For Dexter: The Side of Rescue Nobody Posts About
By Ashley Schausten
We lost Dexter this week.
I've started this post about six times. I keep closing the tab. Because writing it down makes it real, and I have spent the last few days doing everything I can to keep it from being real.
Dexter was one of ours. He came into this rescue and made himself at home in the middle of everything — the top of the cat tree, the middle of the cuddle puddle, the exact center of the bed at 2 a.m. He had this look he'd give you, a slow half-lidded squint we all called his blue steel, like he was doing you a favor by letting you look at him. He was right. He was.
He is gone, and the house is quieter in a way that doesn't feel like peace. It feels like a hole. Gizmo keeps checking the spots Dexter used to sleep in. I keep catching myself counting heads and coming up one short. I don't know how long it takes for that to stop. I suspect the answer is that it doesn't — you just get used to the counting.
I'm not going to write out every medical detail of how we lost him. That's not what this post is for. What I want to write about is the thing we don't talk about — the part of rescue that never makes it into the happy adoption photos, the part nobody signs up for and everybody who does this work carries anyway.
The part nobody posts about
Here's what people see: the intake photo, the glow-up, the adoption day. The before and after. The happy ending.
Here's what they don't see: the nights you sit on the floor of a bathroom with a kitten in a towel, watching the clock, doing math you can't do. The drives to the emergency vet at 3 a.m. The bill that comes after, and the phone call where you say yes anyway. The weight check that didn't go up. The appointment you keep putting off making, because you already know what they're going to say.
And then, sometimes, the moment that comes anyway.
We don't talk about the grief, because talking about it feels like failing. Rescue is supposed to be about saving lives. When you lose one, there's this quiet voice that says you should have done more, known more, been faster, been better. That voice is a liar, and it is also extremely loud at 4 a.m. Every person who does this work knows that voice by name.
The decisions nobody wants to make
There's a thing people say when they find out what we do: "I could never do that, I'd want to keep them all." I understand it, I really do. But the harder truth is that the hardest decisions in rescue aren't about keeping anyone. They're about letting go.
Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for an animal is to end their suffering, and you are the one who has to decide it, and sign it, and hold them while it happens, and then drive home. Sometimes it's choosing which kitten gets the last open spot in a foster home. Sometimes it's a placement that doesn't work out, and you have to make the call that puts them back at square one. Sometimes it's looking at a cat who isn't going to get better and deciding that their comfort matters more than our hope.
Nobody trains you for that. There is no certification, no handbook for the moment itself. You just have to be the person in the room who can hold the love and the decision at the same time — and then go home and feed the rest of them, because the rest of them are still here and still need you.
What it takes out of you
People think this work is soft. It isn't. It's soft-hearted and hard-backed at the same time.
It takes a particular kind of person to do this. Someone who can love an animal completely, knowing from day one that the odds aren't guaranteed. Someone who can get attached on purpose, because that's what the animal needs, and still hand them over when the right family comes. Someone who can lose one and then, the next morning, still answer the message about the kitten who needs a place tonight. Someone who keeps going while running on empty, because stopping isn't an option for a living creature who is counting on you.
That isn't toughness in the way people usually mean it. It's something quieter and harder. It's doing the thing that breaks your heart because it's the right thing, and then doing it again next week.
And the toll is real. It's the kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix. It's why people in rescue burn out, and why so many of them do this alone, quietly, on their own dime, and never once tell you what it costs them.
Dexter didn't go in vain
Here's the thing I keep coming back to, and it's the only thing that helps.
Dexter was loved. Not in the abstract, not in a general "we love animals" way. He was loved specifically — by name, on purpose, every single day. He slept at the top of the cat tree because he felt safe enough to claim the highest spot in the house. He had a full belly, a warm bed, and a person who knew exactly how he liked to be held. Whatever else is true, that is true, and nobody can take it from him or from us.
If you've ever adopted from us, you know the other half of this: the animal you took home is the reason we can say yes to the next one. And if you've ever donated, or dropped off a case of formula, or shared a post, you're part of the same thing. You're the reason a cat who could have died nameless on a street got to be known and loved and surrounded instead.
Dexter didn't go in vain. He didn't, because we're going to keep going. We'll keep saying yes. We'll keep making the hard calls and paying the hard prices and getting up the next morning to do it again. That's the promise we make to every one of them, and losing one doesn't cancel it. It makes it heavier, and it makes it matter more.
So if you're one of the people doing this work — in your own home, in your own quiet way, with your own heart on the line — I see you. I know what it costs. Please take care of yourself, and please don't stop.
And to Dexter: thank you for letting us be the ones. We miss you, sweet boy. We'll keep the top of the cat tree warm for you.
