SB Fire & Wind Coverage

When he has to escape danger, he goes to the safest spot — on the roof. But then sometimes, he’s hard to get down from there.
Just last winter, he held out through freezing winds for four nights! His escapades had all of us inside shivering, and pleading with him to come down. Ralphie finally did — on his own time. Ralphie doesn’t do anything until he’s ready.
Ralphie pretty much does what he wants. He slid through the Old Fire successfully, and now he looks to be sliding through the Slide Fire as well.
During the Old Fire, he evacuated himself — a day early. So, when it came time for us humans to leave the mountain, Ralphie was nowhere to be seen.
The whole time we were gone, we fretted about Ralphie. More than once, we feared he was a goner.
But 12 days later, when we finally got to come home, there was Ralphie — sitting on an old couch on the porch, waiting for his dinner.
That’s when Ralphie got his nickname, Survivor. We figured he found plenty of “barbecue” to live on during the fire, if you know what I mean. We fed him two whole cans of cat food anyway.
This time around, Ralphie looked to be stuck in the house during the fire. On Monday morning, Ralphie wanted to stay housebond when I headed off to work. It was unusual. But over the last couple of months, Ralpie has split his time between indoors and outdoors.
So, per Ralphie, he got a pass to stay inside.
Only, his master didn’t know then that a fire was brewing — and that she would be stuck down the hill, and Ralphie would be stuck inside, with a fire coming.
That always has been the big concern during a monstrous blaze — will Ralphie make it? But that should be the least of our worries, since he always does.
I got really worried Monday night, safe at my mother’s house, when Mike, who had stayed behind on the mountain to fight the flames from his own roof, called down the hill at 4 a.m. to tell me how horrible it was getting up there. I started to cry, thinking that Ralphie might not make it.
Mike called again at 5 a.m. to say it was getting so hot up there, he had to leave. I feared the worst for Ralphie.
On Tuesday morning, I got a call — coming in from my house phone line. I knew it couldn’t be Ralphie!
It was Mike. He had managed to get in through the back door, and Ralphie was there. Doing just fine.
Ralphie looked a little scared and lonely at first, Mike said. But it wasn’t long until Ralphie got happy and started rolling around on the carpet. But once he was fed, Ralphie disappeared into the bowels of the house. And there seemed no way to lure him out.
There ensued several hours of Mike trying to coax Ralphie, a normally skittish cat anyway, to come out long enough to be kit-napped and taken away from the smoke — and impending flames.
Every half-hour or so, Mike would call and say he was trying to get Ralphie to come out. And every half-hour, I’d say, it’s getting dangerous, you need to leave. I’d tell him, “Just leave the door open a little. And that way, Ralphie can go out when he wants to.”
But Mike wasn’t going anywhere without Ralphie. And I was getting scared for both of them.
Finally, about six hours after his initial call, with the smoke getting heavier, and the fire closer and closer, Mike said he had to get going this time, and he’d try one more time to get Ralphie.
All along, we wondered if Ralphie might be better off staying indoors, as long as the fire didn’t hit. But now, thing were rapidly beginning to get uglier. And that didn’t look like a good option anymore.
Thankfully, Ralphie did end up letting Mike pick him up — and carry him to safety.
Mike had had to park his car on another street, so he had to carry Ralphie a half block or so through the suffocating smoke. But Ralphie didn’t blink.
To get to the highway, Mike had to drive down Live Oak through a wall of fire — with Ralphie sitting on his lap. Ralphie was so peaceful he might have even been purring.
Ralphie was delivered to me at work Tuesday night, , safe and sound. I drove him the 50 miles or so to his new temporary home - in La Habra Heights — where my mom has been eagerly awaiting Ralphie’s arrival.
“There’s a little girl kitty across the street Ralphie can play with,” my mom said.
And sure enough, that’s what we think has grabbed Ralphie’s attention already. As soon as I placed him in his new bed in the garage, he got up, slinked acros the floor and outside — where he immediately took off for the night. He seemed so happy to be safe and free to roam the great outdoors — with no fire in sight.
Don’t worry. Ralphie came back to eat his bowl of turkey in the middle of the night, and came when called Wednesday morning. He meowed a few times before disappearing again.
But as I drove off to work, I looked across the street and saw something that eased my mind — the little girl kitty was walking home on her driveway across the street.