Today I’m heartbroken. Family friends have been in crisis so we’ve had a lovely guest here who needed someplace safe to stay. We’ve also had to collect and arrange to be surrendered to the RSPCA two families of cats that had been left without care. Rose, myself, and four other kind cat lovers spent a couple of hours in the rain catching half wild kittens and cats, and with a police escort rescuing two tiny, malnourished, sickly kittens from a house. We’ve just taken them all to the vet. We’d love to give them homes but our cat quota is full. (please don’t offer, they’ve been surrendered now and it’s all out of my hands) So we hope like hell that once they’ve been properly feed and cared for maybe they will be among the few lucky ones who find new homes, but we’re heartbreakingly aware this is unlikely. It was the right thing to do but so hard and so sad.

We got home at about 11pm, kissed our cats, and I took off my shoes and walked Zoe out on the grass of a nearby park, through rain and sprinklers and lightening. It’s raining here in South Australia. The bush fires are going out, at last. The night is beautiful, it smells of rain and grass and eucalyptus. Two families of cats who might be dead tomorrow are in my heart. Two families of cats who will no longer be hungry or sick, no longer have two or three litters of kittens a year, some of whom always die. No more fear, no more snatching food from neighbours bins, no more pain. They deserved so much more but it’s all I have to offer. I’m sorry.