I adopted an abused cat from a shelter in 1993. It took a long time to break down the barriers of fear and mistrust she had of humans, but when I finally did, she became devoted to me for the rest of her life. She walked me to the door every day when I went to work and greeted me when I came home. When I had no other reason to get out of bed, she gave me a reason and that kept me going through some tough times. That same cat saved my life when there was a gas leak in my apartment and she raised a huge cry to get me out of bed. I was already mentally foggy from the gas and would have died if my cat hadn’t persisted in waking me. She also woke me up a few years later when we lived on a boat and the bilge pumps failed in the night–the boat would’ve sunk if not for her sounding her own alarm. I held my cat in my arms when she died peacefully in 2004.
