Homer's Odyssey

20 • September 12, 2001

I took a wallet full of provisions with me, for my mind misgave me that I might have to deal with some who would be of great strength, and would respect neither right nor law.

—HOMER, The Odyssey

I SHOULD HAVE AWAKENED THE NEXT MORNING WITH A VICIOUS HANGOVER, but I didn’t. In fact, I had never felt so clearheaded and single-minded of purpose in my life. It was as if my mind had spent its unconscious hours solving problems for me, so that by the time I woke up the process had resolved itself, and all that was left was the series of steps I would undertake.

A quick check with the news revealed several things. The first was that Lower Manhattan was still shut down, still barricaded, and still restricted to military and rescue personnel. The roads below 14th Street were closed to vehicular traffic, and the subways and buses weren’t running down there—although the rest of the trains and buses in and around the city were essentially on schedule.

This meant my best shot at getting in would be on foot. I fired up Sharon’s computer, consulted an online subway map, and plotted three separate routes that would get me as close to the sealed-off perimeter as public transportation would allow.

The news also informed me that there was no electricity or running water in Lower Manhattan. So if I did get to my cats, it would probably make sense for me to remove them from the apartment even if my building was intact. The four of us couldn’t live indefinitely in an apartment that had no water and was accessible only by climbing thirty-one flights of stairs. I decided to call my friend Scott to see if he could put us up for a few days. Scott had recently moved from Miami to Philadelphia—only an hour and change by train outside of New York—where he lived alone in a three-bedroom town house. He was the kind of friend you went to in a crisis, and was also the only person I knew who had the space to accommodate all four of us. I wrote down Scott’s name on the piece of paper with my subway routes, and next to his name I wrote litter/litter box/cat food, a reminder to myself that I should ask him to purchase these things ahead of our arrival. I would reimburse him when we got there.

Of course, it was possible that Scott wouldn’t be able to receive us, at least not for a couple of days. Or maybe electricity would be restored, and it wouldn’t be logical to take the cats all the way to Philly. In that case, I would need supplies—supplies I couldn’t assume I would be able to get in my own neighborhood if the shops were all closed. I found a separate piece of paper and filled it with a list of the things I would need to buy. I also made a note to pull as much cash as I could out of an ATM. Cash, I had found, was always a good contingency plan in a crisis.

My last note to myself was to call the appropriate city and state agencies to see if anybody was organizing a rescue effort for pets trapped near what every news outlet was now calling Ground Zero. There was an emergency information phone number that flashed on the bottom of the TV screen, but after several calls all I got was a busy signal. It was probably better that way, I told myself. Let the government agencies attend to people. I would take care of my cats.

Sharon was still asleep when I poked my head in to check on her. I scrawled a note and propped it up on her bathroom mirror to let her know where I was going. Then I pulled on my filthy clothes of the day before, grabbed her keys and my purse, and headed out.

The day was as clear and beautiful as the previous one had been. I expected my muscles to be stiff from all the walking I’d done yesterday, but they moved smoothly and eagerly in time with my thoughts—as if they, too, had been awaiting only daylight and consciousness to begin turning plan into action. I walked a few blocks up what appeared to be Bay Ridge’s main thoroughfare until I came upon a large drugstore. There I purchased a cheap pair of jeans, two large T-shirts, underwear, a sturdy pair of inexpensive sneakers, socks, a toothbrush, deodorant, and soap. I also bought two gallons of water, a box of kitty litter, a large bag of off-brand cat food (Vashti might just have to be itchy from allergies for a few days), a flashlight and batteries, and the biggest backpack they had.

It was a job of work getting my haul back to Sharon’s apartment, but I was so pleased with myself that I hardly noticed. Embarking on the earliest components of my plan put me one step closer to my cats. I felt as if they were half rescued already.

