Oh dear, where to start? The title was a question asked to my dad's mom by his sister, who visited us this week from Cali. Problem? Soon after they arrived, trouble brewed in our family.

The Saga of Poe

Poe is our only surving cat now. He is a male blue-point Siamese, thus being male, thinks he is king of the jungle! So recently we've bought a flea collar for him and let him go outside around our trailer park for a few hours each day, since he's fixed, to "be male". Thursday my cousin took him out and since the neighborhood kids like to harrass him, he flew out of my cousin's arms and took off when he heard their screams. Thought nothing of it, since he always comes back. At 4 that evening, the little bugger had not shown up. Gracie starts to get nervous, as does her mother. Poe knows his way home, he NEVER goes out too long. 12 hours since he left, no sign. We call all over, go all over surrounding neighborhoods, nothing. The night passes with tosses and turns. Where is he? Did someone take him? Did some animal hurt him? He doesn't have front claws, what if he couldn't fight back? What if he is lying somewhere bleeding out? All those thoughts flashing through our minds. Next morning, still no Poe. Mom instructs me to make a flyer. Numb with worry, I make one out and fall back asleep crying as she runs all over town sticking up flyers and going to the newspaper to put an add for a lost cat. All day we couldn't move without thinking he was gone. We went to dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousins trying to get it out of our minds. We thought either someone had him and the add would help, or he'd just decided to take off and never come back. That night at around 10, we decided to scout the neighborhood one last time before letting it go to fate. We called, we shined a flashlight, we went into a brickyard that flanks our park, calling all over, our dachshund Bella with us, who by the way, could tell something was wrong. We spent at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half looking. We came back home. Mom sat on the front porch reflecting, I went inside to do the same. We were dreading accepting the inevitable, that our cat was not coming back. When Mom came in, I had been sitting for 10 minutes, maybe less, when I heard a meow. We had always been having those "missing animal delusions" where you think you hear them but it's something else entirely, but this WAS a meow. The second time I heard it, I said, "I swear to God, that's a meow." Jumped up, went to the door, Poe bumps past my leg into the house!!!! I burst out crying I was so shocked and happy. We took a lot of the flyers down over the next few days, but are happy our beloved cat is home, with nothing but a small cold to show for his insolense. Needless to say, he will never go outside alone again without a cat leash!

Fire Kitties

Saturday morning around 3AM- I am sitting up in bed, can not believe Poe came home, and can't sleep. I am reading an old favorite book to help me fall back into dreamland when I hear Mom's phone go off once. It goes off again. I know by now it is my brother, probably wasted and drunk-dialing us as he likes to do. But when it rings a third time I think something must be wrong. I answer, my brother is talking panicked and scared. "Grace, I pulled up to my apartment and it's on fire. I don't know where the cats are, the fireman says one might have gotten out. Oh God, oh God, get Mom." I try to calm him down while running into Mom's bedroom, screaming that she needs to get up, Graham's apartment is on fire. Mom bolts up out of a dead sleep and starts to come unglued. My poor brother! He was finishing up school at U of I and was coming home in August to do grad school at ISU, living with us to save money. His cats, Lila and Rita, are two Siamese that we rescued last August from a kitty-mill basically in some ladie's home in Missouri. They are his babies, and he adores them. What do we do?

My mother panicked as we drove over to my aunt's. I knew I couldn't make the hour-drive myself as I had to keep my mom calm. My brother was alive, I kept telling her. Everyone had gotten out, it was just the cats. The fire they think started in the apartment below my brother's second-story residence by a spark, and it went up the wall and into my brother's apartment, where the firefighters said a cat ran out when they burst through the door and demolished his living room to put out the flames. My aunt drove us, Graham calling and saying he didn't know what to do, he was so scared. We arrived to a scene from a CNN disaster story. Three firetrucks, a paramedic, cop cars, Red Cross volunteers taking names as the residents and their pets sat out front of the apartment building looking on in fear and shock. Everyone had been able to get out, but Graham wasn't home, meaning his cats had been alone, meaning he felt like a "bad father" of sorts. He was wracked with guilt and unaware of possibly losing everything he owned, because he was so grief-stricken for his cats.
He was able to a few things, but everything else was destroyed. My aunt and I went back home and I fell in bed again with worry. Mom called later and told me to stay put, that she didn't want me to see Graham how he was. Red Cross had done what they could, putting the residents up in a nasty hotel, and by noon my mom and Graham had found Lila under a car. But there was still Rita. Where was she? Was she the one a girl had seen jump from the window to the ground and hurt herself? Had she panicked and gone too far? My mom and Graham scanned a 5-block section for hours until finally, they went back in front of his apartment building. Mom thought she heard something. Graham looked up and there in the window of the apartment next to his, was Rita, yelling in her loud mouthy-Siamese meow to get out. She had been boarded up in the smoke-filled-place since the fire had been taken down! Graham broke in and got her. Her bottom lip was singed and she kept her mouth open, sucking in oxygen, but everything else about her and her sister seemed fine. Graham drove Mom home and brought the girls here, where Poe fresh from his adventure, smelled the smoke and licked them/fathered them. They're fine and getting used to the fact that this is their home now. But needless to say, it was a CRAZY weekend!!!