The pets we left with, lost along the way and rescued

The pets we left with, lost along the way and rescued

We all have connections and resources that keep us afloat when things suddenly get tough and we feel like it’s too much to bear. I worked on the set of a TV channel in Kiev and I thought all my knowledge in logistics, preparations and organization would be my anchor. I’ve been doing this for years.

Since February 2022, I’ve met a lot of people and it seemed like they were the web that is woven under my feet in case I fell and needed a safety net. Although I love them, in my story pets have been … not a hardship, but an annoyance. We’re talking long journeys, higher rents, crowded shelters, it is difficult to travel with a cat. I had two. And a dog. And a child for whom they are family. You don’t leave your family behind.

When the war started (on the morning of February 24, at 4.45 am, I was at work, the film crew was preparing to go live with the morning show “Ranok z Ukrainy”), when the cameraman, who was at Boryspil Airport, sent a photo and the message: “They started bombing the airport”. My apartment is located near Zhuliany Airport. I was afraid.

Varya, my daughter, was already on alert, I had warned her she might get a phone call from me with the words “We’re leaving now”. We had talked about our actions and what she should do and pack. We have made preparations… I had realised that the outbreak of war was a possibility. But it was all hypothetical, you can’t really prepare for it.

Varya and I were going to leave with my friend and her husband, we had a hypothetical plan in place. They had a car, we didn’t. I came home… my daughter had packed the necessary things, she was dressed and had her backpack with her… the cats were in a crate and the dog in a stroller. It was a lot to deal with. But you don’t leave your family behind.

February 22, 2022 …. Luggage. “Varya…. we must only take the strictly necessary things….” “Mom, what are we going to do with the pets? …… “I can’t think, I’m just trying to act rationally. Put the dog on the stroller and see how much stuff we can hold in our hands… that’s exactly how much we’ll take”.

I had realised that I would never forgive myself if I left the pets behind. I didn’t know what it would be like at the border crossing, but I wasn’t leaving them.

February 23, 2022 Olya’s car was parked under my windows. Aside from our pets, there were 3 dogs, 4 cats and a tortoise in the car. Also, my daughter was 11 and we were 3 adults…we had pet food and our papers with us. Clothes. Some supplies for us humans. The word “full” doesn’t begin to describe it.

We set out and travelled a long way. The animals were very quiet all the way. My dog weighing 27 kilos curled up at my feet. The two cats who never got along enough to stay in the same room were in the same carrier because there was no room, but they readily accepted their fate as if they had a choice in the matter. ……

It was scary out in the field, but the animals had to go and do their business and stretch their paws. When we stopped for the night, in Gusyatin, in a house near the cemetery, after 9 hours of driving, Cupcake ran off. “My firstborn.” …. It was very dark and Olya’s husband went out to the car and didn’t notice when the cat jumped out into the street …. I heard a cat meowing at night, but I couldn’t have guessed it was him…Cupcake was looking for me.

When I realised it, my heart froze. I went looking for him. We had to remain in one place, and we were doing the opposite. We had to save the phone battery, but the flashlight could help us find the cat. We made every effort to find it, but we had to get moving, and we were leaving with a little girl who had just lost her best friend.

In the morning, the news said men were not allowed to leave the country. I realised we would have to continue alone, the two of us…. I was really scared, I didn’t know if I could keep it together by myself… and I was still looking for the cat and I couldn’t find it…

Then there was a stretch we had to walk and again my heart froze because I had a terrible thought. I was glad that my little girl could now carry the crate. Since there weren’t two cats in it anymore. My shoulder where a bag was hanging had started to burn, now I had my guilt weighing in. The less we carried, the easier it was to walk and the faster we were moving.

