coil. So taking her lead I want to pass on a few experiences, no expectations or pity, please. And feel free to share your own experiences in the comments.

-I was given two life roles that were acceptable choices by my mother growing up: pastor’s wife or missionary’s wife. Nothing else was an option.

-Until fifth grade I was privately educated in Christian schools (there were three people in my 3rd grade class and it was taught by my mother), the kind that only used A Beka books (if you don’t click the link, they’re a Young Earth creationist, bible literalist company. If you’ve seen a WTF picture on the net of a completely anti-science science textbook it was probably an A Beka book.) The kind that only thought it was acceptable for female to wear pants if it was under their dress on the way to school in below freezing weather. Removing the pants was the first thing we had to do daily. As in, we could not leave the church foyer until we’d done so.

-Furthermore not only did I go to school in such and environment, my mom worked in the daycare and summer care as well, AND it was our church. So from about 6:30 to 4pm or at late as 6pm five days a week I was there. And for 2-3 hours at least every Sunday. Plus some Sunday nights. And Wednesdays were Awana, so I was there until at least 8pm those nights. And some Saturdays if there was a special event or something.

-My mom kicked my dad out and divorced him when she caught him with another woman for the third time. She told me multiple times that divorcing him was the biggest mistake of her life.

-My mom was diagnosed with cancer not long after that. One day some of her sisters came down for a surprise visit and discovered me, at six years old, trying to feed my two younger siblings (one was an infant) and get the house clean and take care of her because she was too sick to get out of bed. Because if she was incapable it was my job to take care of everyone.

-A day after she died an aunt pulled me aside and told me that I was the woman of the family now and it was my job to take care of my siblings. I was nine.

-My dad continued the trend, leaving the responsibility for cleaning and parenting my siblings up to me. At one point I was told to “take care of the situation” when my sister was having a screaming tantrum in a Kroger. So I dragged her, literally, out to the car and tried to restrain her. She was five, I was eleven. She hit me multiple times and kicked me. She ended up kicking the windshield of the car and breaking it. We both got screamed at.

-My dad never said a nice word about my mom, not even after she died. She was always “a bitch”. Even when I tried to talk about her as part of my grieving only a few days, weeks and months after she’d died.

-Every time a girlfriend broke up with my dad he would tell us, very clearly, that she’d gone back to her abusive ex and if that was what she wanted in a man over a nice guy like him she deserved to be hit. Every. Time. Every. Woman.

-He had a girlfriend for almost two years before we moved to Kentucky. About six months after we moved here they broke up. He one night told me that he had proposed to her twice, and she turned him down both times because of us kids. She didn’t want us. Then the bit about her being a bitch and going back to her ex who hit her.

-The highest compliment I ever received from my dad was the night when I found him drunk and passed out on the toilet and got him back to bed (and cleaned up after him). He told me I was going to make someone a great wife someday.

-Simple things, like providing my sister and I with correct sized clothes, underwear, shoes and tooth brushes was a massive hassle. But my dad took my brother to skate shops and the mall multiple times a week, blowing hundreds of dollars on skateboards and Nikes. One school year my brother and my dad bought a $200 pair of shoes at the mall. That same trip my sister and I were given $200 to split for the entirety of our school supplies, from backpacks to clothes and shoes and pencils.

-Things deteriorate. He drank more. I fell in with a group of people who started out as my friends, but then began a long cycle of making fun of me, bullying me, stealing from me etc. I was not allowed to turn on the heat in my own home. Notes denying me the right to eat the food in my own kitchen appeared on the fridge. If I stayed in a room with any of them they would begin going on about what a fat, pimply, ugly bitch I was. That “they couldn’t get out of bed in the morning because my rolls covered the floor and they were afraid of getting trapped”. My belongings were stolen so many times, to the point where I bought a door handle with a lock for my room. It was broken before it was even put in the door.

-I was told multiple times, in a day, that the state of the house was my fault for not cleaning it.

-My dad had multiple drunken conversations with me (he was drunk, not me) about how much he loved women and how great of a lover he could be to my brother’s female friends. He liked to talk about their anatomy too. They were all 2-4 years younger than me.

-I once confronted him on how I was being treated by the “friends” that he let live with us. He was sympathetic and said he would make it stop. Later that I night I heard him talking about it with them. He was laughing at how angry I had been and agreeing that I was just a fat lazy slob and they were contributing to the house so they mattered and I didn’t.

-My mom left us a small inheritance. Once I got close to 18 he started talking about “how much of it should be his”. When I finally moved out he outright demanded $14000 from me “for raising you”. He pushed us for this money a lot. To the point where Jason got mad and confronted him over the phone over it. Jason said that there was no way I could have borrowed that kind of money from him and he wouldn’t have noticed. My dad said “She’s a lying whore. You shouldn’t trust her.” I know this for a fact because I was on another extension when he said it.

-Apparently he also had loose lips because a few months after I moved out a woman confronted me at a restaurant to tell me what a horrible child I was for lying about my dad in all those ways and treating him so terribly. He “told her all those things I’d been saying about him and they were terrible lies.” I had never met that woman before in my life.

