Barbara Garcia took shelter in her bathroom during the tornado; when she emerged, her home had been leveled and her beloved dog was missing. While recounting her ordeal to CBS News' Anna Werner, Garcia discovered her dog, alive and well, among the rubble.

Their happy reunion was captured live.

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I recently visited my best friend from college -- we had not seen each other in three years and have been talking over Skype on a weekly basis until now. She is getting married on Friday to a monster I had the great displeasure of meeting this last week. On the first morning I was with her at her house, I noticed her 1-year-old dog had a problem with her eye, ear and back. I asked what happened and she responded, "I'm not going to lie, my fiancé beat the shit out of her."

I was in shock. I didn't know what to say to her until later in the afternoon when I said I was very concerned for her safety. She shrugged me off and said he has never been bad to her, he is very stressed at work, and then said, "That's what battered women say, right?" When the violence occurred, she was not home -- when she came home and found her dog blinded on one side and more than likely bleeding internally, she did not take her to the vet. Instead, she told her fiancé that if he ever hit the dog again, she would be gone. She has been afraid to seek help for the dog, who is obviously suffering.

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I love your column, and I have a problem. Actually, my best friend has a problem and it's about his cat.

My friend lives on a disability pension, so has no extra cash for luxuries. His cat, less than 5 years old, is getting tumors under the skin. So far this year, my friend and his roommate have spent about $2,800 for two separate operations for the cat.

In my mind, this is crazy, but I don't know what to say to my friend that will help him see clearly the hopelessness of this situation and the madness of going into crazy debt for the sake of a year or two of life for a cat.

Don't get me wrong, I love this cat, but if he were mine, I would have him live until he was no longer comfortable, then have him put down.

What would you say to me or my friend?

Thanks,

Jim

Dear Jim,

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It began when I took my dog to the veterinary clinic where my wife works. At the time she was still in vet school and I was a first-time pet owner who’d chosen to spend most of my adult life responsible solely for my own fun and convenience. Archie, my dog, represented my first, hesitant step toward maturity. “He has a tick and I don’t know how to remove it,” I said to my future wife. Thankfully she pitied me, removed the tick, and thought I was cute enough to date. Three years later we got married with our dogs among the witnesses.

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Rereading Scott O'Dell's "The Island of the Blue Dolphins" (every bit as great as you remember it being) for a book group, I'd loved the main character's dog, Rontu. Rontu, in turn, reminded me of several other notable literary canines, particularly the intrepid fox terrier, Montmorency, from Jerome K. Jerome's comic classic, "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)." Why, I wondered, are dogs more endearing and amusing in novels while cats claim precedence in Web videos, captioned photos and GIFs?

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Just yesterday, my cat died. I know that will probably not sound like a big deal to many of your readers, but it is monumental in my world. He was not just any cat. He was the kitten I was tasked with caring for when he was less than a week old. His eyes weren't even open yet, and he had been abandoned in the dog toy aisle of a PetSmart. I was working at the vet clinic next door, and was planning on adopting another dog. I was allergic to cats. I said I'd foster him for two weeks ... and up until yesterday, I would follow that sentence by saying, "and almost eight years later, I have a cat." Now there is nothing but hurt.

I bottle-fed him every two hours, and I made him pee and poo. He had no mother, and I have never been anyone's mother ... nor will I ever be. Except his. I taught him how to use a litter box, and I taught him and my dog to get along. On his own, he learned to sit in response to both voice and hand signals, just by watching the dog. He would come when called, and one day he decided to walk on a leash because he simply didn't want to be left behind when we took the dog out.

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We are here because Tova began pacing my apartment, her tongue shooting out of her snout; she worked her jaws and licked the air. The vet tech who answered the phone, the same one who hands Poochie’s owner a leash and collar with a heart-shaped tag, told me to bring her in right away: “It could be gastric torsion.” Gastric torsion: The belly, swollen with gas, crushes the diaphragm, pinches blood from the heart. It could kill my sweet girl—the one who finally wakes me with head-butts and nuzzling after the alarm has gone off; the one who dances when my key turns in the door—within an hour.

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That's how much the National Retail Federation estimates we will shell out this year for our dogs, cats, "fish, horses and small animals." I'd say that it's all well and good, but don't expect them to reciprocate with so much as a card -- except that over the past few years, I've noticed a creeping new segment of the card shop rack devoted to none other than "From Cat" greetings.

