Adoption coordinator, Barbara Bates, was there with her camera the moment Iona and Edward the cat, met. “I said, ‘Iona, do you mind if I take your picture?’ And she said, ‘Honey, I sure hope I don’t break your camera.'”

She definitely didn’t break the camera – far from it:

Iona’s cat had recently passed away, so she and her son took a little road trip to the Montgomery County Animal Shelter in Conroe, Texas.

“I’d had him for 10 years,” says Iona,”I needed a companion.” As soon as she saw Edward, he won her over. “The way he cuddled upon my shoulder reminded me of the cat I’d just lost,” she says.

Iona has always loved cats and she even says that one of her favorite memories as a young girl is a picture as a teenager with a cat on her family farm. She’d been out milking the cows and somehow a bucket tipped over. The photo captured her and a delighted kitten enjoying the delicious spillage.

Bates had no reservations in assisting Iona in adopting Edward. Iona’s son even promised that should anything happen to his mother, Edward would remain part of the family. “My photo tells me Edward immediately sensed that Iona had lots of love and security to offer him,” she says.

“To me, an animal gives you life, that a person can’t, or material things can’t,” Bates says. “You come home from a stressful day, and they want to kiss on you. It just makes everything bad go away. So it just touched my heart. And I’m just glad that what I felt came out in the photo.”