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A woman reunited with her beloved cat she thought had died in catastrophic fire

After two months, Aggie was miraculously found among the rubble close to her former home.

Images courtesy of TikTok/@carolynkiefer1

Aggie is getting the treatment she needs.

Losing your home and belongings in a house fire is devastating enough, but losing a pet that you can't find before you're forced to evacuate is even worse. No one wants to say goodbye to a beloved pet even under normal circumstances, but to lose them in a fire is too tragic to think about.

So, imagine getting a call that your pet you thought had perished along with your home has been found alive.

Katherine Kiefer got that call from Westside Animal Shelter in Los Angeles two months after her home was destroyed in the Palisades fire. The 82-year-old had been at a radiation treatment appointment for lung cancer the morning of January 7, 2025, when the fire reached her neighborhood. Katherine's daughter Carolyn told Upworthy that Aggie had fled as the family gathered belongings and pets to evacuate while fending off the fire with hoses. They searched and searched, but finally they had no choice but to flee without her.

"Telling my mother that we had not found Aggie was devastating," Carolyn says. "We had failed. The next morning we were able to drive into the Palisades and saw we had lost our home. It felt like a warzone and it seemed impossible that Aggie would have been able to survive such a firestorm. The following two months have been very dark for my mother. Losing the home was painful but losing Aggie made it especially heartbreaking. My mother told me that when she was having a hard time with her cancer treatment and felt down she would remind herself, 'at least I have Aggie.' Now, she was gone."

But she wasn't. Aggie was miraculously found among the ash and rubble near their former home in early March and taken to Westside Animal Shelter, where workers scanned her microchip. Carolyn says the family thought the call from the shelter was a scam at first, but once they confirmed the chip number they knew Aggie really had survived. The shelter had sent Aggie to ChatOak Animal Hospital 40 minutes away for treatment, and Katherine got to reunite with her there.

"I have never seen my 82 yr old mother move so fast and be so impatient," says Carolyn.

Watch:

@carolynkiefer1

My mother is reunited with her beloved, Aggie. #palisadesfire #cat #reunited #rescueanimals THANK YOU @LA Animal Services 🙏

"Seeing them reunited was life changing," says Carolyn. "My mother has really struggled and Aggie's survival has brought her back to life. She is completely different since learning about Aggie. She is really a part of our family and we felt broken without her."

Carolyn's video of their reunion got over five million views on TikTok, but people wanted to see the original recording without the music added. In the unedited version, we get to hear the vet tech share how sweet Aggie had been, and we hear Katherine greet Aggie with, "Hi, sweetest girl!"

Sweetest girl indeed. Oof.

@carolynkiefer1

Replying to @Spasztic.bpd😏🙃🖤🩵🧡

Aggie was suffering from starvation, anemia, a fever, and minor burns when she was brought in. She had to have some matted fur removed and received the blood transfusion, and she will receive ongoing care until she is well enough to join her family again. A GoFundMe to help cover Aggie's veterinary bills has raised over $27,000 in just a couple of days, which is surely a relief for a family already dealing with so much loss.

@carolynkiefer1

Replying to @Yas Thank you for all the support for Aggie. Gofundme link in bio. 🙏 Thank you, Sarah Garrity, DVM, DACVIM (SAIM)! #palisadesfire #cat #aggie


How do you keep pets safe in a house fire?

Everyone wants to think they would just grab their pets and go if a fire threatened their home, but it's not always that simple. Animals have instincts to protect themselves and will often hide if they sense danger, so it can be hard to find them in a fire situation.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

The American Red Cross offers these tips for giving pets the best chance of survival in case of a fire:

- The best way to protect your pets from the effects of a fire is to include them in your family plan. This includes having their own disaster supplies kit as well as arranging in advance for a safe place for them to stay if you need to leave your home.

- When you practice your escape plan, practice taking your pets with you. Train them to come to you when you call.

- In the event of a disaster, if you must evacuate, the most important thing you can do to protect your pets is to evacuate them, too. But remember: never delay escape or endanger yourself or family to rescue a family pet.

- Keep pets near entrances when away from home. Keep collars on pets and leashes at the ready in case firefighters need to rescue your pet. When leaving pets home alone, keep them in areas or rooms near entrances where firefighters can easily find them.

- Affix a pet alert window cling and write down the number of pets inside your house and attach the static cling to a front window. This critical information saves rescuers time when locating your pets. Make sure to keep the number of pets listed on them updated.

However, even the best laid plans don't always go the way we want them to, and sometimes there's nothing we can do but hold out hope that our pets' natural survival instincts will save them like Aggie's did. Her tragedy to triumph story is is a good reminder of how resilient animals can be, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. Here's to a speedy recovery so Aggie can be home with Katherine where she belongs as soon as possible.

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A 'sister city' in Mexico has sent volunteer firefighters to help with Oregon blazes

Alejandro Navarro/Twitter

The entire west coast of the United States is either on fire or covered in some measure of smoke and ash at the moment. We've seen photos of the midday sky the wrong color, from eery orange to apocalypse red. Entire towns have burned down, air quality indexes are hovering in the hazardous zone for millions, and our skilled, brave firefighters are overwhelmed.

Right now, the west needs all the help it can get.

Enter the volunteer firefighters of Guanajuato, Mexico who have arrived in Southern Oregon to help try to get the raging blazes under control. Known as the Heroic Fire Department of Guanajuato, the firefighters come from a city in central Mexico that has a 50-year "sister city" relationship with the Oregon city of Ashland. According to Portland Monthly, the five firefighters dispatched to Oregon have trained in the area before, which means they can jump right in.