-Remember that bit about all women leaving him for abusive exes? I received calls from two family members wanting to know if I need to “be rescued”. Apparently he told my whole family that Jason (who was the first person who I ever remember defending me against my dad) was beating me. To this day most of my family still believes it. For a while they refused to have any contact with him, or listen to me talk about him at all, even the happy stuff (because the happy stuff was just my desperate way to try to convince them that he isn’t abusive). We’ve both stopped trying to maintain a relationship with them.

-When I told my grandmother that I was pregnant with Mister her exact response was “Why do you girls keep doing this to me?”

-There are multiple acquaintances that I see 3-4 times a year each who I have to dress for. I have to wear loose t-Shirts and pants because if I wear even a V-neck they are incapable of speaking to my face.

-I was hired at Burger King because I was “a nice responsible girl”, like the other nice responsible girls who were all hired as well. We were all big bossomed and given shirts several times too small to wear as uniform shirts, with management refusing to order correct-sized ones.

-At Borders one of my coworkers would always make crude sexual comments, including asking me to blow him and also calling me a “fat bitch” whenever we worked directly together. When he stole on camera in front of me and I reported him because I feared for my job (that whole ON CAMERA thing) he got a bunch of my coworker riled up on facebook and they refused to speak to me at work, including a manager who refused to come help with customers and register issues. They bragged on their facebook page about “punishing” me.

-At Petsmart I was called a bitch by customers a few times. Once it was an associate and I, who were both cursed at and called “stupid bitches” by a client. We called in a manager for help and the manager forced us to perform the services for free. (And the coworker was on commission, so it was a double blow to her.)

-After my dad had a stroke my brother told me it was my fault for not “taking care of him the way you should be.” He expected me to let my dad move into my house and support him after the stroke. He hasn’t spoken to me since I told him no and he said I was just making excuses to not “do my job”. (That excuse is that I refuse to have a sexually abusive man around my children.)

-I to this day cannot call most members of my family without getting a guilt trip over no longer speaking to my dad. They say I should forgive him, that he feels bad for his actions.

-Which is why he told my sister she had to choose between speaking to me and speaking to him. My sister is one of my best friends these days and doesn’t regret her choice at all.

I know that it’s completely possible I just know a lot of assholes. But my life has been large swaths of belittling and emotional abuse. So much so that I don’t have a lot of the “bully called me a bitch” “group of guys catcalled me” stories. I’m sure some stuff like that happened, but it pales to the other things that were happening.

Furthermore the constant second guessing, disbelief and accusations of abuse I get from my family is doubly abusive. Saying these things are hurtful enough, but most of my interactions with them as an adult have been passive aggressive attempts to shame me for “choosing” Jason over them.

I don’t know what is harder for them to believe, that I am an adult who is capable of making good decisions; or that I am worthy of being loved.

#YesAllWomen is important to me, because it is not at all how I was raised.

I’ve spent the day watching info come in on the Texas and Oklahoma tornadoes. I know a few people getting hit by the same storms as they move toward me too. It’s always a sad subject, thankfully with an outpouring of help.

At the day job they’re understandably interested in helping out with pet welfare especially. Yeah, we adopt pets, but we also send resources out to areas like these, hit with natural disasters. Every time something like this happens you hear about the pets lost or left behind, which is one of the reasons why when I started building emergency bags (kinda like BOBs, but closer to the original use than the kind meant for mutant-zombie-bikers/the fall of the government that you see some days.) I built one for my pets too.

So here’s my list of essentials for your emergency pet bag. (I’ll cover small animal and exotics later.)

1. The bag itself:

I had a doggy backpack from years ago (back when my first rottie, Phoenix and I were going to be in the SCA. It didn’t work out due to life and mostly a lack of my own car.) It’s pretty big, being meant for a big dog. All my dogs have walked around with it on, not tons, but enough that they won’t freak out if I threw it on them. Also they know it has THEIR stuff in it, so that makes them happy to see it. You can easily use a backpack (like the ones your kids have left over after school) or many other kinds of bags, but I recommend a back pack of some style (hiking, camping, etc) just because they tend to be a lot easier to grab and carry (such as if you’re also trying to manage three large dogs at once.)

2. Extra collar and leash for each dog

Just in case. I actually have a spare collar and a slip leash like these (which are cheap and easy to find. Some places like vet offices even hand them out, since they get their name and number printed on them as an advertisement) for each dog, and a spare for my cat. you can use those slip leashes to make a figure 8 harness for cats, rabbits, ferrets, guinea pigs, etc. If you can a second set of ID tags would be pretty useful too.

3. Food

Keep in mind the idea is to be able to survive for 72 hours. You don’t need a whole bag of dog food. Know how much your pet eats and you can fill gallon freezer bags with that much food. Make sure to date it, so you can switch it out because food will go bad. Also, labeling the bags wit the kind of food it is will help you find that brand again, because most pets can get serious upset tummies if you switch food on them too abruptly.