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Dennis Murawska, 59, said a pet chicken named Cluck Cluck woke his wife Susan Cotey, 52, with loud clucking from its cage in the basement two floors below about 6:15 a.m. Thursday. The couple's two cats also were running around the main floor.

Murawska said he had been half awake but didn't know about the fire because the smoke alarms hadn't gone off. He realized something was wrong when his wife got up.

"The chicken gets quite vocal when she gets excited," he said.

Cluck Cluck came from a nearby farm in Alma Center, about 135 miles east of Minneapolis, Murawska said. When the chicken began wandering over to his house, his neighbor said he could kill it because it wasn't producing any eggs. But Murawska felt sorry for Cluck Cluck because she had a mutated foot and decided to keep her. He fed the bird and built a coop, and then his wife let Cluck Cluck into the basement on cold nights.

"I spent way more money than I ever should've," Murawska said by telephone. "I guess it paid off."

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Lou Wegner, a 16-year-old actor and singer from Columbus, Ohio, started Kids Against Animal Cruelty when he was 14. The organization, which uses social networking to encourage adoptions at high-kill animal shelters, has helped 20,000 pets escape euthanasia in two years.

Lou said he became aware of euthanasia at shelters when he went to Los Angeles to make the short film "Be Good to Eddie Lee." The director suggested that he volunteer at an animal shelter.

Until then, Lou thought shelters were safe havens for strays and lost pets. "It was heartbreaking. All these dogs crying in their cages. Knowing they would be put down broke my heart," he said.

The group started with Lou and his friends, carrying signs on street corners, and a Facebook page with 47 friends. Now it has more than 12,000 U.S. members and 50,000 members, supporters and partner coalitions across the globe, he said.

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According to a recent study published in the journal Animal Cognition, your pup can count how many treats you put in front of her. And if you take one away? Yeah, she can tell -- so maybe don't try it. Findings like these have led scientists to peg an adult dog's cognitive functioning at around the same level as that of a 2-year-old child, which, if you've ever spent any time with a toddler, sounds about right. Most pooches can understand close to 165-250 words, successfully interpret basic social cues and they love to play with iPads.

And as it turns out, the old saying about dogs resembling their owners has some scientific merit. Because dogs are deeply domesticated animals, studying them can reveal a lot about humans, said Gregory Berns, a researcher at Emory University. "The canine mind reflects back to us how we see ourselves through the eyes, ears, and noses of another species."

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Meanwhile, I have another dog enduring the indignities of what his veterinarian calls “the slow fade.” Both suffer grand mal seizures. Both have fragile stomachs that cause indoor accidents and sleepless nights. And both teeter on the edge of death one moment only to act like spry pups the next.

For more than half of my adult life, I have scheduled my world around my pets. But I don’t know how much longer this can go on. As much as it pains me to admit it, part of me is anxious for their anguish — and mine — to end. I can’t wait for them to die.

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The Guinness World Records 2013 book published Thursday recognizes Zeus of Otsego, Mich., as the world's Tallest Dog.

The 3-year-old measures 44 inches from foot to shoulder.

Standing on his hind legs, Zeus stretches to 7-foot-4 and towers over his owner, Denise Doorlag. Zeus is just an inch taller than the previous record-holder, Giant George.

Zeus weighs 155 pounds and eats around 12 cups of food a day. That's equivalent to one 30-pound bag of food.

Doorlag says she had to get a van to be able to transport Zeus.

Another tallest story:

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I've been reading your column for years and always appreciate the way you connect writers' personal problems to larger issues of mindful living and social justice. Such a perspective might help me understand why my husband and best friend slept peacefully last night inside the house I bought a year ago, while I spent the night in a tent in the backyard.

I'm almost 40 and just bought my first house. It was supposed to be my sanctuary -- an affordable fixer-upper in a not-bad neighborhood, close to my job and within a bus ride of my husband's job. We're in a state we've always loved, but we have no family or close friends nearby. Neither of us has good family relationships, and I've always envied people who came home to a loving family and a house in decent condition. My childhood home had a boarded-up hole in my bedroom wall, an unfinished bathroom, and later a bathroom but no functional kitchen. My husband spent his childhood in a smoke-filled trailer. We rented for years until the market crashed, then bought a house that needs some work but was functional and affordable. I thought I'd never move again.

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