• • •

THE R TRAIN out of Bay Ridge was crowded that morning, but not unbearably so. Probably, I thought, a lot of people who worked in the city were off for the day. I hadn’t considered it, but I realized that my own office would, perforce, have to remain closed. What felt odder than having an unexpectedly free Wednesday, however, was the idea of people who weren’t taking the day off. It was impossible to imagine that in the same world that contained the smoking ruins of what had been the World Trade Center were people doing commonplace things like dressing for work, making coffee, or packing lunches for their children. Yesterday had felt disconnected and unreal. Today, it felt like something I had been born knowing would happen eventually, and it was the people going about normal, everyday things who were the ones living strange lives.

“You’re crazy,” Sharon had told me flatly when I unfolded my plan to her upon returning from the store. “Listen to the news—buildings are still collapsing down there.”

“All the more reason to go now,” I replied.

Sharon went on at some length, insisting that people weren’t being allowed back in, that there was no way I’d get through. I was welcome to stay with her at least through Friday, she told me. She was itchy to get out of town—a lot of people were—and she and her mother were planning to go away for the weekend. But her spare bedroom was mine until then.

This should have been of some concern to me because, technically, I was homeless. As far as I knew, the things I’d purchased that morning might be the only possessions I had left in the world. But that was a long-term problem, the consideration of which could only make me emotional and distract me from the immediate business at hand. In the short term, I’d already put my friend Scott on alert and he was more than willing to welcome me and my three cats if, upon reaching my apartment, I decided it was necessary to remove them. Today was only Wednesday, and by Friday I would be long gone from Sharon’s apartment.

Sharon had insisted that I take her spare keys with me anyway, in case I returned that afternoon and she was out. “Once I get to my cats, I probably won’t come back here,” I warned.

Sharon shrugged. “Then you’ll give the keys back next week at the office.”

My backpack rested on the floor of the train at my feet, next to a shopping bag that contained the items I hadn’t been able to fit into it. Everything together probably weighed about twenty pounds, but wasn’t so bad to carry when most of the weight was distributed on my back.

The R train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge on its route back into the city, surfacing so quickly from subterranean darkness into sunlight that the change was startling. It was like a rewind of the walk I’d made yesterday. A wall of smoke rose from the ground to the south of the Brooklyn Bridge, and even on the train and at this distance, I could smell it. I turned away from the window.

The train deposited me at 14th Street. I had never thought of Manhattan as being a place with a particular, universal smell until the only smell of it—at least for me, there at the border of downtown—was the singed smell of the rubble at Ground Zero. I thought of Homer, of Homer’s sensitive nose and his hyper-acute hearing. What must it smell and sound like to him, so much closer than I was to where fires still burned and buildings continued to collapse? Somehow it seemed as if Vashti and Scarlett, who could see out of the windows of our apartment, would be less frightened. At least they would be able to connect something visually to what they smelled and heard—surely, it would be less terrifying for them.

Or would it? I understood so much more than they did, and even I couldn’t make sense of it all.

Stop it, I told myself. This isn’t helpful.

The intersections of 14th Street were barricaded to keep vehicles from passing, but a handful of people crossed the barriers either on foot or mounted on bicycles. I had thought earlier how odd it was that the world that held the rubble of Ground Zero could also contain normal people going about normal lives. Now I realized that there were actually two worlds: the one on the northern side of the barricades, where people sipped coffee outdoors at trendy cafés, and cars and cabs propelled themselves impatiently toward shops or office buildings—and the world on the other side of the barricade, devoid of cars and navigated only by a handful of persistent pedestrians. Tightening my grip on my backpack and shopping bag, I joined them.

I walked south and east, zigzagging through the streets, the plume of smoke that had once been the World Trade Center serving as my compass. Businesses were closed and deserted, their windows papered over with the flyers and posters that had materialized overnight. Have you seen our son? the signs implored. We don’t know where our daughter is. She works in the World Trade Center. Smiling faces looked at me from the flyers, grinning beneath graduation caps or beaming from the safety of honeymoons and family fishing trips. Do you know my husband? Have you heard from my sister? If you know anything, please call … please call … please call … It was a journey through the underworld, the shades of the dead clamoring all around me.

