No-kill shelter

Two days ago, our beloved cat Shadow started stumbling around in circles, head turned to one side. We spent a small fortune on the vet only to be told we'd have to spend thousands more to learn what's "really" wrong with him. Finding out would cost an additional $5,000. Alas, the poor creature had become inconvenient and I, selfish wretch that I am, considered putting him down-- but my son won't hear of it. "You wouldn't do that to a relative,would you?", he asked. So we're nursing the animal, medicating him, hand-feeding him, and changing his pads when he soils them. We try to give him physical therapy. We've become a regular no-kill animal shelter.At 16,he's a brave little soul, obviously fighting for his life. He's alert, he eats, seems to have a fair amount of strength, and is slowly regaining his sense of balance and direction. We're hoping for the best, but he's not our only problem. These days,I'm dealing with the same kind of end-of-life scenarios I went through with my parents 20 years ago, and my grandparents before that. Only now it's my own generation's turn to get sick and die, and I'm just hoping I'll live long enough to help out contemporaries in dire need. A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. My older brother had suffered a stroke, and they were searching for his relatives. He is suffering from dementia and we still don't know whether he'll be able to return home or have to go into long-term care. His next of kin is his husband, who himself had suffered a stroke a few years ago and can barely communicate. My brother had been his caretaker, now both men are adrift, incapacitated. Now I have two brothers to worry about. It saddens me to remember what full and happy lives they've led, and I have to wonder what God would want them reduced to their present state.My younger brother, my son and I flew down to Atlanta to see how we could help. Atlanta, which I hadn't visited in decades, turned out to be an unpleasant surprise, a third world shithole of a city with ugly corporate architecture, kamikaze drivers and the smell of menthol cigarrettes everywhere. There are vagrants all over the place, they live in tents on median strips within major highways. Nothing works as it should. Nobody comes to the phone, returns calls or gives out information--not even direct numbers.They make you go through switchboards that invariably put you on hold. The ubiquitous recordings tell you to leave a message and expect a callback in 3 o 4 days.Maybe. (It's not a "Southern" thing, either. We're also dealing with Miami on an estate issue, and everyone there seems to be on their game.We ordered some legal documents from North Carolina, and actually got them within a few short days.)

Once in Atlanta, in a darkened little house, we sifted through the wreckage of lives that had been descending into squalor for years,without our realizing it (we had all been estranged when we had to regroup as a family and rush to the rescue). I think that things started falling apart when both men began to have health problems. Now there was filth, clutter, unpaid bills

and overgrown weeds everywhere. Their poor dog had a skin infection and was not being walked, so she had defecated throughout the house.I tried turning the dog over to Animal Rescue, but my brother in law refused to give her up, and in Georgia,go figure, you can't rescue abused animals without permission from the abuser (whereas in New York, abused animals can take their abusers to court).We cleaned up,took the dog to the vet, and are now looking into legal and financial issues.Almost miraculously, a squad of Good Samaritans has emerged to help us out. We're daily in touch with a group of well-meaning friends and neighbors who take turns checking up on my brother in law and the dog. The dog's still not being walked, but she's let out in the evenings and makes her bathroom run of the neighborhood before returning home. Nobody interferes with her. Some of these neighbors didn't even know my brother and his husband before all of this happened. Meanwhile, my brother languishes in rehab, cut off from external contact by Covid precautions within the facility. We check in by phone every day; he appears to be getting better. We're hoping he'll be able to return home. I've decided that now that I'm retired, I can dedicate myself to look out for my brother.I have the time, and it's needed.

Amazingly, I seem to have taken my brother's place with his friends, who speak to me as though they've known me my entire life. It's very moving, I find comfort in their voices and I am perfectly at ease with them, as though they were my old friends, too. All throughout the ordeal, I only cry whenever I speak to my brother and realize he's having a bad day. This is new. I'm ashamed to confess that in my life,I have shed more tears for cats I have lost, than for estranged relatives, including my own mother. Maybe now I'm being given the chance to atone for my intransigence of the past. Maybe this whole episode, with its wonderful cast of characters, has restored my faith in humanity.