My kitty Pippin is the product of a foster failure not long after I started volunteering with a shelter. After living in a dumpster behind a restaurant for the first year of his life, he is now my super spoiled lap cat. Whether he's helping me cook as Chef Le Pip, singing opera outside my door at 6 am, making biscuits on my face at night, or wrestling with his best friend Max, he's never alone and always loved. When I see his little clipped ear I am reminded how lucky I am he's alive.

That I let him play with ice! He always come running when the freezer opens, so I give him two ice cubes in his water bowl to play with. It's our secret! He's my little polar cat!