Five Fire Cats

That's how many died in the fire, which is already ten months ago.

On the day of the fire, we adopted TinTin, who was scheduled to be destroyed that day.
Last January, I stopped to help a cat that had been hit by a car. He didn't make it. His head was crushed, his eye knocked out. He was still breathing when I took him, wrapped in a yellow baby blanket, to our vet. I ran a red light. I petted him as I drove, willing him to be a miracle cat. I lifted the cat from the car, the blanket over his head so I didn't have to look (doing the right thing doesn't mean you have to look), and his eye fell across my arm as I took him in. I was already crying, and that made me scream through my teeth.

I sat in the exam room and cried when the vet came back with the bloody yellow blanket. Cried is not really the word.  Howled  is more like it.  Loud, I can't even care what anyone thinks, wailing. Tears still running off my chin, I paid the Good Samaritan fee for that poor bastard cat's cremation and left.
I drove home,  errands eighty-sixed, napkins mashed down on the red on the seat, my new notebook tossed to the back floor so I didn't have to look at the blood. I felt I was sliding into an obligation, a curse in a way, to save five cats. I thought this because I had closed the front door on my house when we ran from the fire, out of a habit to keep Boy inside. I trapped the pets, and they perished. I know I had no time to get them. I know even getting my glasses was the difference between living and dying.
I know.
But I have been haunted by the possibilities. What if I had at least left the door open? At least called the dogs? At least grabbed the rats' cage? Anything at all to have made Summer's fifth-grade fire safety poster, the one with a comic strip about fleeing a fire with cats, rats and dogs safe in her arms and following at her heels,  true. Anything even a little bit, one-pet true.

There has been something missing from the fire story, an ending. Getting home wasn't it. Re-opening my studio wasn't it. I know life is a endless, unscrolling play, but parts of it complete and others start. Something was still open and unfinished about the fire, and I didn't know what.
Just thirty minutes ago, I had that sliding feeling again. That understanding that something had slid and clicked, like the day the stray cat didn't make it.
Yesterday, I went into a store I'll never go into again, looking for something I thought I didn't get. But I got it.

Three more cats. Two and three makes...five. Five cats.

Slide. Click. End.