I used to adopt stray animals. If they looked dirty and unkempt, I would take them home with me.

One time, this little tabby started following me on my way home. It didn't have a tag, or even a flea collar, so I wasn't sure if it was homeless. But it followed me, and I decided if it followed me all the way, I would keep it. A few houses down from me there was a house where three big, loud dogs lived in the yard, behind a waist-high chain-link fence. They used to bark all night, and they were mean whenever someone walked by.

For some reason, when we were passing that house, the cat slinked through the space in the gate and started walked along the inside of the fence. I stopped, seeing the sleeping dogs come to life.

Come on kitty, I tried to quietly lure the cat over to my side of the fence.

But the cat kept walking, stopped to sniff a blade of grass, and the dogs were on her. The growling, yowling, hissing, and barking was deafening. She bolted out of the mess, and tried to climb up a tree in the middle of the yard. But she couldn't get her claws in, the dogs pulled her back down and continued to maul her.

I was screaming at the top of my lungs, crying and yelling for someone in the house to come out and pull these beasts off of the little orange cat. Finally, two young guys came out and hauled the dogs away by their collars. The cat was lying very still in the grass when they moved away. I opened the gate and ran in, picked her up, and stumbled to my house holding her.

One of her eyelids was torn and hanging over her eye, her coat was wet with the dog's saliva, and a little bit of blood. But you could tell what was killing her was the shock, her heart was beating so hard and fast that I could feel it with my hand on her little furry chest, like something trapped inside that was trying to get out.

My mother opened the door in response to my pounding. She saw the cat, and I started to try to explain through my tears and panic, that the dogs had gotten her, she was going to be my cat if she made it home, that we had to save her because she was going to die for sure.

Mom has always had the same weakness for strays and injured animals that I have, and she immediately grabbed a towel to wrap the cat in, put her in the Buick, and took off to the vet's office. I stayed at the front door, on the steps, as the late afternoon turned into dusk.

When my mother came home, she got out of the car with empty arms, and tearfully told me that we would go and find a cat for my very own, real soon.