Family Dog

I’m Ryan, 19, and my hands are still shaking as I write this. For a long time, life was simple—my mom, Melissa, loved me fiercely. Before breast cancer took her when I was nine, she set up a $25,000 trust for me to receive at eighteen. “College, a first place—something that makes you proud,” she…

Cats are the ultimate con artists of the animal kingdom. They sauntered into human life around 9,000 years ago in the Near East, not because they loved us, but because we were sloppy with grain and therefore rich in mice. One clever feline looked at our rodent problem, looked at our warm laps, and basically…