Cody’s blog

So, I have had an exciting past couple of days. When last I wrote, I mentioned that there appeared to be a big fire down around Rosamond. Turns out it was actually just over the hill from us. Mom and I went into town Monday afternoon for lunch and a bit of shopping, and when we got back, we weren’t home for more than an hour when my neighbor stopped in my driveway to say that we were evacuating, and Mom and I should leave. So I called Mom to tell her to pack up her stuff, and I started throwing things together and packing up the cats, and we headed over to my brother’s place for the night.

It’s very odd, packing for an evacuation. There’s time… but not a whole lot of time. Worry distracts you from remembering everything you might need. Plus, you have no idea what you’re really packing for. An overnight in town? Three days? A week? Forever? Will what you’re packing today be everything you own a few days from now?

You need a change of clothes or two, of course. Toiletries. The cats and their supplies—food and water dishes, litter boxes. Unfortunately, the fish are on their own—I have never been able to figure out a reasonable way to evacuate fish. When I had my big fishies, I used to think I’d take them with me, no matter what. I had visions of filling the 75-gallon tank in the back of the truck, taking along the pump and filter, and setting it up somewhere. Not really realistic. Now that Fred and Bitsy are gone, I don’t fool myself any more. I love my little fishies, and take care of them the best I can, but I don’t love them the way I loved the big fishies. Which is probably just as well, although it makes me kind of sad.

Anyway, after the basic necessities, you also want to grab a few valuables. Me, I bring my laptop, iPod, camera, cell phone, and associated AC adapters and accessories. I still have them all packed up in a backpack, in case the wind changes and we have to head out again. My checkbook and credit cards. A few books.

I look around and think, okay, what would be easy to carry and nice to have if I lose everything else? It’s hard… I have a lot of stuff. But I can’t say that there’s really much I would feel too bad about losing. At least, no one thing that means more to me than all the other piles of things. Money-wise, I’d sure hate to lose the generator and power tools, but I can’t pack up all that stuff and take it with me.

The only really important thing is to make sure Mom and the cats are safe. Everything else must be left to fate, I suppose. It would be nice to have some fire insurance, but I tried to get insurance before and no one would insure me. Because my house is smack in the middle of one of the worst areas of fire danger. Oh well.

So we spent the night at my brother’s. Mom stopped on the way to pick up pizzas, and we sat out on the porch eating pizza and drinking lemonade and it was really quite pleasant. They have some old rabbit hutches out back that they’ve fixed up for the mom cats when they have kittens, so the floors are partly covered with carpets, and I put my three kitties in them. Socks and Jerry shared the big one, and Spot had one of the smaller ones to himself. So they were safe and protected, and I didn’t have to worry about them getting lost or hiding where I couldn’t find them or getting into fights with the other cats and dogs. They weren’t at all happy about it, but they were safe. Socks stayed in her box the whole time (I only have two carriers, so I put Socks in a cardboard box with some little window-holes cut into the sides). Spot ended up sleeping in his litter box—most likely because it was the only thing in the hutch that was familiar to him. Poor guys.

Mom and I slept in the living room, I on the couch and Mom in a rollaway. It was comfortable enough, but between the dogs barking and the clock chiming the hour, I woke up a lot and didn’t get a full night’s sleep. We got up around 6 am and had coffee with John and Jill. It was really very pleasant to get up in the morning and hang out with them. If not for worry about the fire, it would have been a lovely little vacation. I told them I’d borrowed their dog on the Internet, and showed Jill the Dogster page I’d made for Mrs. Beasley. She thought it was pretty good.

Around 8 am, I called the Fire Department to see if they had any news on whether it would be safe to go home. They didn’t really know, but said no evacuation had been officially called for our area. I guess it was our property owners’ association that decided we should evacuate.  Mom and I drove back in her car to check things out. The smoke had gone down considerably, and we could only see a few white plumes behind the hills, so we decided to come home.

I got myself and the kitties home just in time to take a quick shower and head to work, so I didn’t have time to write yesterday. I posted a quick update in my lj and that was it.

Work was the usual Tuesday, busy and full. Along with the usual, I was called upon to catch a lizard that had somehow gotten into the ceiling and was hanging out on top of one of the light panels. I used a ladder to get up to the panel, opened it up and caught the lizard in a towel. I think it must have been pretty weak—Carol said it had been there for a week already—so it wasn’t too hard to catch. Carol and Kris took it out back to turn it loose, while I reattached the panel and put the ladder away. So now I am the official lizard catcher at work. Heh.

Mom came over last night and made dinner for us. I spent the rest of the evening getting ready to evacuate again, if necessary, cleaning up Spot’s carrier and washing his blanket, and getting the suitcase and backpack half-packed so that throwing them together will be short work.

I plan to stop at Kmart after work to get a third carrier, so nobody will have to evacuate in a box. And then we just wait. As of 6:45 pm last night, the fire was 50% contained, and the wind was pushing it east, so we’re okay for now.

For today, since I didn’t post yesterday, here are two pictures. First, a photo I took on Monday just before we evacuated, of one of the helicopters flying overhead, taking water to the fire. The sky behind it is dark with smoke. I posted this one in my lj yesterday.

And here’s one of poor Mr. Spot, huddled in his litter box, with a “Why U Do This?” look on his face.