It never ceases to amaze me the amount of non-support and discrimination against cats and people who care about them in this area. I could make everyone of you weep if I shared with you some of the stories these cats will carry in their lives due to abuse, neglect or hatred of the species. But the discrimination doesn’t end there- it flows over to the people who give a damn about these stray and feral cats and ty to do something about the issue. All of my neighbors save one dislikes cats. We have had our cat enclosure broke into and the cat litter and cat food dumped on the ground mixed together. We had beds slashed, litter boxes upended as one demented person whose cats we rescued and rehomed miles away “searched for his precious cats”  seized after a meth raid. We have had fireworks intentionally thrown on our driveway, at the cat enclosure- we’ve had cats systematically killed and laid out on our lawn as a message to us. I don’t get it? We don’t hurt anyone, we just wish to coexist and allow these cats to have a life here without prejudice or future abuse.

Yesterday, they lifted the burn ban and in the afternoon when I got home after picking up only two bags of food- I started the pile. You could burn till 4:30 so at 3:00 I went out and started putting water on the pile. The pile was bigger than normal due to the tear down of some of the buildings as we remodeled. Our maintenance man who is no longer here was supposed to have burned down the pile to a manageable state, but again, he is no longer allowed to come here. Long Story- at any rate, I put 4 hours of water on the pile and it still wouldn’t go out. I asked Mike if I should call the fire department and he said no, it would burn out. But I knew I wasn’t going to sleep much last night because I would watch it and douse it when it flared up again. It took forever to get going and now it wasn’t going out.

At 10:30 our house was lit up by a Christmas tree- and the fire marshall is banging on my door.There’s a fire truck in the front driveway and I hustled into clothes and showed them the fire and told them all I had done to try and put it out. One of my cat-hating neighbors called them and even they said the fire posed no danger in spreading- but I asked them to please just put it out. Too many fires to take a chance- and again, it was a bigger than normal pile. So they did. They said I wasn’t in trouble but I was sobbing while they were talking to me. There is no way anyone on the road saw this fire the fence obstructed the view as well as outbuildings. It was a neighbor and sadly, I know who it was without even being told. And ironically, I have clashed with him in the past for burning all the time, even during burn bans. I never reported him but that didn’t matter- after all I am a crazy cat lady and I need to be “watched” or that’s what his wife said to me once during an encounter we had years ago.

So this morning, I wake up feeling embarrassed and foolish and relieved that no fines were issued. One of the firemen said when the call came in, they just kind of looked at each other and went “really?” But they came anyway engine in tow.

I told my friend when she called worried that she went past the house and saw all the emergency vehicles and the house lit like the fourth of July that maybe I should just put up my hands and surrender already? But in the next instance, the word that came out of both of our mouths simultaneously was “Never!” Which made both of us laugh and that finally dried my tears.