For decades, retired fire chief Kevin Miller spent his life responding to emergencies across rural Pacific County.
Now, years after stepping away from the fire service, he has turned those experiences into a memoir titled “I Saved a Cat Once,” a collection of stories shaped by tragedy, humor and the emotional weight of small-town emergency response, he said.
Miller, of Amboy, said the idea for the book began long before he ever started writing.
“Well, the thing is, I started making notes. I kind of had a plan for it before I actually quit the fire service,” Miller said. “I quit permanently in 2012. Retired as a pro guy in 2011, stayed on for a year as a volunteer.”
Miller said he initially intended to begin writing after retirement, but the memories remained too fresh.
“I started writing it after I retired,” Miller said. “And the stuff was a little too fresh. I couldn’t do it. Some of it, I got too emotional over it. So I figured, well, I’ll just kind of put it in the hopper for a while. You know, wait on it.”
More than a decade later, a major health scare pushed him to finally commit to finishing the project.
“And then I had a heart attack in 2023, July 13,” Miller said. “And I had a lot of time to sit in the hospital. It was a bad one. It almost killed me. I had five stints.”
During his recovery, Miller realized he could no longer put the project off.
“I thought, I guess if I’m going to write this thing, I probably better do it. Because my time could be limited here on this earth,” he said.
From there, the writing came steadily, often sitting down with his laptop in local coffee shops, mainly on rainy days.
“I found it easier for me to write when I was somewhere else in a coffee shop,” Miller said. “It’s weird. But that’s what I did. And just started writing, man. Writing, writing, writing.”
The title of the book, “I Saved a Cat Once,” comes from one of the lighter moments of Miller’s career, a rare rescue that ended happily.
“Because we did save a cat once,” Miller said. “And it wasn’t from a tree or a telephone post. It was from a house fire.”
Miller recalled firefighters locating the soot-covered cat hiding beneath a bed after extinguishing the fire. Miller said he then stuck an oxygen tube in its mouth and “cranked that baby up.”
“Lucky I didn’t blow its lungs out,” Miller joked, adding that a short time later, the cat jumped about four feet into the air and went on a run.
While the cat rescue inspired the title, much of the memoir centers on the emotional realities of working emergency calls in a small town where first responders often know the people they serve personally.
“Absolutely,” Miller said when asked whether the job became more difficult because of those personal connections.
The breaking point for Miller came near the end of his career following two teenage suicides.
One call, involving a 16-year-old girl, still remains vivid in his memory.
“And, yeah, a couple of buddies and I put her in a body bag and cleaned the mess up,” Miller said. “But I knew the family. And it was very, very emotional.”
He said the experience convinced him it was time to leave the profession.
“And I said, ‘you know, I don’t think I can do this much more,’” Miller recalled telling his wife.
Miller served as chief for three entities in Raymond: the city fire department, a county fire district and the ambulance district. In rural communities, he said, firefighters and medics often face enormous workloads with limited recognition.
“My hope is that it will leave a mark on people to respect and honor those small-town guys,” Miller said of his book. “Especially where I live.”
He added that many people misunderstand the realities of small-town emergency work.
“It’s not all sitting around playing cards and playing pool and watching baseball,” Miller said. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
Miller also spoke candidly about the long-term effects emergency work can have on mental health.
“I don’t know that everybody has hardcore PTSD when they leave the fire service,” he said. “But I have a degree of it. I don’t think you can go out of that business after 30 years without it, you know, affecting your brain in some way.”
Everyday reminders can trigger difficult memories for Miller.
“Every time I see a cross on the side of a road, you know, that hurts,” Miller said.
Even during the interview with Miller in the Trove coffee shop along North Parkway Avenue in Battle Ground, a fire apparatus and ambulance went by, prompting Miller to say, “I don’t miss that at all, by the way.”
Despite the emotional challenges of revisiting decades of memories, Miller said readers have encouraged him to continue writing.
“People are after me to write another book,” he said. “Because people like the book.”
For now, Miller hopes his memoir offers readers a glimpse into the unseen realities of rural emergency response while honoring the people who dedicate their lives to it.
“I’d like to get some hands with some fire departments and paramedics and EMTs,” Miller said. “There’s stuff on fire in there, too. I had some close calls and interesting stuff happening. But we did like 13 times more ambulance calls than we did fire calls. It’s pretty typical.”
On Saturday, May 16, Miller will be at the Northwest Carriage Museum in Raymond for a book signing event from 3 to 5 p.m. In Battle Ground, he will have a book signing at Trove on Friday, June 5.
Miller's book is available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/0824b1Tl.
