If you feel shaking right now, stop reading and Drop, Cover, and Hold On. Protect your own head and neck first. Michelson Found Animals says animals are very good at finding safety and hiding until the danger has passed, so you look for your pet once the shaking stops.
That is the answer to what to do with your pet during an earthquake while the ground is shaking: nothing. Protect yourself where you are, do not chase a bolting animal, and do not run outside. The instinct to grab your pet is the one that gets people hurt in the seconds the ground is actually moving. Below is why, then the sequence for the moment the shaking stops, when you get your pet back. Decide now, so the decision is already made when the floor moves.
Protect yourself first
The guidance is about you, not your pet, and the Great ShakeOut says federal, state and local emergency management experts all agree on it. Its protocol, from the Earthquake Country Alliance and the Southern California Earthquake Center, has three moves:
- Drop where you are, onto your hands and knees. This keeps you from being knocked down and reduces your chances of being hit by falling or flying objects.
- Cover your head and neck with one arm and hand. If a sturdy table or desk is nearby, crawl under it. If not, crawl next to an interior wall.
- Hold on until the shaking stops. Under shelter, hold it and be ready to move with it if it shifts. With no shelter, hold your head and neck with both arms and hands.
ShakeOut also answers the grab-or-protect question directly: “DO NOT run outside! Trying to run in an earthquake is dangerous, as the ground is moving and you can easily fall or be injured by debris or glass.” Its main point is not to try to move but to protect yourself where you are, because you are much more likely to be injured by falling or flying objects.
ShakeOut also says not to shelter in a doorway: in modern houses and buildings, doorways are no safer and do not protect you from flying or falling objects.
Read that with your pet in mind. If running across your own living room is the dangerous move, running across it after a cat that just bolted is the same move with a worse ending, because now you are reaching into the gap under a bookshelf that may come down. You cannot protect an animal from the floor of a room that is falling on you. The rule that protects you also keeps you intact enough to find your pet the moment it is safe to move.
Should I grab my pet during an earthquake?
No, not if grabbing means moving across a shaking room or reaching into a hiding spot. Jason Ballmann of the Southern California Earthquake Center, quoted in Redbarn’s earthquake guidance, puts it this way: “We recommend people try to leave them alone and focus on their own life safety.”
There is one narrow exception. If your pet is already right next to you when the shaking starts, small enough to hold and calm enough not to fight, you can shelter together under your cover. If you are on a walk and already holding the leash, the pet-earthquake guidance from Michelson Found Animals and Redbarn is to hold on as best you can, but to drop the leash if your own safety is at risk. None of that means chasing. A pet that has already fled is a pet you retrieve afterward. Michelson Found Animals adds that a pet already in a carrier or crate should stay inside, where it is protected from falling debris, and that a light carrier can be carried or dragged with you to safety. If a pet struggles or turns aggressive, it says to let the pet go; your safety comes first.
What pets do: bolt, then hide
Michelson Found Animals says a dog will most likely panic and try to escape to safety when the ground shakes, and that animals are very good at finding safety and hiding until the danger has passed, which is why you can look for your pet immediately after the shaking stops. It also warns that a frightened animal may bite or scratch to flee to safety, so “do not try to restrain your pet”.
Two things follow, and both argue against grabbing:
- Restraint invites a defensive bite or scratch. A cat wedged behind the water heater or a dog crammed under a desk has picked a hiding place. Michelson Found Animals and Redbarn’s guidance both say a frightened animal may bite or scratch to get away, and Ballmann adds that interfering is at your own risk.
- Hiding keeps the animal out from underfoot. Michelson Found Animals says animals are very good at finding safety on their own, so leave it to them while you protect yourself.
During the shaking, let the animal do its job while you do yours. The reunion happens the moment the floor goes still.
Your pet is not an earthquake warning system
A belief appears after every earthquake: the animal knew. The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program is blunt about the state of the evidence. Stories of strange animal behavior before earthquakes abound, but USGS says that “consistent and reliable behavior prior to seismic events, and a mechanism explaining how it could work, still eludes us.”
What USGS does explain is the seconds. Very few humans notice the smaller P wave, which travels fastest from the earthquake source and arrives before the larger S wave. Many animals with more keen senses can feel it seconds before the S wave arrives. Your cat is not forecasting an earthquake; it is reacting to one that has already started. USGS says that sensing an impending earthquake days or weeks ahead is a different story. It also describes an old theory correlating lost-pet ads in the San Jose Mercury News with Bay Area earthquake dates, and reports that a statistical analysis published in California Geology in 1988 found no such correlation.
The seconds-level warning that does exist is engineered. USGS says “ShakeAlert® is not earthquake prediction.” The USGS-operated ShakeAlert system detects an earthquake that has already started and estimates its location, magnitude and shaking intensity. It buys time because P waves, about 3.7 miles per second, generally do not produce strong shaking and outrun the S waves and surface waves, about 2.5 miles per second, that do the damage. Alerts reach people through Wireless Emergency Alerts and phone apps, and USGS says they prompt a protective action such as Drop, Cover, and Hold On.