I made it to Canal Street before I was stopped by military personnel guarding the impromptu checkpoint I would have to pass if I was to continue. The young men in army fatigues with machine guns strapped across their chests were polite, and vaguely sympathetic, and called me “ma’am,” but they were completely unwilling to let me pass.

“This entire area’s locked down, ma’am,” they told me. “We can’t let anybody through.”

“But I live there,” I pleaded, “and my cats are—”

“Sorry, ma’am,” they said firmly. “We can’t let anybody in.”

A flatbed truck carrying men and women with cameras was waved through. “But you’re letting those people in,” I argued.

“They’re journalists, ma’am.”

Recognizing a lost cause when I saw one, I headed east across Canal Street. When I reached the next checkpoint, I tried once again.

“I’m a journalist,” I said, without hesitation.

The young men guarding this barricade looked at me with polite skepticism, their gazes taking in my jeans, backpack, and sweat-streaked face. “May we see your press credentials, ma’am?”

“Um …” My smile faltered. “Well, you know, it’s buried in my backpack and I …”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I was once again told. “We can’t let anybody through.”

“But—”

Their expressions were unyielding. “Please step away from the barricade, ma’am.”

I continued onward, hoping that I might find some back street, some tiny alley that, in the haste and confusion, had been overlooked and left unbarricaded—or, barring that, a sympathetic soldier. None was forthcoming. I’d had a hazy idea, when I’d pulled cash out of the ATM that morning, that I would be willing to bribe people if I had to. But when it came down to it, I was too intimidated to make the attempt. Nor did I really want to know if any of the soldiers could be bribed. It would have been unsettling to learn that the people now protecting us were subject to petty corruptions.

It’s okay, I told myself. You left the cats enough food and water to last at least through today, and by tomorrow morning you’ll be able to get back in.

I pushed the thought of broken windows firmly from my mind. I had spent the morning walking among the images of the dead, but my cats were still alive. If they weren’t, wouldn’t I have known? They were alive, and they were fine, and my plan was a good one that would reunite me with them tomorrow. They would be fine until tomorrow.

I RETURNED TO Sharon’s apartment disappointed, but not yet despondent. This was only a minor setback. I told myself that it still made sense to try to reach somebody at my building, and even if nobody was there, I’d certainly be able to get back in the next day.

“Try the ASPCA or PETA,” Andrea suggested when I called her that afternoon to check in. “I’m sure they’re coordinating rescue efforts for pets.”

I was angry at myself for not having thought of this before Andrea did. As a Miami native, hadn’t I lived through enough hurricanes to know that there were always animal rescue organizations that helped reunite owners with their pets in the wake of a disaster?

I called the ASPCA, and somebody answered on the first ring! Hope continued to mount when I explained my situation, and the woman on the other end said, “Yes. We’re working with local authorities to help reunite people with their pets. Give me your information and I’ll have someone call you back.”

“My name is Gwen Cooper,” I began, “and I—”

“Wait, you’re Gwen Cooper?” the woman interrupted. “Gwen Cooper from John Street?”

In fact, I was Gwen Cooper from John Street. But how could this woman know that? Unless, I thought, there had been some further catastrophe, some additional disaster that had only affected my building, and maybe they had a list of tenants who they’d have to break the news to and—

“Your pet-sitter—Garrett?—has been calling us all morning. He doesn’t know if you’re alive or dead, and he’s frantic. He told us to have you call him if you called us. He says that your contract with him gives him access to your apartment in the event of an emergency, and he’ll show it to the people in your building in case they won’t let him in. He has food, water, and litter, and he’s going to try to ride his bicycle in. He said, Tell her I’m not leaving my buddy down there.”

The potted plant resting in front of Sharon’s phone twinned and blurred. Always, always, people were willing to go above and beyond for Homer. My cats had always been a reminder to me of the capacity for human goodness in the world; each of them was alive because someone else had done a kind and charitable thing for something small and helpless—down to the burly mechanic I’d had all those years ago in Miami, or my mother who, on paper, didn’t even like cats in the first place.

