By Mike Tramuta

A few months back, I wrote an article on compassion in chemical dependency counseling and how it affected our clients. This article has a slightly different take dealing with animals, namely cats.

In our house, we had raised cats by the name of Bebe, Brody and Macy. They became members of our family and we were happy to have them. As each one grew and then passed on, we felt the loss of animals that were devoted to us and each other. Thus after Macy passed on, my wife, Karen and myself stated that we were done raising cats because the losses were hard to deal with. Anyone who has had animals and become attached to them, knows what I mean.

Thus what happened next was totally unexpected. On a Saturday night where we were finally able to go to dinner with my son and daughter-in-law in Olean, we were walking up our driveway as we arrived home, I noticed something by the side of our chimney. I said to my wife, “what’s that?” She knew right away and returned back, “a newborn kitten, by himself, with the umbilical cord still attached, abandoned by its mother for some reason.”

She picked him up and he looked very frail and pale. He fit in my palm with room to spare.

Thus, this was how our adventure with compassion began. We brought the baby kitten into the house and sat there and looked at each other with blank stares. Neither one of us had ever dealt with or seen anything this small. Thus, we both got on the telephone and called around as to what we should do to help this little creature stay alive. From the information we received, it appeared that if he was not fed in the next 12 hours, that he would die. The type of milk that he would need came from the drugstore. It was also suggested that an eyedropper be used to feed him. Karen went to the drugstore to get what we needed.

Watching her feed this helpless little baby that had done nothing to deserve this, reminded me of the many clients that had been abandoned mentally, physically and spiritually. Many of them were never rescued or cared for. As we began our search to help, it was amazing the kindness and compassion we found,

One family had a mother cat that was nursing five kittens, and had room for another. This was information provided by the Humane Society. This kitten weighed three ounces at birth, but had no mother and no means of obtaining food except for a caretaker. They took our cat in, and as of the other day, he was up to almost a pound and filling in daily,

After staying in touch with the people at the Humane Society and the people helping the kitten grow, we have decided to adopt this little kitten. It is probably the last thing that people of our ages do, but this little kitten has touched our heart strings. My point in writing this article on compassion was that the main theme of REBT is “treat others the way you would want to be treated” and these acts of kindness happen every day.

See TRAMUTA, Page D6

In CD counseling, many times we have told our clients “find random acts of kindness and them use them to better your life.”

Will adopting a homeless cat make our life better? We feel it will. God works in strange ways and His ways are often not man’s ways. If I were this cat I would hope that I would have met people that I have introduced you to in this article.

Mike Tramuta has been a CASAC counselor for more than 30 years. Call 983-1592 for more information.