Snowball is usually the first person to greet me every evening when I get home. When my keys enter the lock, he runs to the door and when the door opens, he reaches up to me, like a small child, to be picked up and held.

When Snowball was but a 4-week-old kitten, he raced into our house like a little white lightning bolt and hid beneath the obligatory stereo cabinet of doom and destruction. All I saw when I opened the door to go to work was this white flash. I closed the door, walked over, knelt down and peered beneath the stereo cabinet. These two large yellow eyes were staring back at me. Amused, I stood, walked back to the door, and told my wife, standing in the kitchen, "Honey, we have a new cat." and went off to work.

When I got home that night, my wife had the cutest little white furball in the palm of her hand. She had run off to the store and bought kitten formula and a bottle. His little ears were still closed. Two days later he was listless and not eating. We ran him to the vet's office. the vet told us he had a respitory infection, likely due to the lack of mother's milk, and would be dead within the next 24 hours. He said we could try oral and nasal antibiotics and antibiotic eye drops but likely it was a waste of time. We took the antibiotics and made a pact, my wife and I, to do whatever we could to keep this little guy alive. We both had executive-level jobs and work was just going to have deal with us bringing in this little ball of fur. Every hour of the day and night we had to give him drops in his ears, eyes and nose and give him oral antibiotics every 4 hours. We got two slings, one for my wife and one for me, as he couldn't regulate his own body temperature and we had to keep him warm. We slept with a heating pad between us for him to sleep on. We had two alarm clocks set to make sure he got his meds on time. There were some complaints from some folks at work about bringing an animal into the office that were quickly quenched when the complainers were told by other employees about the Herculian effort we were giving to keep this little guy alive. For 8 weeks we kept up this effort. Our reward for this is coming home to a creature who always comes for affection, for comfort, for warmth and for companionship.

Perhaps I am anthropomorphizing a bit by giving a cat these human attributes, but Snowball demonstrates more humanity than many people I see on the street, walking near my office or home. While I cannot attribute love to him as I do not believe cats (or any other non-sentient being) can give or receive love, he does seem compassionate, as I, too, have compassion for him. And yet, perhaps it is in the nature of cats (and dogs, too) to be sensitive to the emotions of humans around them and do what is instinctual when presented with certain emotive responses. I am fairly certain Snowball knows it is me when I come home. He does not exhibit the reaching-up to my wife when she comes home. When my wife is at home by herself, the cats will come to her call and will sleep on her lap if permitted or next to her or near her when her lap is off limits, but they do not pester her or talk to her when I am not home. When I am home, the cats seem to become more active, more animated and much, MUCH more talkative - like children when Daddy comes home.