“I’ll call him,” I told the woman at the ASPCA. “And thank you for giving me the message.”

I had to collect myself for a minute before I could call Garrett, my gratitude tumbling out in a confused jumble of sentences that only somebody as patient as he was could have unraveled. I wanted to convey something of what I felt—of what it meant to realize that my cats and I had been remembered, were being thought of by someone who I hadn’t thought about since the terror of the day before.

“Of course,” Garrett murmured, whenever I paused for breath. “Of course. I know, believe me, I understand … I’ll do everything I can … I’ll call you if I manage to get in …”

Garrett wasn’t the only one who was thinking of Homer and me. When I checked the voice mail of my home machine, it was full. It seemed as if everybody who’d ever known us wanted to know if we were okay: old boyfriends from Miami, the friends I’d made since I moved to New York. “What’s our plan to get your cats?” they would ask. “I have a bicycle … I know a rescue worker … I know somebody at the mayor’s office … I can send you money … will money help? What can be done, what can we do? Homer’s my buddy, my boy. We’ll get him. We’ll get him, Gwen, you’ll see …”

It was still only the first day, and hope was everywhere. Somebody would get to the cats. We would be fine.

THE NEXT MORNING was a retread of the morning before. Once again, I tried to get into the Financial District. Once again, I was turned away. I knew of at least three different people attempting to get to Homer, Vashti, and Scarlett on foot or on bicycle, but it seemed unlikely that anybody else would be successful where I had failed.

I calculated that the food I’d left for the cats Tuesday morning would last about a day and a half. That meant that, probably right around now, their food was running out. What concerned me more, though, was water. The air in New York was far drier than it had been in Miami, and no matter how much I filled the water bowl, it would completely evaporate within twenty-four hours. I’d heard that humans couldn’t live more than two or three days without water, but I didn’t know how long a cat could go.

“Well, they can always drink from the toilet if they have to, right?” Andrea said.

“No.” I was anguished. “I keep the toilet lid closed so Homer won’t fall in.” I mentally vowed that I would always leave the toilet lid open from then on.

Thursday was the first day, since September 11 itself, when I felt true panic. I was worried for the cats’ survival, but I also found the thought of what they must be going through unendurable. They had never been left alone for so long without anybody’s checking in on them—they had never gone so long without food or a change of their water. The litter box hadn’t been cleaned since Monday night and must, I was sure, be an abomination by now. They wouldn’t understand—they would think I had abandoned them to hunger and thirst, and the horrible sounds and smells coming from Ground Zero.

I don’t know what my state of mind would have been if I hadn’t gotten the call, late Thursday afternoon, from the ASPCA. The area had finally been deemed stable enough to allow residents with pets back in just long enough the following day to collect their pets. “President Bush is going to speak from Ground Zero tomorrow,” the woman from the ASPCA warned. “So you’ll need photo ID proving you live in the area.”

I still had my Miami driver’s license, which I hadn’t bothered to change since moving to New York. I didn’t drive a car anymore, and the license hadn’t yet expired, so it functioned just fine for normal ID purposes. Trading it in for a New York license had seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else. But I did have a checkbook in my purse with my name and New York address listed on it, and I hoped that the two together would provide sufficient evidence that I was who I said I was and lived where I said I lived. And going in with a group of ASPCA volunteers would undoubtedly help. Maybe I could avoid an ID check altogether.

Sharon left town on Friday morning. I handed her the spare keys and tried, in the fierceness of the hug I gave her, to convey my gratitude for these last few days. “Good luck,” she said into my shoulder. “Call me when you’ve got them.”

I phoned Scott and told him to expect the four of us—definitely, for sure—that night. My situation had all the pristine clarity of a syllogism. I would have to leave New York that night, because I had no place to stay. But I wasn’t going to leave New York without my cats. Therefore, I would get my cats that day.

