Julian’s hands shook as he clasped Jennifer’s tightly. A crushing wave of regret bore down on him. The warning signs had been there all along—signs that might have kept their daughter safe. The weight of responsibility pressed hard, and he could not shake the belief that he had failed in the one duty that mattered most: protecting her.
Yet what he had overlooked, their cat Whiskers had not. The pet they once dismissed as unpredictable and aggressive had, in truth, been acting out of fierce devotion. Each strange behavior, each unsettling cry, had been a shield they did not recognize. Julian flinched at the memory of nearly surrendering Whiskers to a shelter, ashamed of how gravely he had misjudged him.
Their remorse was briefly interrupted when a police officer commended the cat’s vigilance. The praise stung, for it highlighted how much worse things could have turned out. Slowly, however, Julian understood the truth: Whiskers had not been misbehaving. He had been standing guard.
From the moment Jennifer became pregnant, Whiskers’ behavior shifted. What should have been a season of joy—the long-awaited dream of becoming parents—was instead shadowed by unease. They had heard of cats rejecting newborns, and the thought of losing Whiskers, their first “child,” was unbearable. Yet in their hearts, they feared that decision might soon be unavoidable.