Be careful, the doors are closing, the next stop is Borodyanka.

Nowadays everybody is like an open wound. And that is why we are grasping for these straws, like the repost of the picture of Angelina Jolie with the boy (or girl) because it feels like healing with antibiotics ointment. But the thing is that this treatment does not work for shell wounds.

It is very joyful how they save the cat, I can’t imagine the way he sat there for so long, how he managed to get the food and the water, (and is it even possible for the living creature to live for so long without water?). And then I remembered that people here on Sklyanka did with their pets with the fear and the blind desire to survive, and I almost fainted. The packs of hungry cats and dogs from Irpen and Bucha, fluffy, pure breed domestic cats, who are crawling near my doorstep because they cannot hide as they were starving…

I hide those images in the deepest corners of my mind and locked them there under the concrete wall.
I fed the animals when I had a chance, but they still scurried and fled. But at least they eat the meat left for them overnight.

I will mention only one of the most disgusting examples, as it touched me personally and reveals human nature.
So, imagine the war is all around us, my next-door neighbor fled and left her grandson and two pets (a cat and a dog). The grandson has mental issues and was abusing these animals, even during peacetime, so we threatened to call the police on him. And here we are in the midst of war, my mom felt sorry for him and talked to him and he started to come to our house. He brought us food on occasion, like potatoes and biscuits, or soup or chopped some wood for us.

And in his home he cleaned everything obsessively, he threw the cat out and let the dog into the wilderness, and stopped feeding both.

The cat followed us around and pitifully meowed, the dog was bitten by the local stray dogs. I could not stand to see it but was trying to hold back my tears.

And here we are with this immoral freak, walking into our house without even knocking at the door (you see, because of war all the common rules stopped at once) and he heard my cats scratching, locked in another room, and proclaimed with the unbearable voice: «Don't you get tired of these kitties? You should let them go, I threw mine out because they bring only a mess».

If I had a weapon I… don't know. So, I just turned around and my mom quietly made him leave, explaining that he was like his animals, abandoned by his own grandmother.

My mother told me later: «We should somehow survive, we will be starving without his cellar.» But I think that we’d better starve than deal with that man, who thinks he could usher command in other people’s households, just because he brought four potatoes to our home.

I understand that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol abuse but … somehow it was worse than the shelling.
To bear with the constant visit of the bastard that helps you survive, but on the other hand, leaves his animal to die. But he is the one that threw them away, others were even worse. Others locked them in the apartments… but my mom still pities him, and keeps telling me that he helped us. Maybe we should also help him somehow, when we are back home. We were unaware if he survived or not because the last days of occupation were cruel. Our neighbor wrote our phone number for him, and I hope that his pets are still alive, but the hope is dwindling.

This is the story of the weak and horrendous abandoned man who bullied weak creatures. The bully could only fight the weak because the stronger ones will knock his teeth out.

Olena, Bucha

*A cat named Shafa (actually Gloria), miraculously saved in Borodyanka. The animal sat for two months on the 7th floor of the destroyed house.