“This is my cat, Philya, or as my dad called him, Philemon, because he is a very important person and a member of our family.
This letter is a cry of my soul, because it cannot be expressed in any other way - we must be strong! Strong for ourselves and those who surround us, for the future of our country and for the Ukrainian nation.
Philya is my cat. My soul. My brother. I write and cry! This text is written in tears .. (you see, Putin made up that Ukraine is a threat to the "russian world". So sit now and watch your news and don't worry - the Russian world will only be YOURS, on your territory, and most importantly isolated from normal people !!)
On 24.02 at 6:30 I woke up from a call from my friend and her words: "Katya, wake up, they are shooting in Ukraine, it is war"
After that everything was in a fog: I ran to my parents, told them to wake up, we sat down and thought about the situation, we grabbed documents, we still don't believe that, so we really take a minimum of things, 0 food, almost nothing that could be valuable and helpful to survive.
In just 15 minutes we put on our shoes, I choose shoes: warm or comfortable? Here, for the first time in winter, I put on sneakers and we went out.
And the next scene I remember clearly, the fog of incomprehension passed in an instant: I turned around and saw the eyes of Philemon, who sits on his locker and, as always, quietly follows us with his eyes as I and my parents usually go to school or to work.
We turn around and leave, as we know that we will return after him, we just need to move all things to another city 10km away from us now and try to understand what is happening, to understand the situation, we are thinking: " We live in the city centre, we definitely won’t be attacked today”.
And we left, an act that we still can't forgive ourselves. We didn't take him with us at once!
Did we come back home again that day? Yes! After bringing the first batch of stuff and recovering from the words "War has begun, bombs are flying", we were on our way home to pick up Philya and other things. And then on the horizon, 2 km from our house, we stop the car sharply and hear shots, bend down, shout, open our eyes in a second, raise our heads - we see 3 helicopters, which are attacking our town and airport...
We still don't know what happened to our house, what happened to our family member, our Philya, our soul, we don’t care about other stuff, we have come to terms with the new reality, but we have not come to terms with the losses !!
We only see from the news that our house is being fought over and it is constantly under attack.
But I know that my Philya, in case of any danger (even if I turn on the hair dryer), runs to his bomb shelter, under the bath, that’s why I know that everything is fine with him!
Maybe I don't deserve pets, it seems to me that I shouldn’t be trusted with a living soul… Philya, we'll pick you up as soon as we can !!”