Regional Head Start offices are closing around the country.

Staff at the Seattle office say they learned last week the closure was coming and then were just locked out of the office without warning.

The closures are happening during mass layoffs at Head Starts parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.

Joel Ryan is the executive director of Washington's Head Start Association.

Its members serve more than 15,000 kids.

“It certainly will hamper and hobble Head Start programs ability to provide awesome and great services to kids and families who need it.” The Seattle office oversaw grants, compliance training, and technical assistance for more than 70 programs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska.

A new report is ranking Washington and Idaho high for public emergency preparedness.

Oregon, however, ranks pretty low.

A nonprofit, Trust for America's Health published the report.

It looked at things like accreditations, cross state nursing practices, vaccination rates, and water system safety.

It also looked at funding.

“We can't just cut for the purpose of cutting.

We have to be really mindful of the impact on people.” That's Dr. Umair Shah.

He's Washington's former Secretary of Health.

Read more about the full report and why our northwest states ranked so high and so low.

That's online at NWPB.org.

It's been said that dogs are a man's best friend.

But cats, it turns out, could be pretty good at that, too, in the form of therapy cats.

Dogs, of course, are the most common service animals in the United States, but a researcher from Washington State University and several other researchers from Belgium recently found that cats who enjoy things like being petted could be beneficial therapy animals.

Here's WSUs Patricia Pendry.

“Dogs kind of rule the world of animal assisted intervention, but this research suggests that there are actually some cats that may also have what it takes to be a therapy cat.” Go online to learn more about the 500 cats surveyed and what traits they had, similar to dogs, to make them therapy friendly options.