Whiskers Beneath the Rubble

I often think that I did not truly understand silence until I lost my cat during the war in Gaza. Before the war, silence meant early mornings before the city woke up, or late nights when electricity briefly returned and everyone rushed to charge their phones. During the war, silence became terrifying. It meant waiting—waiting for the next explosion, the next scream, the next loss.

I am from Gaza. This is not just a place on the news for me; it is the smell of bread in the morning, the dust that never leaves your shoes, the sky that you learn to fear before you learn to trust it. And for four years of my life, it was also the home of my cat, Luna.

I found Luna when she was barely a day old. Her eyes were sealed shut, her body so small it fit inside my hoodie pocket. Someone had left her near a damaged wall, crying with a voice too weak for such a cruel world. I fed her with a dropper, waking up every few hours, terrified that if I slept too long, she would be gone. In a place where life is often taken, keeping her alive felt like a quiet act of resistance.

Luna grew up knowing Gaza the way I did—through interruptions. Electricity cuts. Water shortages. Sudden nights filled with the sound of drones hovering like mechanical insects that never sleep. Yet despite everything, she brought softness into my life. She would curl up on my chest during airstrikes, purring not because she was calm, but because she was trying to calm me. Animals, I learned, often become the emotional anchors for people who live under constant threat.

When the war began, it did not announce itself politely. It arrived violently, shaking buildings, cracking windows, ripping holes into the sky. The first night of heavy bombing, Luna ran in circles, confused and terrified. I held her tightly, whispering to her as if my voice could somehow negotiate with the war outside.

Days blurred together. We stopped counting time in hours and started counting it in bombings. Food became scarce. Clean water was a luxury. Sleep was shallow and fragile, constantly interrupted by explosions close enough to make your heart forget its rhythm. Luna stopped playing. She stopped grooming herself the way she used to. Fear changed her, just as it changed me.

Our home no longer felt like shelter. Every wall seemed temporary. Every ceiling felt like it was borrowing time. I remember watching Luna stare at the door, ears twitching at every sound, her instincts telling her what my mind tried to deny: nowhere was safe.

The day I lost her, the air was heavy, as if the city itself was holding its breath. Bombing intensified suddenly. The kind that does not give you time to think, only to react. We tried to move to a “safer” place—a phrase that feels cruelly ironic in Gaza. I wrapped Luna in a small blanket, holding her close to my chest as we ran.

Then everything exploded into chaos.

A strike hit nearby. The shockwave threw me to the ground. Dust filled the air, thick and suffocating. People were screaming. I screamed too—her name, over and over. When I looked down, the blanket was empty.

I searched like someone possessed. Digging through debris with bare hands, calling for her until my throat burned. Every second felt stolen. Every sound felt like it might be her. But Luna never answered.

Hours later, when the bombing slowed, I found her under rubble not far from where I fell. Her body was still, unnaturally peaceful in a world that had lost all mercy. I picked her up, shaking, begging for a miracle I already knew would not come.

I have experienced loss before. Gaza teaches you how to grieve early. But this loss was different. Luna was not just a pet. She was a witness to my life. She saw me at my weakest moments, when I cried quietly so no one else would hear. She was my comfort when the world outside was too loud, too cruel, too unstable.

After her death, the war felt heavier. The nights felt longer. The fear felt more personal. Her absence followed me everywhere. I would wake up expecting to feel her curled beside me, only to remember—again—that she was gone.

People around me were losing everything: their homes, their families, their futures. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Children carried trauma in their eyes instead of toys in their hands. Entire neighborhoods disappeared. Gaza became a landscape of ruins and memories.

In this sea of suffering, some might think grieving a cat is insignificant. But grief does not work that way. Loss does not measure itself against other losses. Luna represented something pure in a life surrounded by violence. She was love without conditions, trust without questions. Losing her felt like losing the last piece of softness the war had not yet touched.

Living through the war in Gaza is not just about surviving bombs. It is about surviving the emotional erosion—the constant fear, the helplessness, the accumulation of losses that slowly hollow you out. Every death leaves a mark. Every goodbye removes something you cannot replace.

Even now, after everything, I still find myself listening for her footsteps. I still save small pieces of food without thinking. I still look at sunlit corners of the room and imagine her lying there, eyes half-closed, pretending the world was kinder than it truly was.

The war continues, in different forms. The sky remains unpredictable. The trauma lingers long after the explosions fade. And inside me, Luna lives on—not as a memory free of pain, but as a reminder of what war steals beyond headlines and numbers.

This is not just a story about a cat. It is a story about what it means to love something fragile in a place where fragility is punished. It is about the silent victims of war—the animals, the small lives, the quiet bonds that never make it into statistics.

I survived. But survival in Gaza often means carrying ghosts with you. And one of mine has soft fur, a gentle purr, and a name I still whisper when the nights become too heavy to bear.

#GazaWar
#UnseenVictims
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