Check the coverage before you build a plan on it. In the sign-up table on USGS’s earthquake early warning overview (dated March 9, 2022), three channels are listed for California, Oregon and Washington only: the USGS/FEMA Wireless Emergency Alerts, the MyShake mobile app and the Google Android operating system. The fourth, Alert San Diego, is listed for California alone. No other state appears in that table. Check the current USGS page for coverage where you live. If it does not list your state, staged gear and a practiced cover spot are the whole of your warning system.
Storms are a separate, disputed question
One study comes up whenever people ask whether animals sense disasters, so it gets a paragraph. In Current Biology in 2015, Streby and colleagues reported that breeding golden-winged warblers carrying light-level geolocators left their territories more than 24 hours before a severe tornadic storm arrived. They proposed infrasound as the probable cue. In 2018, Lisovski and 19 other researchers published a formal comment arguing that the hypothesized movements “fell well within the geolocators’ inherent error range” and that environmental shading could explain them. Streby and colleagues replied in the same issue that the shading premise is false. The dispute is unresolved, the study is about birds, and it offers no warning a pet owner could act on.
For dogs, the evidence is about association, not anticipation. Veterinarians Melissa N. North and Sara L. Bennett, a board-certified veterinary behaviorist, wrote in Today’s Veterinary Practice in 2025 that “darkening skies, gusts of wind, the scent of ozone, barometric pressure changes, and even rain alone can induce panic in dogs before the storm arrives.” They add that dogs with storm phobia might keep showing fearful behavior for hours to days after the storm passes. Behavior that shows up on both sides of a storm cannot tell you which side you are standing on.
What restlessness should change
“The dog will let me know” substitutes for switching on Wireless Emergency Alerts, staging the carrier in the room the cat hides in, and knowing your cover spot. It costs nothing until the night the dog sleeps through it, or paces for a reason unrelated to the weather. Restlessness gives no direction, severity or lead time.
Evacuation timing comes from the alert system. The National Weather Service says of a Severe Thunderstorm Watch: “Be Prepared!” Severe thunderstorms are possible in and near the watch area, which is typically large. Of a Severe Thunderstorm Warning it says “Take Action!” Severe weather has been reported by spotters or indicated by radar. Earthquakes have no watch stage, because USGS says ShakeAlert is not prediction. There is nothing to act on until the ground moves, or until a ShakeAlert message reaches you seconds ahead of it.
What restlessness legitimately changes is the calming plan. A dog that starts pacing when the sky darkens is telling you to run the routine now: get it to its safe spot, ask for the settle you practiced on ordinary days, and have the harness and carrier already in that room. Our guide to calming gear for storm and evacuation stress covers what compression wraps and pheromone products can and cannot do. If the pet will be home alone when a warning lands, leaving a dog home alone during a tornado warning is the pre-set version of the same plan.
The moment the shaking stops: your retrieval sequence
Do these in order.
1. Check yourself and anyone with you for injuries first. Ready NC’s after-earthquake list includes helping hurt or trapped people and giving first aid when needed. The order here is ours: you are no use to a hiding cat if you cut your foot on broken glass. Confirm you are functional and get shoes on.
2. Find your pet where it went. Search low and enclosed spots: under beds, behind and under furniture, inside closets, behind appliances. Move slowly and talk low. Do not corner and grab a still-frightened animal: Michelson Found Animals warns a frightened animal may bite or scratch to flee, and a pet is likely still frightened right after the shaking. For a cat that has dug in hard or turns aggressive, our method for getting a hiding or scared cat into a carrier covers the towel wrap and the top-load lower.
3. Secure it before the aftershock, not after. Ready NC warns that “aftershocks can be as strong as the earthquake” and may occur for days or weeks. A loose, rattled pet may bolt again when the next jolt hits, possibly out a door that got shaken open. As soon as you have the animal, get it into a harness and leash or into a carrier. This is where staged gear earns its place, because you do not have time to hunt for it.
For a dog, a harness with a grab handle kept clipped by the door is the fastest way to get control of a frightened animal before the next shake. The Ruffwear Web Master Dog Harness with Handle has a reinforced back handle and a three-strap body that Ruffwear markets for dogs that slip out of ordinary harnesses. Staged by the door with the leash attached, it goes on in seconds. The card below covers the timing and the fit that decide whether it holds.
For a cat, or a small dog that hides, a pre-staged carrier does the same job. The Petmate Two Door Top & Front Load Kennel (24-inch) earns its spot for one feature the moment demands: the top door, which changes how you contain a braced, hiding cat once you have found it. Stage one in each room a pet actually hides in.