For years I had heard about a very special couple that owned a wonderful cat kennel up on Tano Road. Out of curiosity, one day I decided to take a drive and find them. Dawn and Paul Bick gave me a tour of the delightful facility. In sharing with them about my book, they smiled and mentioned that they sleep with four cats and four dogs! I said, “No way! How is that possible? I gotta see this. Will you be in my book?” I came back early the following Sunday morning. As I carried in the ladder, my lights and cameras, the dogs jumped off the bed and came charging to the front door. By the time I set up everything, all had settled back in bed except for one cat, Pookie, who has his own individual portrait because he was totally uninterested in being in a group shot. Paul has always been the dog person and Dawn the cat person. In bed, it’s the opposite. All the dogs tend to get on Dawn’s side of the bed and all the cats on Paul’s side, which means that Dawn has no room because the dogs are much bigger than the cats. I asked, “So how does this work at night? How do you coordinate this?” “When we go to bed at night,” said Dawn, “they all hop up and get their spots. If I get up for any reason in the middle of the night, I lose my spot. It’s that simple. The second I’m out of the bed, Cocoa, a chocolate lab, will put her head on my pillow and that’s it. I have no other space. Then, to make matters more complex, Pookie, and sometimes Leroy, the black cat, will awaken me with unbelievably loud purring as they sleep right near my head.” I asked if they had planned on having eight animals sleeping with them. “No, we never intended that. They’re all foundlings. We’ve never purchased an animal.” Since the shoot, Miss Coors, one of the cats, has died. Dawn said about Miss Coors, “She was my real bed buddy. I adored her the most; she was the lap cat of the group.” Even though Miss Coors has died, there are still eight animals on the bed; after her death, they acquired one of the downstairs kennel cats. For five years, Dawn and Paul lived in Houston and ran a cat kennel called The Cat’s Pajamas. They were also both working full time as professional librarians at a medical school, but were tired of the beauracracy and politics. They took books out of the library on how to run their own small business. In the listing of what to do and how to do it, one suggestion was to look around and see what your interests were. As Dawn said, “So I stood in my house and looked around and said, ‘I see cats. I see cats. I see cats.’” Shortly afterwards, they were visiting Santa Fe on vacation. Someone suggested they visit the cat kennel lady up on Tano Road. First thing out of her mouth was, “It’s really nice to meet you and, I should tell you up front, we just put this place on the market.” It was perfect timing. Dawn looked at Paul and said, “This is a no-brainer.” So they moved right into the existing set-up. Animals are their whole life. Dawn said, “All the pets we’ve ever had have been rescued. We both grew up with pets. They’re our friends, they’re our companions. And it’s how we serve. Other people care for children or the elderly; I think about this as what I do in my life to take care of the welfare of another living creature. And they’re so much fun – a constant source of amusement.”