Operation New Dawn

Everyone secretly strives for perfection. Life is however, messy and although one likes to start things on the first of the year, the first of the month or the first of the week, they start when we get to them. So it is February 3, 2012, nothing perfect about that, it is not even the first day of the rescue, but it is the first day I have had a moment when cats weren’t the priority. It was actually December 17th when this began, I learned of the death of a volunteer’s friend, who left behind some 30 cats and 5 dogs. Springing into action I suggested that I photograph the cats, as that was my specialty at the shelter. The next day I went to the house which held all of the sad residents. It is a house that exists in any town on any block. The house we ignore; the people who worry us for a while and then become part of the landscape. The one with the animals who look sadly out behind torn curtains. The one we train ourselves to look away from. I was not invited inside, so I suggested that she carry out the youngest ones, and that’s where I met the Bells. I named them the Bells for the season: Sleigh Belle, Silver Belle and Jingle Bell, the silver male who is in the next room. There were others to come, who are as important, who have their own stories. There were others I knew, I might never meet, who are dying perhaps as I write. This is the start of the rescue, not the first day as that would be perfect, but the part when I started to write about it. Maybe it is because last night, I brought the first one to the vet who had to be put to sleep. What a strange euphemism. It sounds so peaceful. It sounds almost alluring, for someone like myself who rarely gets enough sleep. It cloaks what the act really is: the taking of a life.