No matter what.

THE WOMAN WHO called from the ASPCA had directed me to an airplane-hangar-sized space at Chelsea Piers. Chelsea Piers was a huge entertainment/all-purpose complex on the West Side Highway. It featured bars, restaurants, an ice-skating rink, a bowling alley, batting cages, and several facilities large enough to host trade shows. In the last few days, it had been utilized as an overflow hospital for survivors and rescue workers injured at Ground Zero. The ice-skating rink had been appropriated as a makeshift morgue.

Before going to Chelsea Piers, I had made one last effort to reach my cats on my own. I’d made it as far as the City Hall terminus of the 6 train, mere blocks from my apartment. Upon reaching the top of the station stairs, however, I had been stopped by soldiers asking for my photo ID. I tried showing them my Florida driver’s license in tandem with my checkbook, but had been unable to convince them to let me through. Reluctantly, I’d boarded the train once again and headed back uptown.

I found the ASPCA’s area easily enough once I reached Chelsea Piers, and signed in with my name and address at a desk in the front of the room. They had divided Lower Manhattan into zones, and would bring in groups of people divided by their specific locations. The weather had turned gray and sharply cold that morning; all my own heavier clothes were in my apartment along with my cats. The woman who took my name and address, noticing that I shivered in my thin T-shirt, directed me to another enormous room, filled with boxes of donated clothing. I selected an over-large flannel shirt and buttoned it over my T-shirt and jeans, topping it with a sturdy windbreaker. Nothing fit quite right, but at least it would keep me warm.

I returned to the waiting room and seated myself in a plastic chair, settling my backpack and shopping bag on the ground beside me. There were scores of other pet owners there, trading stories and rumors in grim, hushed voices. One man said he knew a guy who’d made it all the way to the front door of his building, only to find that the doormen had left and locked the main door to the building behind them. The man didn’t have a key to that front door—and who did, when you lived in a doorman building? He’d made it all that way and, in the end, hadn’t been able to get into his building after all.

I lived in a doorman building. With all the careful planning and foresight I’d attempted to employ, it had never occurred to me that, upon reaching my building, I might not be able to get through the front door. The anxiety already churning in my stomach increased threefold.

All of us were nervous; we didn’t know if we’d make it to our homes, or what we’d find once we got there. We distracted ourselves as best we could, trading photos of our pets and sharing anecdotes of their courage or cowardice, their likes and dislikes, the quirks that made them real and individual to us. “This is Gus, and this is Sophie,” one woman said, showing me a snapshot of two Border collie mixes. “Our kids are just crazy about them.” Her fond smile wobbled. “They’ve never been alone this long. I don’t know what our kids will do if they’re not okay.”

“Of course they will be,” I assured her. “Of course they’ll be fine.”

I showed her pictures of my own brood. Like most people, she marveled at Vashti’s beauty and laughed at tales of Scarlett’s sulky hauteur. “Poor thing,” she said pityingly when she came to Homer’s photo. “Poor little thing. He must be terrified.”

“He’s the toughest little guy you’ve ever seen,” I told her. “He once chased a burglar right out of my apartment.” I related the story of the break-in, and noticed that my audience was growing. “Pets can adapt to so much more than we give them credit for. This’ll be nothing for him.” People around me nodded, and I prayed as I said it that I was right.

The hours rolled by in pet-owner purgatory. From time to time, one of the women or men with the ASPCA would stand in the front of the room to announce that they were heading in to a specific set of blocks, and a small band of pet owners would excitedly move forward, driver’s licenses held at the ready. Sometimes, they would make announcements like, “Anybody we bring to a building, who goes into their building and comes out without a pet, will be taken straight to jail.” Apparently, some people were down there pretending they had pets so that the ASPCA could help them return to their apartments to retrieve laptop computers or business documents. “This is no joke, folks. We have police officers going in with us, and if you come out of your building without a pet you will go immediately to jail.”

