Shaky Ground - Ana

Is the economic crisis having an impact on the SPCA? I count only four potential customers over my three hour shift, and only one of them needs help (she makes a quick selection of a shy orange kitten, assuring me her two kids will love him).

So extra time with the feline friends. As I write in the date on the volunteer log, it strikes me. October 17 – has it really been 19 years since Loma Prieta? So many things have changed since then (and I don’t just mean the Giants and As in the 1989 World Series). Like cell phones. They were new back then; a friend who lived in the East Bay and worked in the city told how one woman in a crowd gathered to catch a ferry (BART had stopped running and the power was out) passed hers around so that everybody else could call loved ones and say they were ok.

I figured things were not as bad as they first seemed by the time I made it home, also sans BART. Walking several miles from South of Market (back when that was a gritty area) to my flat near City College, I only saw modest damage. The plume of smoke from the Marina was worrying, but otherwise mostly people were hanging out on a hot night. And my cat Pepe greeted me at my door meowing indignantly for her delayed dinner. She was an unusually mellow cat, it’s true, but she didn’t seem to even have noticed the quake.

The threat of a really big one has been with us every day since. Now I keep a food and water supply, a solar powered radio and flashlight, the cat carrier handy near my door. But since around November ’89 I haven’t really worried much. I don’t want to live always scared, anticipating the next blow.

Which brings me to little Ana. Some bad stuff has happened to her, it’s obvious by the way she huddles in a nervous ball, how she flinches at a gentle hand coming toward her. She’s a pretty 5 year old brown tabby with big sorrowful eyes. She has a couple scarred areas on her sides, and her ears look a bit chewed up.

Her safe spot is at the top of her climbing structure. She won’t leave it, but lets me pet her there, mewing nervously during the first few strokes. Then she curls around one way and another, purring and kneading, never closing her eyes but looking up sideways, wary and needy both.

Poor girl. Yes, it can be a dangerous world for a little cat. Or for anyone living in the big city on the fault line. I’d like to get her to that point of not feeling nervous every waking minute though.