Amid the Grief During the Los Angeles Wildfires, Pet Reunion Videos Are Providing My Daily Scrap of Joy

When, five minutes after waking up on Monday morning, I logged onto Instagram (I know, bad sleep hygiene!), I didn’t think that anything I saw there could truly cheer me up. After all, devastating wildfires are still burning in my home base of Los Angeles, and while I am beyond lucky not to be among the many who lost their homes, their precious belongings, or (in some particularly awful cases) their loved ones in the blazes, it’s hard to be in LA right now without feeling at least a little bit off-balance.

To my surprise, however, what I found waiting for me on Instagram made me smile without even realizing I was doing it. Here, I present, for your own viewing pleasure, this photo of a goldfish in an Erewhon jar that someone rescued from one of the fires:

Sure, the very-online collective consciousness may have moved on from cute animal videos sometime in the early aughts, but the sight of this little fish floating in a vessel from one of LA’s most ridiculous and wonderful places—small, orange, and alone, yet very much alive and queening out—genuinely made me feel good. That’s something I don’t take for granted, especially right now.

So, that’s what I’m up to for at least five minutes a day, every day, for the time being: mainlining photos and videos of displaced pets reuniting with their owners after the fires. I want to be as present and helpful as I can to the friends and neighbors in my community who have lost everything, or who are simply struggling and need someone to watch their kids or bring them dinner, but amid all that, I’m also leaning into whatever self-care tools I have in my arsenal—and these moments of heartrending sweetness are among them.

So, in the spirit of sharing resources, and in case you, too, are in need of a hit of joy right now, find a roundup of some of my favorite stories of pets found or reunited with their families after the wildfires. You’re welcome.