April has been a hard month for me. I've had knee problems, our heating unit failed, and our water heater needed to be replaced. But nothing could compare with the sadness that's consumed me in the aftermath of the passing of my beloved dog, Bogie, who’s been by my side for almost ten years, who slept with me, followed me from room to room, and loved me without reservation. I know I’m not alone in this situation. I’ve read the stories of friends on Facebook who have gone through the same thing, lamenting that they’ve lost their best friend, that there was and never will be another pet like theirs. I feel the same way. Our pets just don't live long enough. I asked myself if there was anything more I could have done or steps I could have taken to extend Bogie’s life. The answer is no, and even the vet said I had performed a miracle to give him the extra few months he lived. I bought special food for his renal failure, gave him daily injections of fluid and pills to ward off...

Memoir can get a bad rap. It’s been likened to reality shows, panned for TMI, pigeonholed as mere publicity for politicos. My favorite peeve is the ghostwritten celebrity memoir—or, worse, the simpleminded recovery story in which the protagonist falls into drink or illness and, inevitably, regains health by page 300. It’s the "inevitably" that bothers me. These memoirs, written according to formula, often gloss over the real difficulties of people trying to make and keep their lives better. The “my cat saved my life” story bugs me no end, as you can imagine. So why did I write a memoir about a feral cat who helped ground me emotionally in an uneasy period of my life? The most important answer is that Henry, the ginger cat I rescued one night after someone’s car had hit him on a busy road, turned out to be one of the sweetest creatures ever. Oh, he hissed and spat at the beginning and hid under my spare room bed for six months. But when he finally began to trust ...