After a storm, new life

First and foremost, thank you for the birthday wishes! 29 is turning out to be pretty great so far.

In other news, Hurricane Irene came through here and left Philly with a flooding river. Other than that, we got out unscathed. We bundled down in South Philly armed with delicious food, knitting, the humor of Louis C.K., and crosswords (for me).

On Sunday morning, Kasy and I rode up to the banks of the Schuylkill River to see the flooding. These were taken at 9:30am and the waters rose even higher later in the day. I know that we’re lucky to not have any damage to our persons or our home and my heart goes out to those who are still dealing with damage, major flooding, injury, and the sad loss of loved ones. While the storm may have seemed like hype to a lot of people (myself included, as I pshawed the warnings expecting nothing more than the rain we did receive) it really did reek havoc in many communities and we are lucky it did not cause more damage and sadness than it did.

As parts of the city are still recuperating, we continued on with our home renovations today. I had scheduled some debris haulers to come in and remove demolition waste from the tear down of the back room (where the kitchen used to be). We’re going to be building a pretty excellent back porch in its place. Our trusty haulers came out and upon removing the ply-wood board we had covering the crumbling Sheetrock pile, they discovered a newborn kitten snuggled into the pile of debris. Now, I’ve had animals in my life every since I was a wee one, but this is by far the scariest, tiniest, animal I’ve ever had to handle. I was a nervous wreck. Luckily, I know some great people who are excellent foster parents for the strays and surrenders in our city, and I called one of them immediately after putting the kitten in a box with towels. My friend awesomely handled finding someone to come and pick up the wee kitty, have it checked out at PAWS and passed on to a wonderful foster parent who is well versed in bottle-feeding. It was a stressful few hours, friends, as this tiny life was in my hands and I felt helpless and worried.

I’m hopeful that this little hurricane babe survives, even though it was found relatively abandoned with eyes and ears closed and cord still attached. It is a cutie and deserves a lovely cat life, not on the mean streets of stray-cat-ville South Philly. It was also an interesting reminder at how tiny life can be and how tenuous it can be, and how scary change and the world can seem.