Almost everyone who picks up a litter of kittens is trying to save them. That is worth saying first, because the honest answer is that most of those kittens did not need saving, and the people who took them had no way to know that. Here is the short version. A mother cat leaves her…

Compassion fatigue is the specific cost of caring, at close range, for suffering you can only partly fix. It has a name, and the name matters.

Compassion fatigue is the specific cost of repeated exposure to suffering you can only partly fix. It is not the same as being tired, and it is not the same as not caring enough.