If you passed by Chris Arsenault’s home, in Medford, New York, and saw the 300 cats living there, you’d probably consider the 58-year-old retired train conductor a crazy cat person, but that’s only because you don’t know his history with them.
In the summer of 2006, about two months after Arsenault lost his son Eric, 24, in a motorcycle accident, the train conductor found a colony of young cats by some train tracks, in Long Island. There were over two dozen kittens, and Chris knew just by looking at them that if he left them there they would die. So he took them all home, doctored them back to health, fed them and gave them a home. They in turn helped the mourning father deal with the pain of losing his son.