The first time Rudy laid eyes on Topa, he knew instinctively she was his dog. And now, lying in a tunnel in a rubble pile, he hoped Topa felt the same way.

Driving back to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, after the shooting, Ivy was scared....She didn’t know how to navigate the road ahead—the school’s plans for reopening seemed haphazard at best—but she knew Luigi would be there to help. That would have to be enough.

“Who is going to adopt that dog?” thought Stephanie, a volunteer at Animal Farm Foundation in upstate New York. Whatever had happened to Sherryl before the shelter was written all over body. “She wore her story,” says Stephanie. “She didn’t need to tell you.” 

Gabriel Spera’s poem from the perspective of a cat spirit comforting people in mourning, for Mutual Rescue’s memorial montage “Silent Paws.”

I made my way to the little blue “cat house” in Chicago’s Bowmanville neighborhood. As I walked in, a couple of dozen cats came racing to the door to greet me. One of these cats was Crackle. Little did I know this sweet little boy would become my best friend in time.

Gabriel Spera’s poem from the perspective of a cat spirit comforting people in mourning, for Mutual Rescue’s memorial montage “Silent Paws.”

Tight situations and evaluating risk are something Mike Merrill is accustomed to—from his ten years in the Army and decades in Silicon Valley startups to his work evacuating animals from natural disasters, and now from a war zone.

The Ukrainians Alexandra Sava meets in Romania tell her stories, so many stories. People who refused to leave Ukraine without their pets. Those forced to flee without them, begging her to find help for their animals back in Ukraine.