It’s always cruel to abandon an eight-week-old kitten. Sometimes it crosses the line to sadistic. By the time nearly dehydrated Chloe made it to the shelter, on a 90-plus-degree day, the fit-in-a woman’s-palm calico had excruciating asphalt burns on her paws and whiskers. Chloe must have been abandoned to toddle down a scorching highway.

Yet, after the shelter staff gently removed scorched-on asphalt from Chloe’s tender paw pads and sensitive whiskers, she began to act like a kitten. Now her tiny paws are healed enough to appreciate her bed, probably the first anyone ever gave her.

Chloe deserves a softer, kinder, fairer life from now on. She’s young enough to forget, except, perhaps, in her nightmares, what she’s suffered. She’s ready to focus on love.