THREE weeks ago they had families, laps to curl up on and reasons to purr or wag their tails. Now thousands of cats and dogs rescued from New Orleans gaze dolefully from row upon row of cages in a gigantic exhibition centre, wondering where the good times went.

They are emaciated, exhausted and afflicted by sores. Some have bandaged paws. The critically ill are hooked up to drips. Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, said: “The scale of this takes your breath away. It buckles your knees.” The society, along with scores of other rescue groups, is facing the biggest animal catastrophe it has known. "The evacuation doomed these animals to dehydration and starvation,” he said. “We rescued people, but we left their pets behind to die. Amazingly, we are finding more alive every day.”

The Lamarr Dixon Expo Centre in Gonzales, 35 miles from New Orleans, has become a miniature city for the four-legged victims of Hurricane Katrina. Its five giant barns usually play host to show horses. Now each stall is stacked with cages that hold about 2,000 dogs and cats rescued from homes, rooftops and flooded streets. Another 5,000 pets have been sent from here to shelters across America. A further 1,100 are housed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and 500 more in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Some went to San Francisco on board two Boeing 737 passenger jets chartered by a Texan oilman at a cost of $1 million (£553,000). Mr Pacelle said: “When you looked down the aisle, all you could see were snouts and whiskers and tails. They even got in-flight service.” As fast as pets are moved on from Gonzales, more arrive. Each evening a fleet of at least 20 small lorries bearing hundreds of animals pulls up outside Barn 5. Their withered passengers are coaxed or carried off. Some are so weak that they cannot stand. Kim Johnston, a helper, said: “We found a dog covered in 2in of faeces. He was skin and bone. I thought he was a brown pitbull; when we washed him, he came up a dalmatian.” Tending the menagerie is so traumatic that a counselling tent has been set up for the 1,000 volunteers.

The “exotics” section in Barn 1 houses an albino Burmese python, a cockatiel who cries: “Hello darlin’,” and an Amazon parakeet who announces that his name is Sambo and that he is a good boy.

Owners search the aisles for pets they were forced to abandon in the chaos of the evacuation. There were squeals of delight when Maleaca and Roosevelt Vincent found their nine pitbull puppies.

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