Cat Power

I knew that my daughter would bond with these kittens they had the same condition she did. But I never imagined how they would change our lives

- By MICHELE CLOCK Exeter, New Hampshire

JUST LIKE US Michele, daughter Bayleigh and their cats have something in common.

It was the ski trip that did it. I had taken my 11-year-old daughter, Bayleigh, to a Special Olympics Winter Games event at a ski resort here in New Hampshire. Bayleigh has cerebral palsy and had been skiing with an adaptive ski program since she was four. We enjoyed skiing together, and I thought she would have fun at the games. But her anxiety got the better of her. Despite my coaxing and encouragement, she wouldn't leave our cabin the entire time. It made me sad to see her missing out on not only some great skiing but also making new friends.

I went home convinced that I had to do something to make Bayleigh face her fears. I fought fiercely for my daughter when people put limitations on her. In fact, I'd been known to go full-on mama bear in her defense, maybe because I was a single mom and didn't trust anyone else to look out for my little girl. Still I understood that if she never stepped out from under my protection, she would never grow. Sometimes a person needs to be pushed in order to overcome a challenge and make a breakthrough.

I'd seen that in my work as a speech pathologist and in my own journey learning to live with a visual impairment from a traumatic brain injury I'd sustained years ago in a car accident.

Why not use Bayleigh's love of animals as motivation? We'd been looking for a friend for our cat, Chloe, ever since our other cat died several months earlier. Now I shifted my search to adopting from another state, one far enough away that we would have to take a plane to pick up our new pet. Bayleigh was afraid of flying, going to unfamiliar places and meeting new people. If she wanted another kitty, she'd have to do all those things.