"It's a Long, Long Road, From Which There is No Return..." ...that leads us to who knows where... Who knows where?

All that day, before evening fell, little Monstrous had been coming up to me, meooooOOOOWWWWing...a long, drawn-out meow, like she had never done before, looking right into my eyes the entire time. I couldn't understand what she was trying to tell me....but now...(and here, i cannot help but cry)...i know now, that she knew something was very, very wrong next door, and she could not get me to understand, try though she did. I want to go into all of the details of the actual events leading up to the moment I realized there was fire, due to Captain's vocalizings, to the banging on the other apartment to rouse the family below us, to the call I had to make to 911 because, though the fire was already swallowing up the neighbor's apartment and they had fled, neither Pamela Barrett nor Edward, her boyfriend, had called the fire department. So I was left to have to take time from my rescue efforts, eating away crucial time which I had not to spare, and which I lost, that I needed to carry all of my very precious little ones to safety... ...but, I cannot bring myself tell everything here. It's painful enough to recount simply the aftermath for you, but I must do this finally, for you to understand better the magnitude of the impact of these losses, and to do justice for my animal friends, which the LAW, shamefully...did NOT do. Captain was found alone when the flames were extinguished, only feet from the firefighters who filed past the unlocked door as they "rescued" Pamela, who had run back into the house upon seeing me screaming, trying to rescue my animals. Captain was closed off in only the living room, as I had dragged him by his scruff in my fear for him, out of the bedroom where he kept running back to, away from the smoke that angrily rolled in through the open living room door where I kept trying to call to him. Kipling, my old cat, had not left my side even through the smoke, and I clung to him (painfully, I know), in my desperation and fear, unwilling and unable to put him down, and trade one life for another, to pick Captain up and physically carry him out. The smoke poured in mercilessly, filling the tiny apartment, in great black billows, from Pamela's apartment adjacent to mine across the hall. Finally I had to find the door, crawling, unable to see with my eyes streaming, or to breathe, trying to scream to Captain to follow. But I didn't think he would follow me, after I had to chase him three times, losing more crucial time, to drag him from the bedroom with Kipling in tow, so I crawled out and shut the door to try to keep the smoke out while i tried to get Kipling to my car. Within feet from me, the fire was blazing in the apartment across from ours, and the heat scorched my hair, burning it off along the ends in the extreme heat. Kipling and I fell down the stairs partway to scramble to my feet outside, and he was still clutched tight to me when i got up. I raced to the car and put his limp little body in the backseat of the car, slammed the door and ran back up for the others, my feet not touching the stairs, back into the thick smoke rolling out, within feet of the huge fire, back inside the apartment. Two of my teeth were broken in the fall, and later I'd find I'd injured my left shoulder as well. I crawled through the completely black living room on hands and knees, face pressed to the floor to catch any air at all, but there was already none...i could not see...I couldn't see Captain or my other three elderly cats. I crawled, feeling for Captain where I last remembered him being, screaming but no sound would come out, because I could not breathe in, in order to have air to breathe out, so only my brain was screaming, sending messages that my vocal cords could not produce. Finally I knew I needed help to find them, and I felt my way to the door, disoriented and choking... I still don't know how I found the door, but I did, and I crawled back out and shut the door again to keep the omnipresent, roiling smoke out, like an idiot, not realizing in my panic that Captain would follow me through fire to stay by my side. My poor, poor Captain Dogg. I know I killed him. In my stupidity, in my panic, I killed my own little ones by losing my usual stubborn presence of mind and closing off their exit while I ran up and down the street screaming for someone...anyone....to please help me! How can I live with this? HOW? I must try...for them. As a child, I'd had a recurring nightmare that a huge wall of fire had already burned down my family's neighbors' houses and was advancing on our house. I ran through the house screaming for my mother, Stepdad, my sisters and brothers, unable to find any of them anywhere...knowing they were there, and that they were going to die because they didn't know. Now, here I was, living this nightmare. I lost my normally cool head. My neighbor climbed on the roof, trying to get in the bedroom door to save them. He could not reach it, though he tried heroically. My love to him for this. I could not get back inside, and the