Learning About 9-11

I was born on March 19, 2014 — many, many cat years after the events of September 11, 2001. That was even before my great-grandparents were born. The only cat here who was living with my human that day was Binga. Boodie was alive, but she was only four months old and had not yet been dumped at the veterinary clinic parking lot from which she was rescued. On 9-11, Binga was just a little over a year old — old enough to remember that day. So even though she often says bad words to me and tries to steal my food, I decided to ask her about it.

Binga does recall 9-11 very well. It started off like normal, with my human’s boyfriend going off to the job he had at the time, and my human waking up later, around 9 AM. At the time, she was living in the house she had before this one. In fact, she had just bought it, and escrow had closed only a few weeks earlier. She gave Binga and Harlot their second breakfast (her boyfriend always gave them a little something in the morning when he got up), and then went back upstairs to her office, which was in the second bedroom. We live on the West Coast, so everything had already happened, but my human didn’t know yet.

One thing you have to realize about my human: New York is her soul city, like Harlot was her soul cat. Although she has never actually lived there, every time she visits it, it feels like she has come home. In 2001, she hadn’t been to New York in about 6 years and she was a little homesick. So when she turned on the computer and saw something about the World Trade Center collapsing, she thought it was a joke because she couldn’t even comprehend that happening for real. She knew the World Trade Center well — she had been there for music conferences and had lots of fun memories. But when she logged into the employee and freelancer community area of About.com (she was their Yoga Guide at the time), she found out it really did happen. The About.com offices were in New York, so some of the people online there even witnessed it.

After getting everything she could out of the internet news, my human did something that apparently she never, ever does: she went into the living room and turned on the television. She switched from news station to news station, looking at all the footage and the interviews and the horror, and watched over and over again as the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, and the two towers as they collapsed. She had to watch these scenes over and over again because that was the only way she could make it real.

In between watching the devastation of the city she loved, and seeing the heroic efforts of the New York City police and fire departments, she listened to newscasters and people talking and she heard a lot of anger and hatred and blind desire for revenge. Watching the towers fall was awful, but listening to these people was worse. My human knew the world had changed, and not for the better. Finally she left the house and went out for a walk. Binga says that when she came back, she could tell she had been crying.

Something about the events of 9-11, and seeing what so many people went through, changed my human forever, Binga told me. It made her more compassionate and opened her heart. It also made her lonelier because it seemed to her like she was the only person who felt that way. There was so much anger, and people calling out for retaliation, and she knew actions that came out of that only played into what the terrorists wanted. All my human wanted, really, was healing and for everyone to rise above the evil that was behind this awful event. But she knew that for a long, long time, just the opposite was going to happen.

Lots has gone on in the years since. Harlot died in February, 2002. Sparkle was born the same year, and now she’s gone too. In 2006, my human sold that house she was living in and bought the house where we all live now. Her boyfriend returned to working full time as a musician again. But even though her life has gone on and in some ways gotten better, every 9-11, she looks at the world around her and thinks about this sad, sad anniversary.
* * *

Having problems with your human or the other cats in your house? As the internet’s “Dear Abby With Claws,” Sparkle had answers to many annoying problems in her two award-winning books! Visit her author’s page on Amazon to buy one or both of her awesome Dear Sparkle books!