The smoke hasn't left yet. We're told the smoke in the valley now has blown up from California fires.
The heartwrenching realization of overwhelming loss overtook me night before last.
The animals and birds lost, thousands upon thousands of them, had me sobbing half through the night.
People saved their dogs and left their cats. People saved their rabbits and their goats and left their cats. To burn. That's what consumed me, the horrors those kitties went through, or, if still alive out there, are going through and the fact people would not be prepared in a fire zone in a high wind event that was forecast days in advance and have them at least inside and contained to a small room and ready to go.
Today the anger and unfairness of it left me and sadness moved in. It's just plain sad all around.
The fires are still raging. The promised rain has not come yet.
A person has to just move on, is all.
I wish I could turn the clock back, wipe out that wind event somehow, so it never happened, make it all ok.
I drove up to the Cascadia homeless camps with cat food. It was a good thing to do, to keep busy. People there were happy to see me, as always, which also was nice. I really don't see any people, unless I'm out trapping or delivering food like that.
Saturday night, one of the cottages burned, at the location where I'd just returned four fixed cats that same morning. Arson they say, as there was no electric hooked to that one and it was empty. I was at least happy to see the cottage the tenant lives in who feeds the cats was still standing.
I remember weeping very similar tears. Buckets of them. Most of a year later I still grieve.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many people feeling it deeply.
DeleteAbsolute tragedy. You just have to do what you can but you can't save the world.
ReplyDeleteI know Andrew. It's just one of those things.
DeletePeople like you said should be prepared if given advance notice. We stopped to get hamburgers at a fast food restaurant and found a dozen abandon kittens huddled together in the parking lot corner. OMG my adult son was beside himself as to why someone would do that when they can easily drop them off at humane society shelter or no-kill shelter. People are so lazy to take that extra step to do something good. We got home and he took a crate, food, water to see if he could round the kittens up. He was not successful. The kittens scattered when he tried to catch them but they ate the food and drank the water. It was 113 degrees outside. As ugly as the scene was, we had to put our concerns aside...however we did call and texted humane society the following day when they were open.
ReplyDelete9 years ago my friend and her husband were killed when their house blew up in a propane explosion. Several weeks later their (house) cat was found safe, sheltered in a window well ( So it is possible you will see some of your friends again. But it is all a terrible tragedy
ReplyDeleteI’m sorry you’re going through this.
ReplyDeleteReading posts like yours makes the catastrophe seem more real than the sound bites they show on the evening news.
ReplyDeleteOur smoke is somewhat thinning out. I was talking to my son the one down in Medford. He was saying that they can't get the planes up because it so smokey. But he was hearing rain she be coming in toward Thursday and will be getting it Friday
ReplyDelete~hugs~
ReplyDelete