Deni loved animals, having been raised with two Great Danes. When I first met Deni in the late '60s, she was keeping a Seeing Eye German Shepherd female between litters. Soon after we moved to Maryland we got Natasha, a huge German Shepherd trained as a guard dog, and Miss Mocha, a cockapoo, to keep Natasha company. Natasha was followed by Elke, a long-haired German Shepherd puppy Deni raised and trained to receive a Companion Dog certificate before she was one year old, which is almost unheard of. Shortly after, we got her brother Klaus from a different litter, who, while very large and very gentle, was almost untrainable—eventually Deni discovered he could learn by having him watch her train Elke!

Her interest in cats began when we lived on a half-acre in Potomac MD, and our backyard neighbor had a promiscuous momma cat—thus, lots of kittens. The first was Q-Tips, because he was gray with some tiny white tufts around his neck. Michelle Stratton, Deni's daughter whom we raised, brought him home one day with an "Oh, can we keep him? Please? Please? I'll take care of him". And Deni liked him, and he was terribly cute. Hard to fight all that, even though I wasn't much of a cat-lover.