Beth Stern Introduces Her and Howard's Family Pets

"There was a cat that was found pregnant walking around a junkyard, it may have been somewhere in New York, and brought to a municipal shelter; this pregnant cat was about to be euthanized. North Shore Animal League rescued her, and she gave birth at North Shore Animal League to four kittens. She was a wonderful mother, and we soon found out she was blind, but a wonderful mother to her kittens.

"Once her kittens had enough of her nurturing — after five weeks they can be separated from the mother — I took her babies, fostered them, and found wonderful homes for them. Then I went back, and I picked up the momma. She was a foster of ours. I took her to many eye specialists, and she had to have one of her eyes removed. She can detect shadows out of the existing eye, but she is definitely blind.

"It came to the point where I felt she was ready to go, and I remember having dinner with my husband, and he looked at me and said, 'Bella's not going anywhere, is she?' And I said no. She was a foster failure, and she's been with us for two years now. She is my love. She is a wonderful cat."

"I like to go to the shelter and grab a cat that has been in the shelter a long time, an adult. I grabbed this big mess of a cat; he was really skinny and was completely shaved. I brought him home to foster and took him to the vet, where the vet told me he was in heart failure and that he had three to six months to live. Hearing that news, Howard and I adopted him immediately, and we said we were going to love him until his last breath.

"Soon after Yoda — Howard named him Yoda — soon after we adopted him, we had a brand new litter of kittens in the foster room. One day Yoda followed me into the foster room, and something magical happened. He entered the room and he started taking over as the foster papa to all of the babies. He started grooming them, he made sure they would eat, he would reprimand them if they were being bad. If they left the foster room, he would get on his hind legs and corral them back in.

"Over the course of a few months, I had to continually take him to the vet. His heart was getting stronger and stronger. Now a year later, he has no detection of having any type of problem with his heart. It is completely gone. He is a medical miracle and I truly believe love and purpose healed his heart."