Most households refill the pet food bin and top off the water bowl without a thought, right up until a storm or an evacuation order interrupts the routine. Two of the best-known U.S. preparedness sources, Ready.gov and the American Red Cross, both build that routine into their emergency kit lists.
Ready.gov’s kit page lists pet food and extra water for the pet among its additional items. The Red Cross puts pet food, a bowl, a carrier, a collar, a leash and ID on its survival kit list, and its separate pet preparedness page names food, water and bowls for a pet kit. Neither agency regards a pet’s meals and drinking water as an afterthought, and neither sets a pet-specific amount, which is where a third source comes in.
Ready.gov Counts the Pet Along With the Household
The basic kit on Ready.gov calls for one gallon of water per person per day for several days and at least a several-day supply of non-perishable food. The pet line sits in the additional items, next to cash (frenzhub’s guide to building an emergency fund covers that line), copies of important records and a warm blanket for each person. The page also tells readers to think about unique needs, such as supplies for pets or seniors.
Ready.gov adds two upkeep rules that apply to a bin of dog or cat food as much as to canned soup. Canned food belongs in a cool, dry place, boxed food goes into sealed containers, and expired items should be swapped out while the whole kit gets a review once a year. The same logic shows up in frenzhub’s rundown of best practices for seasonal storage, where cool, dry and sealed are the recurring words. Outages bring their own household cautions, too, such as the ones craftingyourhome lists under things never to do with a kerosene heater.
The Red Cross Adds the Carrier, the Leash and the Bowl
On its survival kit supplies page, the Red Cross sets water at one gallon per person per day and asks for a 3-day supply for evacuation and a 2-week supply for home. Food follows the same split. The pet entry reads as a short packing list: collar, leash, ID, food, carrier and bowl.
The Red Cross pet preparedness page goes further. It lists sturdy leashes, harnesses or carriers, food, water, bowls, and litter or a litter pan, plus a manual can opener for households that feed canned food. It also suggests veterinary records in a waterproof container, recent photos of the owner with the pet, feeding schedules, behavior notes and the veterinarian’s name and number.
One warning on that page matters for planning. The Red Cross says hotels and shelters may not accept animal guests other than service animals, so a carrier is not the only thing to sort out in advance. It also recommends including pets in evacuation drills so they get used to entering and traveling in carriers calmly. Holiday travel is a good time to rehearse, and craftingyourhome’s checklist of things never to do before leaving home for Thanksgiving covers the house side of the trip.
The ASPCA Puts Numbers on the Pet Pantry
Because the federal and Red Cross pages leave out pet quantities, the ASPCA’s disaster preparedness guidance is the one that supplies them. It recommends packing 7 to 10 days’ worth of canned pop-top or dry food and rotating it every two months. For water, it recommends at least seven days’ worth of bottled water for each person and pet, stored somewhere cool and dry and replaced every two months.
The rest of the ASPCA list echoes the Red Cross: feeding dishes and water bowls, an extra collar or harness with an extra leash, and a crate or sturdy carrier, ideally one per pet. For cats, it adds a pillowcase, toys and scoopable litter. For dogs, it adds toys and chew toys. The group also recommends microchipping as a more permanent form of identification and says pets should wear collars with current tags.
Cat households that already rely on automatic feeders may recognize the dry-food point. A feeder only works while the power is on, which is why frenzhub’s holiday gift guide for cat people, with its smart feeders, pairs well with a bin of sealed dry food kept for outages.
Water Takes Up the Most Shelf Space
The Red Cross figures are easy to turn into a shopping list. A three-person household needs 3 gallons a day under the one-gallon rule, which works out to 9 gallons for a 3-day evacuation bag and 42 gallons for the 2-week home supply. A pet’s share has to be added on top, and the ASPCA’s advice to count each pet in the seven-day water supply is the clearest rule on offer.
Ready.gov also lists a manual can opener among the basic kit items, and the Red Cross repeats it for canned pet food. Pop-top cans, which the ASPCA names, skip the problem. The Ready.gov food page adds that commercially canned food may be eaten out of the can without warming, and the same page says to avoid cans that are swollen, dented or corroded.
A Short Grab-and-Go Routine
Ready.gov says the kit should live in a known location at home, with a smaller one at work and another in the car.
Putting the three sources together gives a simple order of operations. Start with the Red Cross 3-day bag: carrier, leash, collar, ID, food and a bowl. Add the ASPCA’s week or more of bottled water and dry or pop-top food for the pet. Then set one date each year, as Ready.gov suggests, to check that nothing has expired and that the carrier still fits a growing pet.
A final detail comes from a Red Cross line on its pet page: if a home is not safe for people during an emergency, it is not safe for pets either. Each of these lists exists so that leaving, when it comes to that, takes minutes instead of an afternoon.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Olympic National Park – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