The men include Captain Aldo Iván Ruiz, Captain Juan Armando Alvarez Villegas, Sargent Jorge Luis Anguiano Jasso, Sargent Luis Alfonso Campos Martínez and firefighter Miguel Ángel Hernández Lara. They arrived in Oregon Thursday, along with the city's mayor, Alejandro Navarro. The group has already gotten started and are "very moved by the terrible impact of the fire on families and their homes," Mayor Navarro wrote in a tweet, adding the hashtag #PrayForAshland.

Ashland is a picturesque town in Southern Oregon best known for its 85-year-old, Tony award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Alameda Fire that threatens the town and has forced evacuations is just one of many fires burning in Oregon. Today, the New York Times reported that 500,000 people are under evacuation orders in the state. That's 10% of Oregon's population. Other states have begun sending firefighters to help as well.

Five firefighters might not sound like a lot, but every set of skilled hands helps—especially individuals that are familiar with fighting fires in a specific area. While this story is a lovely example of support, it also highlights one of the many benefits of maintaining positive relations across borders and nurturing international friendship and cooperation.

When need arises, friends and allies step up to help. Thank you, Guanajuato, for sending help to a state that isn't even in your own country. Your generosity is definitely appreciated.

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Maryland county turns firefighter stereotype on its head—and the photo itself is pure fire

BecauseOfThem/Instagram

If you were to imagine a typical firefighter, chances are you'd picture a white man in firefighting gear—and there's a good reason for that. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 96% of career firefighters in the U.S. are male and 82% are white. Firefighting has long been a white male dominated field for various reasons—but in some places that's starting to shift.

Meet the newest firefighters of Prince George's County, Maryland, who are flipping the image of a stereotypical firefighter on its head. A viral Instagram photo shared by BecauseOfThem shows eight black female firefighters posing in their gear, looking like fierce firefighting goddesses.

Do these women actually fight fire with fire? Because fire is all we see here.

RELATED: People argue that women aren't strong enough to be firefighters. Here's why they're wrong.

The photo is striking, partially because it's simply not what we're not used to seeing in an image of firefighters. Why fire departments are so heavily white male dominated is a question without a clear answer, but one cities have started exploring. For example, the Los Angeles Times looked into the LAFD's efforts to increase the department's diversity to more closely represent the demographics of the community it serves. Those efforts have largely failed, but why? Is it a self-perpetuating issue of representation? Is it a problem with bias or nepotism in hiring or recruiting? Is it that women and/or non-white Americans aren't interested in being firefighters? A little of all of the above?

On possible reason for Prince George's County's influx of black female firefighters might be who it hired as fire chief. Tiffany Green, former deputy chief, took over the department as acting fire chief this summer after her predecessor retired. She is the first female to lead the department, and she happens to be black as well.

Research shows that representation makes a difference in education and in media, so it's not a stretch to think that it matters in various career fields as well. If people don't see themselves reflected in certain professions, they may not even think to pursue those professions. Women have faced a lack of representation in many fields, as more women have entered the work force in full-time careers in the past couple of generations. But some fields, such as nursing, have had to overcome a lack of male representation as well.

The more we challenge the stereotypes of what certain professions look like, the easier it will be for all kids to imagine themselves in any career.

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Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been pledged to rebuild Notre Dame. It's only half the battle.

Yesterday, millions of people all over the world watched as one of the most iconic buildings in history went up in flames. Today, they sprung into action.

Whether you'd never seen the cathedral in person or had walked by it everyday of your life, it was a devastating event to witness. And while many are still in mourning over the loss of Notre Dame's grand spire, many others are already making a plan to restore the cathedral to its former glory.

Unsurprisingly, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, ever the activist, was one of the first to pledge himself to the task. "This Notre-Dame Cathedral, we will rebuild it. All together. This is part of our French destiny. I am committed to this: from tomorrow a national subscription will be launched, and far beyond our borders," he wrote on Twitter (translated into English).

Macron is also launching an international fundraising campaign to help with the extensive repairs.

Several prominent french people with deep pockets immediately followed suit by vowing to donate millions of dollars to aid in the restoration.

On Tuesday, Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman of Kering (the parent company of Gucci) announced that he and his father would donate 100 million euros (roughly $112.98 million). The pledge seemed to spark some friendly philanthropic competition among French billionaires as Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault, chief executive officer of LVMH, the world's largest luxury-goods company, vowed to give 200 million euros to the cause.

Meanwhile, the city of Paris is also planning to donate 50 million euros, and the city of Cannes has pledged 11 million euros.

It might sound like they have plenty to get the job done, but some experts say that money is only half the battle. The other half is figuring out how to put a building that hundreds of years old back together when very few records about its construction have been kept.

"The stripped roof and upper masonry will reveal aspects of the building's history which probably haven't been understood,"architectural historian and broadcaster, Jonathan Foyle, told CNN. "Notre Dame has virtually no building records. We know (that construction) started in 1163 and was basically completed by about 1240, but there are no building accounts."

"Evidence for the evolution of that building is in the physical fabric, so you'll need an army of archaeologists all over it to better understand which parts they're repairing and what they belong to."

So, even with the large pledged budget, the likelihood is the restoration will take years if not decades.

That said, Notre Dame has suffered damage and been through restorations before and survived. While the fire was devastating, structural experts who've worked closely on the structure say it could've been much worse.

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