After two hours, I was antsy beyond endurance. I was losing confidence that they would be able to smuggle me past the checkpoints without proper ID. The crowd in the room should have been thinning out, but it didn’t seem like it was. I couldn’t detect a pattern in the zones they were calling—if they were moving from north to south or east to west. All I knew was that they hadn’t called mine. The next zone they call will be mine, I kept telling myself. The next one will be me. Another hour passed, however, and it never was. Finally, unable to wait any longer and deciding that I might actually be better off on my own since I didn’t have New York ID, I decided there was nothing for me to do but try to go in myself.

I walked east from Chelsea Piers until I reached Seventh Avenue, then turned south. My backpack was on my back, and I clutched the large shopping bag containing the items too large to fit into the backpack. After three days of handling, the bag was coming apart, and I had to hold it in both arms to keep everything in place. I kept going until Seventh Avenue intersected with Houston Street and became Varick Street. There was a barricaded checkpoint guarded by three police officers—two young men, and one who looked a bit older. It was the first checkpoint I’d encountered that wasn’t monitored by military personnel, and I took this as a positive sign.

“ID, please,” the older officer said. I pulled out my Florida driver’s license along with the checkbook that bore my Manhattan address. The cop put them together and regarded them doubtfully. “We’re not supposed to let anybody in without ID.”

“Please,” I said desperately. “I just moved here—that’s why I don’t have a New York license yet. You can search me. You can strip-search me. You can truss me up like Hannibal Lecter and roll me in on a dolly. I just want to get back to my cats. Please, sir, please, please let me in.”

The three of them looked at each other. They were cops, not soldiers—and, unlike the soldiers, they were from here. This was their city. I was somebody in that city who needed help. They could tell at a glance, with all the instincts of a cop, that I wasn’t a threat.

Still, orders were orders.

“Please,” I said again. “They haven’t had food or water in days. They’ll die if I can’t get back to them. They’ll die without me. Please, sir—I promise I won’t hurt anybody. I just want to get to my cats. Please help me. All I need is someone to help me. I’ve been trying to get back to them for days and days. Please, sir, please help me—please let me in!”

I had been prepared, as circumstances dictated, to fake-cry as a way of gaining sympathy. There was nothing I wouldn’t stoop to at this point. But now I found, to my complete humiliation, that my crying wasn’t fake. I was sobbing—huge, racking, genuine sobs that took all the air from my body and doubled me over. I buried my face in the shopping bag I clutched, I dragged my sleeve across my face to clear my eyes, but the tears kept coming. My cats would die because I hadn’t changed my driver’s license. They would die over a driver’s license. It seemed like such a stupid, impossible thing, yet here was the reality of it.

The three cops stood there, looking at me a bit uncomfortably, until I had cried myself out. Finally, one of the younger ones spoke. There was a slight trace of a Hispanic accent in his voice as he said, “My wife is pretty crazy about our cats. She’d probably kill me if we didn’t let the girl in.”

I looked up hopefully. Was it going to happen? Had I really and finally succeeded?

“Here are pictures of my cats,” I said, scrambling around in my purse for my photos. I struggled to hold them up along with the shopping bag cradled in my arms. “That’s Scarlett, and that’s Vashti,” I pointed to each in turn, “and that’s my youngest, Homer.”

The three of them squinted and looked where I pointed. “The little one’s interesting looking, isn’t he?” said the older policeman.

“He’s blind.” I was pulling out all the stops. “Anything could have happened—if a window broke, he wouldn’t know not to jump out of it, and I live all the way up on the thirty-first floor. And he must be so terrified—he can’t see what’s going on. Can you imagine what it must sound like down there, to such a little cat who’s blind?”

The older police officer heaved a deep sigh. “All right,” he said. He stepped away slightly from the opening between two barricades and waved me through. “Go on.”

“Oh, thank you!” I clutched his hand, pressing it between both of my own. “Thank you! Thank you!” I pivoted blindly to each of the three police officers and thanked them in turn. Then I readjusted the weight of my backpack and shopping bag, wiped the last of the tears from my cheeks, and stepped past the barricades.

