“I still hope I can stroke his head or at least learn a little about his new life…”
Ștefania Oprina, Editor: Among the first images, the ones that are firmly stuck in my mind for their humanity, are pictures of Ukrainians carrying their pets across the border. One in particular showed a huge old German Shepherd being carried by its human, skinny and visibly weary, on his back while holding bags filled with clothes and papers in his hands. That’s how I imagine Tatyana – holding a crate and a stroller, a dog and two cats and a daughter worried sick for them.
That’s not what I expected to talk about the most when we met. I knew that before February 2022 Tatyana had an important job in the Ukrainian television, I had already had the opportunity to see how organized and “clear-headed” she was, expertly handling logistics and how effortlessly she could coordinate people, things and processes in the 4 languages she was using alternatively, and I described her as calculating, rational and somewhat aloof.
“I still hope I can stroke his head or at least learn a little about his new life…”
It was the first sentence spoken during our meeting about connections and people in her new life, in Romania. Like thousands of other women, I realised she was talking about a husband or a father who could not cross over the border since the war started. With all the gentleness in the world however she meant Cupcake, a cat rescued from the war zone, and then lost in an open field during a night on the run.
“When we stopped in the night, after 9 hours of driving, in Gusyatin in a house near the cemetery where we were going to spend the night… he ran off. My firstborn, Cupcake …. It was very dark and my girlfriend’s husband went out to the car and didn’t notice when the cat jumped out into the street …. I heard a cat meowing all night, but I could never have guessed it was him… Cupcake was looking for me.”
It didn’t seem any less serious to me, and it was the turn our discussion took at the meetings that followed. About how this invisible link between the pets in her life has travelled across dozens of towns, villages, over shattered bridges and forests filled with danger, crossed a border and connected many people in Tatyana’s and her daughter’s lives.
I told her I had an idea of how we could make it easier to talk about the abandonment suitcases, about her coming to Romania and trying to adjust here. She took a picture to illustrate the idea.
