No gambler in his right mind would have laid a cent on either of them. But then, most gamblers are not in their right minds, and the gods make sport of our sport. Still, the odds were long, and too many others who went down that path died before their time, executed for the crime of suffering, or withering away in confinement.

She left home before puberty. Lost, stolen or strayed, she would never say, and no one ever cared enough to look into it. The authorities nabbed her for the crime of being outside in bad weather, and put her in a cage too small for her nature, with bars on the door, a place to crap, and two standardised meals a day. Before long, she developed a cold that would not go away. She lost weight, her hair fell out in clumps, and the few who paid attention shook their heads silently and prepared for an end.

He was born to the purple, pedigreed to rival royalty, handsome and cultured. A silver spoon was the least of his estate: he had no need to care for himself; others did everything for him. All the pleasures of life were his, and he grew to his prime surrounded by adoring females and willing servants. It was just as well, because he was not very healthy -- along with the rights of his descent came a complex of physical handicaps that made it hard to breathe and troubled his vision.

But something went wrong. He never understood: although civilised and loving, he was not the best mind of his generation. One day, he was flung into a box, the box was sealed and he was transported far from everything he knew, and abandoned.

Fortunately, someone found him. Not knowing who he was, they handed him over to the authorities, the same authorities that had taken her, and he ended up in the same kind of cell, with the same basic facilities and diet.

Since she would not reveal her name, one of the warders dubbed her Parker Posey, after an actress of the time who was known for her work in independent film. It suited her, so no one tried to change it. They didn't bother to name him anything. Maybe they were too busy: there was always more work to do in the institution than there was staff to do it. maybe they shrank from trying to find a name to fit his beauty. Maybe they feared to name someone so clearly unlikely to survive long in the institution. Whatever the reason, he sat, nameless, behind bars, wondering what would happen next.

I met them both in the institution. I'm the one who takes the photos of the inmates for the record. It's a good gig for someone like me: it satisfies my prurient interest in the inmates without requiring me to get involved too deeply in their fates.

Or so I thought when I agreed to do the job. That was before I met Gus-gus and The Posey.

She was definitely hitting puberty the day I brought her into my cramped little workspace. Or maybe it was hitting her. If I had published any of the shots she gave me, I could have been charged with peddling soft porn. She took to the camera like a celebrity of the demi-monde, stretching and posing with the langour of an Edwardian courtesan. She went back to the bars, but she stayed with me too. I kept thinking of her striking looks, her sleek elegance, her likely fate.

He turned up later. Easy to photograph, as if he had been through it all before, he settled into place and looked at me with a vague scowl. It was not his nature to pose, to plead, to attempt influence. His was the instinctive dignity of breeding, and he would not abandon it though it meant his life.

What can I say? I am not, by nature, a do-gooder. Too much of my childhood was blighted by the destructive interference of the well-intentioned, and grief has made me wary of connection.

Still, I took them home, one at a time, six months apart.

She came first: it was only supposed to be temporary, just long enough for her to get her health back. I guess she didn't understand that: within minutes, it was clear that she had no intention of leaving. Despite my vow never to allow another in my life, I could not refuse her. I spoke to the authorities, paid the costs, and became her legal guardian.

Not that she showed gratitude: she took over the house and made everything in it hers. If she was hungry, nothing would do but that I feed her now, even if now was 4:30 in the morning. I made her a place in my bed, but she refused to occupy it: to her, the night was for dancing, and if I would not join her, then she would dance for herself, and if it kept me awake, tough. Any expectations I might have had about cuddles, affection, even simple conversation, were my problem.

With him it was different. From the moment I saw his face, pale and round, clear blue eyes gazing from behind the bars, I was lost. Oh, I tried to resist, but in vain. Maybe I was weakened by my unrequited expectations of Ms. Posey. Maybe I was just another in a series of victims of his charm. Whatever it was, when I overheard the staff discussing his possible fates, few positive, I could not stand idly by.

Again, I spoke to the authorities, emptied the wallet and took over legal guardianship. Since no one had given him a name and he did not seem to remember his own, I called him The August Personage of Jade, after the Taoist Emperor of Heaven. I thought I was being clever.

It was my fault they met.

I had hoped, below consciousness, that even if I could not influence her attitudes, she might learn more civilised ways from him, perhaps even come to see that returning my affection was not entirly beyond the realm of possibility. I made the foolish assumption that, being a young female of doubtful parentage and dubious background, she would be weak for an older, better looking male.

I should have known better.

He fell under her influence from the moment they met. Not that she encouraged him, at least, not at first. He followed her around: she rounded on him and snarled that he should get out of her face. He tried to touch her: she bopped him one between the eyes. He reclined mournfully on a sofa or chair: she appeared out of nowhere to wallop him and run off before his head had stopped spinning.

Maybe, now that I think of it, it was love at first sight.

After a few days of courtship in that manner, they settled down to serious troublemaking. Far from teaching her more genteel ways, he began to pick up her habits. Now there were two voices demanding breakfast before dawn, two partiers galloping around the house while I was trying to sleep, two protestations of innocence when I demanded to know who was responsible for the latest outrage.

Pretty soon he wasn't any kind of August Personage, and she had lost her veneer of independence. They had become Gus-gus and The Midnight Posey, the Happy Hooligans. As is often the case with the semi-criminals of the demimonde, she is the brains of the operation. He supplies the muscle, protects her back, and takes the fall when need be. Things impossible to one become likely with two: what she can conceive, he has to power to execute.