“Vaya con dios,” the younger officer said as I passed. Go with God.

I stuck mainly to back streets as I made my way from the West Village down to the Financial District. I was afraid that if I used the main thoroughfares, I might encounter another checkpoint, somebody else demanding ID before allowing me to continue on my way.

It was something I needn’t have worried about. I walked for more than three miles, and that entire time I didn’t see or hear another living soul—not a car, not a person, not a bird in a tree. It felt eerie, almost post-apocalyptic, as if I were the only living human left in Manhattan. I had never seen or even heard of a completely deserted New York City street. No matter how late the hour or how quiet a neighborhood, there was always something or someone else—a woman walking a dog, a man delivering produce to a twenty-four-hour grocery story, lights in windows. You were never so far from a major thoroughfare as to be unable to hear cars whizzing by like comets in the distance.

But now there was nothing but silence. Smoke and silence.

The sky was still gray, and it seemed to grow grayer as I approached Ground Zero, the smoke intensifying until my throat stung and my eyes watered. My arms and back ached almost beyond my physical capacity to stand it. Once, I tripped over a crack in the pavement and dropped the shopping bag I carried. The sound of it hitting the ground rang out and echoed from the walls of buildings like cannon fire and I jumped, even though I knew where the sound had come from. The silence of the streets had felt unnatural until something broke it—and then the sound was even more out of place.

Ash had settled onto everything, and grew thicker the farther south I went. The green leaves of trees and bushes and the once festive awnings of boutiques and cafés were caked a uniform gray-white. Even the mannequins inside display windows were coated so thickly that they were indistinguishable from the clothes they modeled.

After an hour or so, I reached Ground Zero itself and rejoined the world of noise and other people. I could hear the groans of trucks and men, the metallic chatter of walkie-talkies and the barking of police dogs. I had seen pictures of the rubble on TV and in newspapers, but it had still been impossible to imagine how enormous the devastation was, the acres and acres of fallen, heaped-up metal and concrete. The thing was still belching smoke and occasional flames. Tiny specks of men, their faces black with soot and drenched in sweat, dotted the ruin as they looked for survivors.

I didn’t look at it for very long; it felt disrespectful, somehow. And there were other places I had to be.

My anxiety grew as I turned the corner onto the block where I lived. What if, like the man I’d heard about back at the ASPCA relief center, I’d come all this way only to find that my building was locked and empty? To my utter joy and relief, however, the front door of my building was open when I reached it—and there in the lobby were Tom, my doorman, and Kevin, my building super. I’d had countless interactions with each of them, of the semi-friendly/semi-professional variety, but now I was so happy to see them, I dropped my shopping bag and threw myself into their arms. “You’re here!” I cried as they each wrapped me in bear hugs. “I can’t believe you’re really here!”

“We never left,” Kevin said. I knew Kevin had an enormous family—something like eight kids and twelve dogs and Lord-alone-knew-how-many cats—all the way up in Queens. “If we’d left, we might not have been able to get back in.”

“You are so not wrong about that.” I couldn’t stop grinning.

“We still don’t have phones, electricity, or water,” Kevin said, “so I can’t recommend you stay here. We’re on the same power grid as the stock exchange, though, so we should be back up in a couple of days.”

“And the building itself?” My voice was anxious as I asked this question. “Were any windows …?”

Kevin’s face softened. He knew all about Homer—he was the one who had supervised the installation of the childproof guards on my windows that kept them from opening wide enough for a small, blind cat to wriggle his way through. “No broken windows,” he said gently. “Homer and your other cats should be fine.”

“We were just doing a sweep for pets,” Tom added, swinging his arm around to indicate the pet carriers of all sizes, each containing a dog or cat, scattered throughout the lobby. “People have been trickling back in to get them.”

“Well, I’m here now.” I reached into the side pocket of my backpack to pull out my flashlight. I flicked it on and off once, to make sure it was working. “Just point me in the direction of the stairwell.”

