Sept. 11, 2005 — Sometimes when the helicopters and military vehicles go quiet in New Orleans, you can hear the howls and screams of the hordes of dogs and cats still trapped in homes and on rooftops.

"It's scary," said Willie Cirone, a volunteer from New Jersey who came to the stricken city to rescue animals after Hurricane Katrina. "There are hundreds of them in houses still."

About 20 volunteers tour the city in a convoy of trucks on the few passable roads. Some have small boats to go into the floods. Some of the volunteers have brought fishermen's gear so they can wade through the streets, carrying dog leashes in their hands.

They have come across terrified mongrels, such as a pit bull that nearly strangled itself on a leash before collapsing with exhaustion.

"They are scared, they are hungry, they are tired," said Kerry Branon of the International Federation for Animal Welfare.

The address where an animal is found is noted, in case it can be reunited with the owner.

But most of the rescued animals are still waiting in a huge agricultural exhibition hall at Gonzales, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from New Orleans. There are already about 1,300 dogs, cats, rabbits, parrots and more.

"About 400 get here every evening. Only about 20 people a day find their pets here," said Laura Maloney, executive director of the Louisiana Society for the Protection of Animals (SPCA).

Exhausted human refugees tour the building. Some carry photos of their lost animals; some have put up signs offering a reward for their pets.

Summer Johannesson, a 23-year-old fashion student from Florida, and some friends came to volunteer at the shelter after the killer storm. She accompanied a distraught woman who had lost her cat and fell into tears every time she tried to describe it.

A sign warns everyone: "Please be cautious next to the cages of animals that are not yours. They are stressed and can be defensive."

Dori Mayard, a 42-year-old nurse, brought her dogs to the shelter. She managed to get them out of New Orleans before her house was flooded but cannot keep them in the two room apartment where she is now staying with nine relatives.

Some owners have got past the military checkpoints to re-enter the city to try to find their animals.

Others have not been so lucky.

Elizabeth Whitlock tried to get back into New Orleans to find her 28-month-old cat, Carmine, but was turned back, brutally she thought.

"Yesterday we were five blocks away from my place when we had to turn back. Only five blocks!" she said.

"We tried every side road. We were blocked by the sheriff. I begged, I pleaded, I would have offered them money, I even showed them the pictures, but there was no way.

"My neighborhood is perfectly dry, but they won't let anybody through. The sheriff told me 'You should have grabbed him when you had the chance,'" she said, sobbing.

"They turned me away at gunpoint. They told me not today, not tomorrow, not for weeks."

Whitlock, manager of Faulkner House Books, which has the world's biggest collection of first edition books by William Faulkner, said she had left enough food for Carmine to survive about a week.

"But it's the water I'm concerned about. I didn't leave the toilet seat up because they warned us the sewers could overflow due to the storm. I bolted all the windows. I put special hurricane shutters on.

"He is my baby. He's bred like some dogs who are capable to bond with humans intensely."

Emergency officials say the pet toll could be as bad as the human one.