When None of It Makes Sense

She has been surviving not just the flames, but the long, bewildering days that followed — days when the world no longer smelled familiar and she herself smelled of smoke, the suffocating kind time struggles to wash away.

The ground offered neither softness nor nourishment, while ash rose with every painful hooffall. The crumpled remains of a home that once anchored her world became nothing more than a memory of danger.

We first sighted Cathkin over a week ago, a small grey figure moving through the nothingness of what was left. Her instinct to survive kept her just out of reach, and her wool hung as though she were shedding a robe that no longer served her.

Her fragile, battle-marked body told a story no being should ever have to live.

And from a distance, we feared flystrike had found her, but mercifully, it hadn’t. The burns, though, most certainly had. Even now, almost four weeks on, they speak loudest.

Over half her body bears the mark of fire.

So when we saw her again, we knew: if we didn’t reach her now, there may not be a third chance. She tried to outrun our kindness, and when she dodged, we followed — not as hunters, but as witnesses. Yet her will, fierce as it was, could not make up for a body running out of strength.

And time.

When we finally reached her, we did what we always do when there is no time to waste: we carried her toward help.

Thankfully, our friends at Vets for Compassion were working just up the road. Soon their gentle hands met her fear. Pain relief loosened suffering’s grip, fluids called her back from the edge and antibiotics stood guard while her skin was cleaned and debrided.

Even looking at her partly denuded body today, it is hard to imagine what hell on earth she has endured. But it is the unseen wounds that trouble us most, these are the ones that may take longest to heal.

Trauma, we are told, lives in the body when there are no words for what happened. And for animals like Cathkin, there is no explanation to hold on to. They simply wake up inside the aftermath and try — somehow — to keep going.

Cathkin’s sweet, soot-covered face cannot hide her fear, but neither can it hide who she is: a gentle, young, astonishingly brave individual. And now, in the quiet of sanctuary life, she has found a kindred spirit in Atlas, another survivor who understands, in the wordless way animals do.

None of this makes sense to Cathkin. Not the fire. Not the capture. Not the treatments. Not the pain.

Or even our kindness.

And yet — she is still here.

Still choosing life, even when none of it makes sense.