Firemen finally found her and realized what had happened. Much of her body had been burned in the course of getting her kittens out. She was taken to the local animal shelter and separated from her kittens because she could not feed them due to her burns. After a local TV station featured her tale of heroism, the shelter received over 10,000 calls from people wanting to adopt her. A week later, she was reintroduced to her kittens and the joyful reunion was broadcast across the nation. Scarlett had her kittens back at last and she licked each youngster in turn, purring happily. One of her fireman rescuers who had dropped by to visit said, “Just to see her do that same head count almost made me cry.”
Because mother dolphins nurse their young for so long—eighteen months or about as long as human mothers nurse—the mother-child bond is very strong. Many times a dolphin will not desert another dolphin who is in trouble even if it costs them their own life. When infant dolphins are trapped in tuna nets, their mothers will try desperately to join them. Then the mothers will cuddle close to their babies and sing to them as they both drown. The tuna industry's official acknowledgment of this remarkable phenomenon is that most of the dolphins killed are mothers and infants. Although they are an improvement, even the “dolphin-safe” nets used to catch tuna continue to kill dolphins.
Aman raised a pet deer that, when young, was so tame it even liked to ride in the car with him like a dog. During the hunting season they would pass other cars full of hunters whose startled gazes the deer would placidly return.
The same deer, when it was a bit older, once came upon a lost deer hunter in the woods. The hunter, completely disoriented, was startled by the deer's friendliness—it trotted right up to him, obviously tame. Figuring he had nothing to lose, the hunter decided to follow the deer. Sure enough, the deer led the man back to his house where someone opened the door. The deer casually walked into the house.
The deer's human guardian gave directions to the now thoroughly abashed hunter, while the deer that had guided him to safety fell asleep on the couch.
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between dog and man.”
—Mark Twain
Atwelve-year-old boy, Rheal Guindon, had gone on a fishing trip with his parents to Ontario, Canada, where they enjoyed camping out. The lake was in a remote area and there was no one else around. The nearest town was miles away.
One day, Rheal stayed on shore while his parents took a boat out on the lake to catch some fish. As he watched from the shore, his parents' boat suddenly overturned. They struggled in the water and before their son's eyes began to drown. He had no idea how to help them and could only watch helplessly, shouting desperately from the shore. Then their frantic cries ceased and all was silent.
Grieving, the boy numbly tried to walk to the safety of a distant town but the sun was setting. Terrified, he realized he had to face a night alone in the woods. As night fell, he lay down on the freezing earth, weeping and shivering.
Suddenly, as if an angel had heard his cries, he felt a furry body press against him. Rheal couldn't tell what it was, perhaps a dog, but just being next to something warm and breathing helped to ease his pain. He put his arm around the animal and, consoling himself in its warmth and closeness, fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke up to find three wild beavers huddled against him and across his body. They had kept him from freezing to death during the night when the temperature had fallen below zero.
Saint Bernards have been performing rescue work for at least three centuries and have saved thousands of lives. They have wide, almost weblike toes that enable them to walk on snowdrifts up to sixty feet deep. Saint Bernard dogs often travel in packs when doing their rescue work. When they find a fallen traveler, two dogs will lie down, one on either side of the traveler's body to warm him while a third licks his face to awaken him. A fourth dog goes for help to guide a rescue party to the location.
One day a half-starved puppy wandered through the gates of the maximum security prison Sing Sing. He was so undernourished that the fur hung off his body; he looked as if he were wearing poor and ill-fitting clothing. Named “Rags” because of his appearance, he was an instant hit with the inmates, who saved food from their meager meals for him. The men of Sing Sing often had no friends or family who cared to write to them, and they felt abandoned and alone. Rags became a true friend to many, and he loved all of the prisoners. And yet, Rags was aloof to the warden and his family, and he growled at all the guards. He would exercise with the prisoners, and when they had softball games, Rags would bark madly and run around the field with glee.
Every night Rags would leave the prison and return in the morning. Every night but one. This time Rags followed a prisoner to his cell and kept vigil there all night. The next morning, the prisoner confessed to his fellow inmates; “That dog just saved my life.” For when his parole had been denied, the man had decided to end his life. Yet every time he's move to wind the bedsheets to hang himself, Rags would softly growl outside his cell. Knowing that if he continued, Rags would bark and alert the guards, the prisoner was unable to act on his plan. At last he realized that there was someone who really cared if he lived or died—Rags. Secure in this knowledge, he had gratefully chosen to live.
“I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings.”
—German pacifist Edgar Kupfer, imprisoned by the Nazis for his beliefs, writing secretly from his hospital bed in Dachau
Toto was a tame chimpanzee and longtime companion of Mr. Cherry Kearton. When Cherry fell desperately ill with malaria, Toto sat up with him day and night. As Cherry grew weaker, Toto learned to bring a glass of quinine, the medicine needed to control the disease, to his friend.
While he was recovering but before he could rise from his bed, Cherry would signal Toto that he wanted to read. Toto learned to put a finger on each book on the shelf until the man said “Yes.” Then the chimpanzee would pull the indicated book out of the shelf and carry it over to his patient. Sometimes, when Cherry fell asleep with his boots on, Toto removed them for him.
In 1925, Cherry wrote: “It may be that some who read this book will say that friendship between a man and an ape is absurd, and that Toto being ‘only an animal’ cannot really have felt the feelings that I attribute to him. They would not say it if they had felt his tenderness and seen his care as I felt and saw it at that time. He was entirely lovable.”
Scientists have found that rhesus monkeys refuse to pull the levers that deliver their food pellets when they see that pulling the lever also delivers an electric shock to a fellow monkey.
Acanary and a cat grew up together and became close friends. They would play together and when the cat slept, the canary perched on his belly. None of the typical cat-bird animosity existed between them.
Joan, their owner, came home one day to find her canary dead on the floor. Convinced that her cat had finally succumbed to instinct and killed her canary, Joan screamed furiously at the cat sitting nearby and tried to swat her but the cat dashed out the door.
Later, on examining the bird, Joan realized that it had simply died of old age; there were no teeth marks, no sign of attack whatsoever. Guiltily, she called for her cat but the falsely accused animal would not return.
The cat's habit was to come home every evening by eight o'clock, but this time she did not appear. As the hours passed, the woman grew more and more concerned.
Finally at midnight, to her great relief, she heard a scratching at the door. When she opened the door, there was the cat on the threshold, delicately holding a live fledgling in her mouth.