police refused to let me try, though I fought them to try again and again, but they held me back forcefully. Later it was discovered Captain's paws were encrusted with soot where he had run through the living room desperately searching for me. Then the roof collapsed down on him. My three precious cats, Berkeley, Monstrous, and Timorie, had been hiding under my bed, where they always felt safe. They were later found side by side where they had crawled out, beside the bed, where they died in their last desperate moments gasping to be able to breathe, cooking in the extreme heat. Probably the most torturous thoughts for me (and i hope Pamela finds this and reads this), are: ...that little Timorie had been rescued in the coldest dead of winter, a starving little 9-month old stray, from a situation where she had been burned badly, all down the back of her head, her shoulders, her left side, by a man (and I use that term very loosely) who threw hot oil all over her, from His truck, where He had been changing it, when she came to him asking for food. She lived with me for 10 years after this, still loving people with her whole, adoring little heart. ...that Berkeley, my big, proud Oompa-Loompa, whom I adored and respected, was found cooked by the heat, patches of his face falling off. He was nearest the wall that burned clear through, melting the television, the VCR and all of my WWF tapes and memorabilia down to nothing. ...that Sweet Jane, my gentle, loving, little rat friend, was found in the laundry hamper, the last to die, hours later. I never closed her cage, because she never ran away. Most rats won't if they are well-fed, have a nice little home, plenty of water. They don't leave their cages. When I held her later, her eyes were bright and clear and she was not stiff. It was explained to me that she had only just been found, and that she had died last, when the little bit of air that she could breathe had depleted in the folds of the laundry where she had leaped from her cage to escape the terrible heat and choking smoke. But the very, very worst for me to handle was little Monstrous Ellen Trilby, "Everybody's Little Mother". I had adopted this gentle, soft-spoken, angel of a kitten as a tiny, two-week old with her mother and many little littermates from a pound in Fayetteville NC, where they were scheduled to be given up for product testing. They had pound seizure there. After taking them home with me, the next day, all the kittens began dying of some virus. Countless trips to the vet, numerous eye washes, force-feedings and medications later, only tiny Monstrous and her mother survived. The tiny sinuses were destroyed though, and the sight in her left eye was gone. It was cataracted, a moon eye. She spent her whole life struggling to breathe, her little nose would constantly run, and she would come to me a couple of times a day when the little nose would become too encrusted to breathe, because she knew I would help her. She knew I would clean her little nose and help her clear her little airways with a kindly tissue and aspirator. Later, when I tore her little body free of the rude, clear plastic bag, her little face was covered with mucous where she had tried so hard to breathe...and her little eyes had been running so badly from the stinging smoke, they were squeezed shut in a painful grimacing deathmask. Knowing that this harmless, gentle, petite little cat suffered so in her last moments...that fact alone...almost killed my very soul in me. Weeks later, when I could think, I realized that among the other most precious of my life's treasures lost were: ...the only thing I had left of my 1st little boy, my infant son, Bryan who was tragically lost to severe birth defects at 4 days of age, and all of the pictures I had of him, even the little snippet of his hair i had taken before the nurse came to take his little body from his father and i.....gone forever. There is nothing left to us now of him but our own private memories. Lost too was the beautiful, delicate negligee my mother handed down to me at Christmas a few years ago, which she wore when I was conceived in love with my father, who died two years later. Portaits of that beloved Father who died when I was only an infant of 1 1/2 years old myself. He died in service to our Country, onboard the government-contracted Greek vessel, the Mirador in 1958. He was down in a dark tank when he was overcome, trying to redirect the thick eductor hoses that emptied ballast that was accumulating, by the thick JP4 jet fuel fumes. He was stationed onboard the USS Soley, a destroyer that was deployed to help salvage the Mirador after sabotage in Iskenduren Bay, Turkey threatened to sink it. The firefighters, in their fervor, smashed the beautiful table he had made at 16 years of age by hand, which I had treasured for so many years...and spent nearly $200 on not three years before, to restore it to its beautiful original state after many years of my siblings and I using it to bear on for homework. It has since been "repaired" again, but it is not at all as before. I cannot afford a professional repair for it. My own