So Many Stories
My rekindled hope of finding Jasper has dwindled. I have been back every day, snooping around the abandoned neighborhood and calling out his name and leaving more food, which gets eaten. I have seen three cats, but no gray tabbies. And now they are tearing down the houses across the street from the house where a cat who looks like Jasper was spotted a few weeks ago. I can’t stake it out anymore, and I doubt the cat will even come back there. It is a noisy mess. And now I know what a demolished house looks like. It ain’t pretty. And it doesn’t smell pretty either.
But I have contacted Animal Rescue, which is still picking up stray animals, and they said they would look for him. So if he is alive, there is hope they will find him or that someone else will. If they scan his microchip, they can contact the shelter where we adopted him 8 years ago, and they will give them our number. But I need to stop hoping and searching. Driving over there and lurking around the ruins every morning has been an emotional odyssey.
On my forays into the area, though, I have met people from the neighborhood and have heard some interesting stories. The most remarkable was from a fireman, who pulled 80 people off their roofs the day after the storm. Now he and his family have moved back into his home. He had his three-year-old son with him. I couldn’t imagine bringing my daughter to that place. But his son has seen it all—he lives in the middle of it. I can’t stop thinking about what it must be like for them to live there. He said it is pretty eerie at night. There are no lights and everything is quiet except for the distant chirping of smoke alarms from vacant homes. But he is convinced Lakeview will come back and they are proud to be one the first who have returned. He said CNN was there to watch his kid open presented on Christmas. I drove by their house yesterday. It looked beautiful—green lawn, fresh paint, and landscaping. He did a lot of the work inside (they had 4 feet of water), so he was able to get it ready long before most others. Another man I met told me it will take another year before he can move back into his home. He also said that he stayed for the storm and retreated upstairs with his cat when the water filled the first story. When he was rescued they wouldn’t take the cat. So he and his son “found” a boat a week later and rowed it in to get the cat, who was still okay.
It was more than two weeks before the water had receded enough for my husband to drive up to our house. By then it was too late. We hadn’t thought about him trying to rescue our cats because we assumed they would have drowned right away. Now we are thinking that one of them probably did and was buried beneath all of the jumbled up furniture when the water receded, and that’s why we never found him. We still can’t imagine how one could have gotten out. The woman working at the shelter where we adopted him told me “you know, cats have nine lives.” And another woman I met said she found one of her cats as late as Thanksgiving, and she had no idea how he got out.
There are so many stories out there. You just walk up to anybody and ask them and they start pouring out their whole experience. At the playground, you compare stories with the other parents while the kids listen in. How many kids have been traumatized by all of this? How much does my two-year-old daughter process when she overhears my conversations?
As you walk around Lakeview it is especially easy to have such conversations as you stand right in the middle of ground zero. We know that we have the same pain to talk about. Most of the people there right now, though, are crews of workers, some local, I’m sure, but many not. You feel strange walking around the ruins of your old life as they look on.
But I have contacted Animal Rescue, which is still picking up stray animals, and they said they would look for him. So if he is alive, there is hope they will find him or that someone else will. If they scan his microchip, they can contact the shelter where we adopted him 8 years ago, and they will give them our number. But I need to stop hoping and searching. Driving over there and lurking around the ruins every morning has been an emotional odyssey.
On my forays into the area, though, I have met people from the neighborhood and have heard some interesting stories. The most remarkable was from a fireman, who pulled 80 people off their roofs the day after the storm. Now he and his family have moved back into his home. He had his three-year-old son with him. I couldn’t imagine bringing my daughter to that place. But his son has seen it all—he lives in the middle of it. I can’t stop thinking about what it must be like for them to live there. He said it is pretty eerie at night. There are no lights and everything is quiet except for the distant chirping of smoke alarms from vacant homes. But he is convinced Lakeview will come back and they are proud to be one the first who have returned. He said CNN was there to watch his kid open presented on Christmas. I drove by their house yesterday. It looked beautiful—green lawn, fresh paint, and landscaping. He did a lot of the work inside (they had 4 feet of water), so he was able to get it ready long before most others. Another man I met told me it will take another year before he can move back into his home. He also said that he stayed for the storm and retreated upstairs with his cat when the water filled the first story. When he was rescued they wouldn’t take the cat. So he and his son “found” a boat a week later and rowed it in to get the cat, who was still okay.
It was more than two weeks before the water had receded enough for my husband to drive up to our house. By then it was too late. We hadn’t thought about him trying to rescue our cats because we assumed they would have drowned right away. Now we are thinking that one of them probably did and was buried beneath all of the jumbled up furniture when the water receded, and that’s why we never found him. We still can’t imagine how one could have gotten out. The woman working at the shelter where we adopted him told me “you know, cats have nine lives.” And another woman I met said she found one of her cats as late as Thanksgiving, and she had no idea how he got out.
There are so many stories out there. You just walk up to anybody and ask them and they start pouring out their whole experience. At the playground, you compare stories with the other parents while the kids listen in. How many kids have been traumatized by all of this? How much does my two-year-old daughter process when she overhears my conversations?
As you walk around Lakeview it is especially easy to have such conversations as you stand right in the middle of ground zero. We know that we have the same pain to talk about. Most of the people there right now, though, are crews of workers, some local, I’m sure, but many not. You feel strange walking around the ruins of your old life as they look on.
posted by Scribbling Mama | 10:52 AM
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