NEW YORK (NYT) – Consider it a government mantra: No Pet Left Behind.

Or if a pet is left behind during a disaster evacuation, it must have food and water, and the home must be marked to indicate to rescue workers that a pet is still inside. Departing owners should also take with them a color photo of them and their pets, to help identify them later.

These are among the suggestions that officials at New York City’s Office of Emergency Management are pressing onto pet owners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which displaced an estimated 200,000 animals.

Because people risked – and lost – their lives over their pets during the storm, Congress passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act in 2006, which required local disaster preparedness plans to take pets into account.

"People were seeing it’s not just a pet-lover issue," said Steve Gruber, the spokesman for the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, a coalition of about a hundred animal rescue groups and shelters. "It became a human issue."

The city’s emergency shelters now include space for a pet shelter, said Christina Farrell, a deputy commissioner for the Office of Emergency Management. And pet owners are not shy about taking their animals along in an evacuation. During the floods in the Midwest in June 2008, one shelter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, housed a thousand pets, including birds, lizards and even a red-eared slider turtle.

New York’s procedure for a coordinated pet rescue is being finalized over the next few weeks, city officials said. Animal groups held a pet preparedness event in Union Square on Thursday, demonstrating the effectiveness of microchips, offering emergency bags – call them "doggy bags" – and demonstrating pet CPR. "You have to be more gentle," said Dina Maniotis, the health and human services director for the Office of Emergency Management.

City officials had a chance to use new pet emergency procedures when a crane collapsed in March 2008 on the Upper East Side. In that evacuation, about 40 pets were abandoned as their owners rushed out of their homes, said Maniotis, who helped coordinate the rescue.

Cats were among the hardest to rescue because they like to hide, Maniotis said. "We even rescued a big snake," she said. "It was four feet long and green."

"Residents were extremely distressed," Maniotis said. "I’ve worked in social services for 20 years. I have never seen such happy residents hugging and kissing me after we got their pet out."