Something had to be done very soon. We didn’t have a car anymore and the taxi drivers wouldn’t let us in with a unmuzzled dog. The constant air raids drove me crazy… I practically didn’t sleep and kept watching the news. The glow on the horizon was a sign bombing was just a few kilometres away. A driver agreed to take us up, but he would do it right then, on the spot. And we hadn’t found the cat. We had to leave. I told myself I would definitely see it again. From that day on I started scanning Telegram groups, I left messages in all of them.  People were more connected than ever. Neighbouring villages that had never visited each other now lived on the same Internet alley and were now involved in retracing the routes people took, delivering reports on the fate of loved ones left behind, hollering over the fictional fence.

The road was taking us to Chernivtsi, we wrote to people all over the world, we settled on a friend from Romania who invited us to come to Bucharest and stay at his place for a while.

At the border a multitude of women were saying goodbyes to their husbands… children were crying in the strollers … the dog kept tripping on its own legs and laying full length on the ground. We were spent. “Milka… you have to hold on a little more, please” I turned to my dog and it seemed to understand me, got up and kept walking…..

…. a stamp in the passport and something else in a foreign language ….. Romania.

Romania. We had arrived. It started snowing…I had to go to Bucharest….volunteers found us a family who took us in for the night. The first night we all got some sleep…

In Bucharest I lived at my friend’s place. We had a complicated friendship, and then we threw sharing a living space in the mix. We were like a family without actually being a family. I grew very close to his mother, she loved us like her own children. And she had a cat. A green-eyed whiskered thing. Pedro! The thankless task of having to tell us to move out when the man we were staying with found someone to make a real family with fell to her, his mother. It was painful for him to watch us go out into the unknown, but we were starting from scratch again, this time in Romania. It wasn’t long before our foster mother’s heart gave out. That brought me to close to my friend again, and for a while I was around to take care of my mom’s cat, her only official grandchild. We moved into the place where she used to live with her cat, so into the cat’s home. Our second host in Romania was… Pedro!

Pedro only eats milk, wants me to hold it in my arms and is happy when sitting on my shoulder…. I make coffee in the morning. Lola, Pedro, Grandpa and Milka became my daily chores.

What do you mean, who’s Grandpa? Around that time, I got back my Keks (Cupcake). Cupcake. Cake. The cat that ran off into the night.

Since I left Gusyatin, I kept looking for it on Telegram. Areas I had never heard of before I was now seeing daily. And one day someone found it! They sent me a picture. Varya and I took a good look, and it really was our cat. Dirty, covered in scratches, beat up, much thinner, but it was our grey cat. What followed was, once again, a web that unites people, a constellation of humans who wanted to help. If I close my eyes, I can see them holding hands across borders of villages, towns or even the real border between Ukraine and Romania. The border our cat crossed following in our steps, three months later, after a group of people had come together and arranged for it to stay 2 months in Kiev to get its vaccines, microchip, and passport.

It came to us on a bus, being transferred from one person to another. It arrived at the Militari Bus Station late at night, at 1 o’clock. We couldn’t afford an Uber ride, I didn’t know Bucharest all that well, and we couldn’t just walk there. I called a colleague from my Romanian class. How can you remember for sure that someone has a car? It was a convertible. At night, in the cold, with our cat in the crate we arrived at Varya’s.

It was dirty, exhausted. In the morning the whole house smelled. Why did it smell? Because it was an unneutered tomcat? Why was it unneutered? Because it wasn’t our cat. 😊) “Mommy, it has no front teeth – that means it’s over 10 years old. Keks was young. ….But it got to our doorstep and it had escaped from the war.

Grandpa became a member of our little family around our birthday, just as we had taken Keks in long ago. Varya and I were born on the same day.

I keep checking the Gusyatin online groups about missing cats and dogs, hoping to see my Cupcake there. If I ever find it and it’s homeless, I’ll take it in despite the fact that we have 3 cats already. After we win, I would like to set up a veterinary clinic or animal shelter in Gusyatyn. I send money to help when I can. The girl who helped me look for Cupcake, despite the dire financial situation and the war, continues to care for the many homeless animals and is trying to find families who would agree to take in a new friend.

Editor: Ștefania Oprina