You can also throw in dehydrated chicken, jerky or the like if you think something might really go wrong.

4. Training treats

These are cheap, tiny, and come in small containers of their own (or you can make them yourself with jerky, bits of dehydrated chicken or hot dogs, etc). The idea here is to have some sort of high-value food treat just in case because let’s face it, animals think with their stomachs a lot, and if having a bit of hot dog lures your cat back to you or keeps your ferret occupied while your stuff her in a pocket and get out of dodge, then it’s worth it.

5. Medicines

If your pet takes regular medicines try to have 2-3 days worth of extra. This can be hard, I know, because meds can be expensive enough without trying to store a little extra. But again, the idea is to have enough to last long enough that you can get to a vet or store and get more.

6. Water

I aim for a 2-liter bottle per pet.

7. Collapsible bowls

These are really easy to find. Ebay, Walmart, Meijer, major pet stores and any store with a camping section should have silicon bowls that will hold food or water. If your pet is a big time chewer (or, you know, a rodent) its not expensive to throw a stainless steel bowl in your pack, though it does take up a bit more room.

8. A copy of your pet’s medical records

It always amazes me when people come into work and don’t have any medical information about their pet. Maybe I’ve just owned Rotts (big, intimidating, possibly more likely to get me legal attention) for so long that it’s second nature to me. I keep really thorough records for my pets. I bought these little booklets, one for each pet, and taped a photo of them on the cover. Inside there are sections for your vet’s contact info, info about the pet like breed, height, weight, and coloring, as well as shots records, weight records, feeding records, dental records, and emergency contacts. I also stuck post its in the back to jot down when I give them all heart worm or flea meds.

I have the actual paperwork from the vet as well, but for emergencies these books (which come in many different versions) are awesome. I also recommend to people that they take a picture of their dog’s rabies certificate/city license with their smart phone or tablet just in case. And yes, KEEP all those medical records any time your pet gets shots or a surgery. If you don’t have any of those record you can just go to your vet and ask for a copy and start from there.

9. A list of Pet Food Banks

Here’s one for Louisville, KY. Not all communities have them. Sometimes shelters can help too.

10. A List of pet-friendly hotels or shelters

It sucks that a lot of emergency shelters don’t allow pets. Until you’re stuck in one with the lady who had three chihuahuas and a mini poodle who “never go outside” and therefore “never needed vaccines or worming or flea stuff”. And also never needed to be socialized with other dogs, people or pets and therefore are hysterically fear aggressive. You’d be really depressed to know how many people like that (or “but it’s a lab/golden/rescue dog, he doesn’t need training, he’s not a bad dog” people) there are out there. You can’t always trust people to control their pets, keep them up to date on shots and meds to prevent things like lepto or feluke outbreaks. Also you can’t trust people not to want to use your nervous, scared dog to distract their nervous, scared kids from the disaster at hand.

Some there’s a pretty good reason for this policy. In a lot of cases, but not all.

So just in case you need some place you can get your pet to keep them safe. Some shelters will accept temporary shelter pets in emergency cases. A lot of times you can work with friends, neighbors, or coworkers to set up a “hey, you live on the other side of town, if you ever have an emergency or your neighborhood is leveled or something equally as sucky, your pets are welcome here”. And, of course, there are many hotels these days that welcome pets.

11. A pet first aid kit

It’s a lot like one for us in some ways. But always best to have at least a small packet of supplies, just in case.

Extras for small animals/exotics/birds:

–Critter Keepers are your friends. They come in a lot of sizes, shapes and colors. They are relatively inexpensive. They aren’t great as long term homes, but they are great for throwing a hamster or  securing a parakeet in so you can get out. Plus smaller containers are easier to keep warm for you reptile buffs.

-A blanket, towel or t-shirt. For covering your emergency cage, wrapping up your pet or as emergency bedding.

–Disposable heat packs. Those Hot Hands can be useful, but there are longer lasting ones that bird owners and reptile owners might want to stock up on.

-Small water bottle with sprayer. Like the kind you find in the travel size section. Mainly for amphibians and reptiles who need moisture, or prefer drinking from moving water. And in case the emergency strikes when someone is shedding.

Finally, it should go without saying, but it won’t, that the best thing you can do is prepare, including keeping your pet up to date on vaccines and preventives, as well as keeping spare pet carriers where you can easily get to them, and making sure dogs know all the basic commands (Sit, stay, come, leave it) and are as well socialized as you can get them. The idea of a one-person dog or cat (or horse) is romantic and an ego boost to us little humans, but it’s terribly impractical and likely to be VERY dangerous to your pet. And it could even be a death sentence if something happens to you.

Here are a few links that can give you more information, and of course, I hope everyone stays safe!

CDC’s Animals in Public Evacuation Centers

FEMA’s Emergency Care of Animals

Reptile Emergency Kits

Emergency Planning for Reptile and Amphibian Keepers

Keeping your pet safe in an emergency