I am a dog person.  When my landlord died suddenly, her heirs did not want her second floor cat.  What is a second floor cat you ask?  My landlord was an old Philadelphian, you know they type that belongs to Sunnybrook and is a DAR.  Her house was big and old, so it was necessary to have a cat on the second floor as a mouser.  Plus two big dogs roamed the first floor and halls.  I babysat while they were away twice, and the cat never showed herself, maybe because I was always with the dogs, but I filled her bowls and emptied her box ea day.  I’m sure she was watching me from her hiding place.

Back at my place across the lawn (sounds like the Great Gatsby, but it was not that opulant believe me), I was alone after the loss of my beloved English Pointer Duke to lung cancer, and had just lost both of my parents.  I was engaged at the time (2006) to my future husband, but we did not live together.  I’m old fashioned.  So a couple of weeks after the funeral, one of the heirs saw me and asked if I might consider adopting her Mother’s second floor cat “Meow”.  Oh that was her name, I didn’t know.  I said yes.  That Saturday she brought “Meow” over.  She went right under my bed.  So I watched some golf out in the living room, and within about 15 minutes she sauntered in and looked at me.  She was beautiful, feminine and sweet natured.  By that night she fell asleep on a stack of sweaters, and my life started to be happy again.  Different, but happy.  Oh, I renamed her immediately: Pussywillow.  It was the name my Dad had once told me he would name a cat if he ever got a cat.  It, she and my Dad were perfect.  I am now forever a dog and a cat person.

— Pam from Gwynedd Valley, PA