Hi All, The death of Osama Bin Laden leads me to reflect on 9/11/2001 and our experiences that day and on the aftermath of that day. Edward and I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn. That morning he left early to teach his class at NYU and I had a doctor's appointment uptown and left a little later. The subway goes above ground for a couple of stops and all of us passengers saw the smoke from the first plane that hit the World Trade Center and people remarked that there must be a fire. Not until 1/2 hour later, upon arriving at the doctor's office, did I learn what had happened. I stayed there briefly to watch the TV, but wanted to get downtown to see if Edward was OK. At this point all of the subways had stopped running, so I walked from E. 95th Street to Washington Square (near 8th St.), being careful to avoid the area around the Empire State Building, which could have been a subsequent target. It was a beautiful, cool, clear late-summer day. I remember thinking how incongruous it was to have such lovely weather for such a tragedy. I was very worried about Edward (NYU is less than a mile from the World Trade Center and the first plane, flying very low, went right over his building). Telephones were not working. Some cell phones worked, but we did not have cell phones then. Meanwhile, Edward was very worried about me because my subway train would have passed directly underneath the World Trade Center. No one knew any details. As I walked downtown and got closer and closer to the WTC, I saw people walking in the other direction covered in plaster dust and debris. When I arrived at NYU I saw that everyone there was OK and they were very relieved that I was OK. Classes had been cancelled. We sat around all day and listened to radio broadcasts of what was happening. All transportation was at a standstill. The Brooklyn Bridge was closed, so we couldn't walk across it to get home to Brooklyn. But the Manhattan Bridge was open and there was a steady stream of people walking home. The Brooklyn Bridge was barely visible in a cloud of smoke. So we walked over the Manhattan Bridge and back to Park Slope, Brooklyn (about 5 miles) in a rain of office paper coming from the World Trade Center. That was surreal: to see all this letterhead, some of it pristine and not charred at all, come tumbling down onto the streets of Brooklyn. We got home, still not entirely clear on all that had happened, but glad to be together. The prevailing winds brought a cloud of smoke, ashes, stench over our part of Brooklyn for the next 3 months as the World Trade Center smoldered. Our local Fire Dept. company, which was a first-responder company, lost half of it's firemen on 9/11. Such bravery and such sorrow were unimaginable. We kept hearing stories of incredible bravery, of incredible luck, and unluck.
Fast forward to 9/26. Edward and I had lost our kitty Alice in Dec. 2000. We kept thinking about all the cats who would be homeless because their people perished in 9/11. So we decided to visit the ASPCA and adopt a cat already there so that there would be room for the orphans. That's how we met Stu, 4 years old, returned twice, and so handsome and athletic. He was in the "habitat". When we stood at the window to watch, he got up from his bed, climbed up on the "catwalk" (which stretched all around the top of the habitat), walked all around it, jumped down, looked at us, and went back to his bed. Needless to say . . .
We took him home at rush hour in the little cardboard carry box they gave us. We started out in a taxi, but half the streets were closed owing to 9/11 and after about 1/2 hour stuck in traffic in Manhattan, we got out and took the rush-hour subway. Poor Stu meowed loudly in his box on the floor with people standing over him like sardines in a can. He kept trying to push his paws out through the holes in the box. He would not be consoled. We finally got home, opened the box, and he emerged. He knew immediately that he was "home" and set to exploring every inch of the apartment, including Alice's box of ashes on top of the piano. He jumped up, was very still for about a minute, then took the small catnip mouse that had been Alice's and was next to her box, jumped down, and played with it. I like to think of this as a passing of the torch.
So that's my story of 9/11 and how we got our 9/11 kitty. Stu was with us for 9 years (FD dx 6 Jan. 2006; GA on 28 Sept. 2010).
(Rusty came home with us on 28 Nov. 2010, but many of you know that story from the posts on FDMB about Rusty's journey.)
Ella
