In my sister's tree.
I'm going back and forth between her new place and mine, keeping an eye while she tends to my ever-worsening mother. This has been mostly ok, except that I miss the kids when I'm not around. The quiet has been good and I have slept better than I did at home (my cat stayed home, so the three AM insistence on my attention has been absent). The only real problem has been that we're on fire again out here, and her new place isn't far enough away to spare us all the heebie jeebies.
Last October, she lost her home, all her animals and two of mine in the arson fires that ravaged Sylmar. Hers was one of four hundred homes lost over a few days. I watched on the news - we watched her home burn. When I got to her, she was in a motel room with my mother and her husband. She hadn't seen her home go up, because she was still trying to find a way to get back into the park to try to rescue the animals. They wouldn't let us in to check, they said it was too dangerous. We got them to agree to put out food and water for the animals, in case any had gotten out.
The next day, she rented a truck and we drove from one pet store to another buying pet carriers. At the Porter Hills PetCo, the fire burning there almost got us evacuated before we could pay for the things. But we got them, dozens of them, and drove back to Sylmar, where we begged and pled with the firefighters to please please, just let us check. They eventually got someone willing to take us up, but only if we promised not to get out of the car if they thought it was still too bad. Deep inside I knew - I had seen her house burning and I knew nothing could have survived that, but her need to hope, to believe somehow that her babies were ok, that they hadn't died the worst kind of death, frightened and wondering why she wasn't coming to save them, it was hard not to hope with her.
So we got up the hill and we didn't have to go far - you could see from the end of the row that the house was gone. They wouldn't let us get out to see if any had survived. They turned around and I spent the next few days trying to keep my sister from killing herself. She tried so hard to get the animals out but they gave them no time - there was just no time. My mother is elderly - between that and all the medical equipment that had to go with her, there was just no time. She felt and always will feel responsible and that it was arson only makes it worse. Me, I'll always feel awful for the two I sent up there and be so grateful I didn't send the others - a new litter had sown up with an orphaned cat I took in just a few months before the fire and there was talk for a while of my sister taking them.
When they finally let everyone back in, we spent weeks up there, calling for the animals. The firefighters only ever found two alive. One is alive today. The other was my sister's favorite - he lasted long enough for her to find him at a vet and sit with him till he died. His paws and lungs were burned badly and he held on for her. He started purring when he saw her and she sat with him every minute - that hope again, and all she could do was be there to make dying easier.
I wanted to believe the animals all found their way out. But we found remains, you see - we know how they died. There's no fooling ourselves that the smoke put them to sleep before the fire could get them.
Now here we are, almost a year later and the sky is dirty yellow with smoke from someone else's home going up, someone else's things being lost. It's hard not to remember the frantic drive looking for pet carriers. The new fire is miles from where she is - but it's burned miles away from where it started. They're funny, fires - they have a mind of their own and they think rings around the firefighters. So here we are again, glued to the news stations, calling back and forth for updates, aware we're probably safe but staying vigilant because we know how high a price will be paid if we look away at the wrong minute.
