The Kitten on The Wall in a Warzone

TW: animal cruelty.

There’s a tiny being screaming for her life in Kherson, Ukraine.

No bigger than palm-sized and clinging on for dear life to a damp crevice in a wall, a bright ginger kitten is seconds away from drowning in this darkening world.

Her owners had named her Isolde, but it wasn’t long before her nicknames boiled down to one rather apt and affectionate, “the mighty orange.”

Granted, her owners are long gone now.

When the flood arrived, Isolde found herself lost and alone, far from home, torn away from her siblings and atomically terrified.

All she could do was cry out. Shiver. Whimper. Call for her mama. Protract her claws and embed them into the nearest surface she could reach as the water rose and her toes froze and the narrow alley she found herself trapped in became more and more isolated and unidentifiable from the world she had previously known. She was exhausted. Confused. More afraid than a kitten should ever be.

“I don’t understand,” her little voice pleaded to nobody in particular, desperate to be heard. “What did I do wrong?”

Because cats don’t understand war, do they?

They don’t realise that they’re mere collateral damage to the stupidity of human nature. They don’t realise that they’ve been entirely overlooked and cast out into the aftermath, where only debris and destruction remains. They don’t realise that they don’t even matter to those terrible people, doing terrible things.

Cats don’t understand why they’ve been abandoned. They just think that it’s their fault.

Isolde’s arms tremble. Her lower half submerges deeper into the murky and bitter flood rising around her. The stone wall is as sodden as she is and she’s losing her grip. She’s that afraid, it’s hurting her. Even with nobody around, she still cries out. Tiny meows lost to the chaos of the war.

“Please,” she begs, her miniature frame already weak and weakening. She’s been clinging on for hours, perhaps days, by now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be bad, I didn’t. Please don’t leave me here. I’ll be better. P-p-please come back.”

How could they do this to her?

She shakes so hard now her entire body convulses in fear. Screams like raindrops pelting a window, inaudible within a monstrous storm, pleading for somebody to come save her.

And somebody does.

A stranger, a hero, a good person wades gently through waters that are waist-high over to the squeaking kitten. With delicate hands, she pries her from her death-grip edge and cradles her in her arms. The kitten is frozen. Quivering. Crying out louder than ever before. The woman can feel the littlest heartbeat pounding like her fear is trying to smash through her.

Isolde blinks up at the women, still terrified. She’s learned recently that not all people want to protect her. How can she distinguish one from the next?

“It’s okay, you mighty orange. I’m here now. You’re safe with me.”

And she is. Isolde learns this quickly. Safety introduces itself to her in the way of soft blankets and scratches behind the ear. As Isolde recovers, her body calming, warming, fear replaced with peaceful sleepiness, her eyes droop shut, no longer wide and alarmed and looking to a rough and jagged wall as a lifeline.

But when they close, she sees her owners. Her siblings. Her mama.

She sees orange. All the orange cats, equally as mighty yet somehow just unlucky, lost to a sea of sadness — until the world fades to black.

----

Thank you to @vet.crew on Instagram for doing what you did. Every life is worth fighting for, and you’re heroes for battling on their behalf. And to all the other creatures who weren’t as lucky — please know that you’re just as loved. Wherever you are, you always have a home with us.