“Do you need any help?” Tom regarded me with concern. “That’s a lot of stuff you’re carrying.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “You guys worry about the other pets whose people haven’t gotten back yet.”

The stairwell of my apartment building was an interior one, windowless and entirely encased in concrete. Without any electricity, even from an emergency generator, it was completely black. The sole illumination came from the pale, round pool cast by my flashlight.

I was so eager to get back to my cats that I hated myself for having to stop and rest as I climbed up thirty-one floors. My arms, thighs, and back ached beneath the weight of the things I carried, and I was drenched in sweat. By the time I reached the thirteenth floor, I was panting so hard that I had to sit and catch my breath. My gasps echoed loudly in the cement stairwell as I unscrewed the cap of the small bottle of water Tom had pressed into my hand. I sipped from it sparingly; I didn’t want to drink too deeply and end up with a cramp that would slow me down further.

After a few minutes, I continued my ascent. I had to stop again to catch my breath at the twentieth floor and at the twenty-eighth floor. My legs were starting to shake by then, but I was only three floors away—there was no point in resting any further. When the sign that said 31 swam before my eyes, I almost wept for the second time that day—this time in gratitude.

My fingers had stiffened around the shopping bag, and I fumbled with my keys as I inserted them into the lock of the door to my apartment. I had expected the smell of smoke to hit me in the face when I opened the door, and so it did, but overwhelming even that was the putrid smell of the litter box that hadn’t been cleaned since Monday night. My heart tore. Poor things, I thought. Having to live with that all week!

I had been almost afraid to enter the apartment, unsure of what I might find. But a quick peek through the front door confirmed that everything was intact, unharmed, and exactly where I had left it Tuesday morning. The only difference was that there wasn’t so much as a crumb left in the cats’ food dish. The water bowl was dry as a bone.

Scarlett and Vashti were huddled together miserably on the bed, but their heads flew up as I entered. Homer was standing in front of the windows. His body was held with an alert, tense readiness, as if he’d been pacing before he’d heard the key hit the lock. His nose was in the air and his ears zipped around. Who is that? Who’s there?

I carefully set down my bag and backpack, not wanting to frighten them further with any loud or unnecessary noise. “Kitties,” I murmured hoarsely. “I’m here.”

Upon hearing my voice, Homer responded with a piercing Mew! He covered the distance between us in two bounds and leapt at me, hurling himself at the center of my chest with a force that almost knocked me down. I sank to the floor to prevent any mishaps, and Homer burrowed his head into my chest and shoulder as hard as he could.

“Homer-Bear!” I said. At the sound of his name, Homer rubbed his whole face vigorously against my cheeks and resumed his cries of Mew! Mew! Mew! Beneath them I heard rich, singsong purring, the way he’d purred as a kitten when he’d realized I would be there every morning when he woke up. “I’m so sorry, little boy,” I said. The tears Homer couldn’t see in my eyes were audible in my voice. “I’m so sorry it took me so long.”

Vashti approached almost shyly, as if she respected the intensity of Homer’s joy and didn’t want to intrude on it. She put her two front paws on my leg and squeaked tentatively, and I drew her into my arms as well. Only Scarlett remained aloof. She looked at me balefully through narrowed eyes, then turned her face away. Well, look who finally decided to show up. But even she relented after a moment. I guess you probably came back as soon as you could. She, too, crawled into my lap, for once not swatting impatiently at the other two as she jockeyed for position.

“I will never leave you alone this long again,” I told them. “I will never, never let anything bad happen to you, and I will never leave you alone this long again.” I pried Homer from my chest and held him in front of me, as if I wanted to be sure he understood what I was saying, even though he couldn’t—not really.

Yet I felt sure he knew. Somehow, he always did.

“I promise,” I said. “I promise you.”

The next morning, from Philadelphia, I mailed Garrett a check for the equivalent of a full week of pet-sitting. I mailed another check to the ASPCA.