It was Christmas Eve of 2006 when a rescuer brought me to Cat-Dad's home, cold, starved, and sick. I'd been forced to make my way on the streets, but at five months old, was entirely too young to be out on my own. While much of my past remains vague, I will never forget how that night Cat-Dad held my body close to his to warm its sickly frame. He told me I was a beautiful Christmas angel fallen from the sky, and that certainly I must have come to him on a very special mission. He called me Noel, meaning "new birth", and promised that I would live.
Six months of daily medications and care were required for me to recover from that near fatal pneumonia and starvation, and to this day I still carry the signs - blindness in one eye; a chronic sneeze from scarring in my nasal passages; loss of teeth from the severe stomatitis. Even now at two years old, I weigh only five pounds, instead of ten like other adult females.
I recount my story as the opening of Project Compassion, a new feature for Cat-Dad Enterprises, to underscore the task that feline rescue/foster homes across this country - and indeed the world - have each accepted. These special humans (sometimes along with a feline helper) open their hearts and homes to helping cats and kittens like me because of their heightened sense of compassion, often turning their home into part medical clinic and part half-way house. As Head of the Division of Rescue Operations for Cat-Dad Enterprises, my first task will be to explore this characteristic of compassion in all its manifestations.
For this initial posting, I will end with the definition of the word according to Webster's Dictionary. "Compassion," he says, "is a sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with the desire to alleviate it." Since I came to this home, I have personally been the recipient of much compassion. Now, in choosing to devote my life to help alleviate the pain of others, I know that Christmas night I was reborn for this special mission. To me and to Cat-Dad both, the reason why I survived is clear.
I invite you all to join me in this journey of exploration.
With love for all,
Noel
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Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
– Albert Schweitzer
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