At least there's no sex involved. Oh, he tried, but she set him straight in a hurry and, now that enough time has elapsed since their operations, they have lost the urge.

Where does that leave me? I'm the one who cleans up the mess, upgrades the security, makes the apologies.

I'm the one that catches sight of them, heads together in the hammock, plotting, and understands, just for a moment, the nature of love.

The shelter where I fell under the spells of Gus-gus and The Posey, handles over 12,000 animals a year, and it is by no means the biggest in the country. It is understaffed, underfunded and overfilled. On any given day, people will bring in lost, stolen, strayed or injured animals, or surrender their own animals for reasons ranging from the heartbreaking to the outrageous: it is hard to know who is more callous -- the woman who surrenders her middle-aged dog because she is going to the cottage for two weeks and doesn't want to take her, or the uncounted assholes who move out of their apartments and just leave the cat locked in it for the landlord to deal with whenever s/he finally gets there. The by-law enforcement people add to the population by rescuing injured or abused animals and bringing them to the shelter in hopes they can be rehabilitated and given a second chance.

Then there are the cowards who haven't the courage to face their own actions: they just dump their animals from a car, or at a park or a farm: there's a farm near the highway that gets so many abandoned cats they schedule a regular run to the shelter as part of their weekly planning. Others box their animal up and abandon it in a park, a parking lot, or throw it in a dumpster. No, I am not making that up. One day, as I was passing the shelter desk, I overheard a conversation between the staff and a young girl bringing in a puppy. It was the sweetest little female, about two weeks old, looking distinctly dubious about the whole procedure. It was also the fortunate one of five -- the girl had found it alive among the bodies in a dumpster behind a mall.

That's just the day-to-day. It says nothing about the burned cats, emaciated dogs, the filthy, the neglected, the tortured.

It's not a no-kill shelter, because sometimes, too often, the kindest thing the staff can do for their charges is to end their suffering as quickly and humanely as possible.

So, while this story has a happy ending, there are others, too many, that do not. There are others, too many, that start in terror and end in agony.

Remember that when you are changing apartments and your prospective landlord tells you your cat is not acceptable: wouldn't you rather rent somewhere else?

Remember that when you decide you just have to run into the store for a few items, and the dog can wait in the car. Do you really want a police officer breaking the window to rescue him?

Remember that, the next time you are tempted to throw something at that scrawny cat that howls outside the window at night, or kick the dog that tries to get into your garbage. Or to leave it to someone else to do something about your neighbours' dog, tied in the yard without food or water for days at a time, or about the weird kid from down the block that talks about killing small animals.

Remember that when you are thinking of getting a cute little kitten or bunny for your own child. Or when you get that donation solicitation from the local shelter.

It doesn't take much to change an ending. Anyone can do it.

That includes you.

One ending. Is that so much to ask?

The alternative is too terrible to contemplate.

Postscript1: It became clear early on that Gus-gus needed an operation if he was not to lose his sight. Like many of his breed, his eyes are pressed so hard against his skull that the lids fold in and the fur scratches his eyes. The eyes were so ulcerated and infected that it took months to get them ready for the operation. The day he went in was the first time since they met that he and The Posey were separated.

Gus-gus has a favourite toy ball. He plays with it, he cuddles it, he carries it around in his mouth all over the house. Sometimes he drops it at my feet so I can throw it for him -- he's the only cat I know that likes to play Fetch. I throw this chewed up mass of fabric -- soggy with cat spit -- down the hall and it lands with a pronounced splut. He runs after it, grabs it on the fly and runs back so I can do it again. It's a disgusting, macerated mess, but Gus-gus loves his ball.

When I brought him home that evening, The Posey was all over him, sniffing his face, checking out the plastic collar from the hospital, cleaning his chin where he had drooled while he was under. He was pretty groggy, his eyelids swollen almost shut from the cutting.

My eyes were wide open though, when The Posey ran up the stairs and came back with Gus-gus' ball. Extending her face carefully inside the cone, she put it in his mouth.

I don't know exactly what happened next. I was having a little trouble with my eyes just then...

Postscript2: There's three of them now. My husband got posted to a country where the problems faced by animals don't bear telling in polite company. Naturally, because of my experience back home, I got dragooned into trying to help.

It's a slog. The yard is full of dogs, rescued from garbage cans, torture, poisoning, starvation, in various stages of rehabilitation. The house is full of cats. I won't talk about what people here do to cats.

There's a sad little cemetery along the garden walls for the ones that don't make it.

And then there's Smokey Joe. Smokey Joe came here as a kitten, with a broken hind leg and what seemed like terminal diarrhea and vomitting. Despite what should have been a one way ticket to the garden wall, he managed somehow to stay alive long enough for the vets to discover that he had a severe food allergy -- severe for a cat: he's allergic to all kinds of animal protein.

In fact, there is only one food in the world he can eat. My Sister-in-Law, bless her soft heart, sends it from home.

So now there are three hooligans, Gus-gus, The Midnight Posey, and a small white and black smoke, elegant and lean, dancing in the moonlight, arguing about food dishes, and draping themselves photogenically across the window sills and the furniture. Three voices engaging in late night yodelling contests. Three innocent faces turned to me over the broken crockery.

I wonder, how did we all get so lucky?

I wonder, what will you do when you are asked for that happy ending?