handiwork... ... hours and days and weeks and months worth of work over the years... ...woodcarvings, paintings, illustrations for the first in my series of children's books I want very much to publish, "Dusty Goes South" (in the pen-name of indi blackwood) ...pictures, movies, all of my World Wrestling Entertainment collectible treasures...the lifesize wall hanging that I was so proud of, of my inspiration to excell in the gym and in my life, the Undertaker... ...ironically enough, pictured standing before a wall of flames, conjuring the flames to rise...now, burnt away to melted plastic. I felt I could not go on...it was far, far too painful, all of these losses, none so important as the dear little lives lost, so suddenly. Just far, far too painful. No family. No one left of our little family but Kipling and I. It left us with nothing. No savings, no home... No money, no security...unable to work, to concentrate, sleep, to get past the grief... ...and I just could not return to driving the cab with Captain no longer riding shotgun with me... I tried. I tried so hard. The words from "Mr. Bojangles", are still, even after counselling and medication for this shellshock, always running through my mind... "...the dog up and died...He up and died......After 20 years, he still grieves..." When they finally brought their bodies out, at my insistence (5 hours had passed), they didn't cover them with sheets with respect as they do for people...or for Police dogs and Police horses...NO. ...What did they give me to face when I was led, very fragile at that point, around the corner of the house to face their deaths? Some insensitive person chose to tie all of my poor, dead, ravaged, little darling ones' bodies into clear, plastic, lawn-litter garbage bags, and stacked them one atop each other... ...like wet, twisted, charred, sooty trash... ...and they were deposited beside the chain link fence in the backyard... Like so much rubbish. I remember tearing each ugly bag open, and cradling my darling, lost little ones one by one, for hours...weeping openly, bitterly, lost myself now...over their wet, stiff, cold, misshapen, little bodies...so disrespected further by the plastic bags and stacking...their faces, expressions, twisted into awful death masks that illustrated clearly their suffering at the last moments when I could not be there to protect them as I had always done before. The entire neighborhood filed by, while a few kindly, caring neighbors stood beside me...all watching my agony in empathetic silence. I wanted to die. I just wanted to be dead with them. They were all I had to come home to... They were my babies, for 10 years. Only one of the fire and police officials... ...one lone firefighter... ...a dear, caring soul, with a long, dark handlebar moustache and a portly tummy, and big, sensitive, tearful eyes, (and I wish I knew who he was so I could hug him tight) came to me, and told me how very sorry he was, and how he understood how I felt about my little animal children of so many years. God bless that man, whoever he is. He gave me that one small comfort that stays with me to this day, in my heart. And the dear people of P.E.T.A....when they learned of this tragedy, proved to me that they do indeed care just as deeply for their own species as for others. So many people think of them as having lost sight of humanity to their own species, but this is not so at all. For the good people of P.E.T.A. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) took up a collection among their members, and afforded Kipling with many wonderful gifts, and paid for the bodies of our loved ones (Kipling grieved deeply for months, searching for them and crying out... it was heart-breaking to see. I could not comfort him. For 10 years, they were his constant companions, and Berkeley, his best friend...now suddenly, achingly wrenched from him too...) to be cared for at Kellum Funeral Home in Virginia Beach, and interrment in Garden of the Pines Pet Cemetery. I thank P.E.T.A. from the depths of me for this dignity they gave back to my little ones, and the comfort to me that I can go back, even though there is still no marker at their resting place, where they lie all together in one little casket, having been so close and loving in life...and I can remember them there, with what is left of them to me. For us, the losses of Captain, Berkeley, Timorie, Monstrous, Sweet Jane...all make me (and I can tell, Kipling too)...so much more appreciative now of the blessings I now have in my life. Please... Meet these sparkling little blessings on the next two pages... *smiles now softly through the tears...watching the new, precious little felines now in my life, so close to my heart, now happily interacting, bringing such love and light back into my life. (Just click on the graphic and it will take you to Paypal, to our little Outer Bohemia account just set up (me) and the Five Angels Arson Fallout Relief fund, should you choose to or be able to help even a little. Please dont feel badly if you cannot. Prayers to your higher power & positive thoughts will also be very deeply appreciated and needed.)