I live on the fourth floor of an apartment block with my beautiful cat Zilly. A few weeks ago, in the morning – late enough that I was mostly dressed but early enough that I wasn’t yet fully functioning, all the alarms and sirens in the building, both in my apartment and in the halls, blared in one deafening scream. I didn’t know what was happening, but obviously it was a warning to leave, now. It was, frankly, terrifying.

I stuffed Zilly into her cat carrier. I thought momentarily about reaching for the little emergency cash in the apartment, but that was 12 steps in the wrong direction so I immediately dismissed it. I didn’t even think about my laptop, or my phone, or literally anything but Zilly. So with cat carrier in one hand and cane in the other, I staggered as quickly as I could down the hall toward the stairway, with my neighbors mostly shouting uselessly “What’s happening?” “What should I do?” “Leave! Now!” I shouted without stopping.

Before I reached the door to the stairs, the alarms all stopped. I stood still a moment, then returned to my door (unlocked, as I hadn’t taken my keys). I still don’t know what happened – a false alarm? a test of the equipment that management hadn’t bothered to announce?

And of course in recent days we have all seen a version of this on a massive scale. It wasn’t a false alarm in California. It wasn’t an unannounced test. It was all too real, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing, some leading horses on foot through the smoke, most with nothing but the clothes they wore, many having to abandon their cars on the escape routes, leaving the few things they had thought briefly that they could save. And the end is not yet.

We used to be encouraged by the Church to have 72-hour-kits packed and standing ready for any need to evacuate our homes. Maybe some of you still have them, but for many of us I suppose that term “72-hour-kit” seems as quaint as canning your own food or sewing your own clothes or anything else that used to make up our cultural world. Maybe it would sound less quaint now if we called them “Go Bags” or “Bug-Out Kits”; if so, maybe we would be more prepared for emergency.

I don’t think I was at all wrong to think first of my beloved Zilly. Life is what really matters, and I’ve promised her repeatedly that no matter what happens in the turmoil my life has become in recent months, she will always come first and I will always protect her.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t do just a little bit more. In the past week, realizing that even if I’m not thinking straight I can almost certainly count on Zilly as my focus in an emergency, I have put a flat corrugated scratcher in the bottom of her carrier (that texture helps calm her when she is over-stimulated). Beneath that scratcher, where it won’t disturb her, I have stored an external hard drive with a recent backup of my laptop, a pair of contact lenses, and a few papers with critical phone numbers, addresses, and other data that I might not be able to remember under stress. I can’t carry much with my physical limitations, but I can, possibly, save those few things, along with Zilly.

There are many internet resources for how to prepare for evacuation and I won’t try to repeat them. If you have favorite sites or suggestions, or questions, maybe we can exchange ideas here. At least, think seriously again about what you will do when the flames or flood waters or earthquakes come for you.

And let’s take care of each other. We have to. We simply have to. That’s all that matters, really.