It’s been exactly 2 years since the word SAFE was put on Ray’s death row picture. That is the day he moved in.

He was agreeable from the beginning. Not effusive mind you but polite and pleasant.

He was really skinny and tried very hard not to be a bother. If I were a different person he could have been trained to fetch, sit and do the laundry. That’s how amenable he was to fitting in.

And fit in he did. He realized after awhile, quite rightly, that we would share a bed, most meals and an ice cream pop before we went to sleep.

He didn’t request it but I’m sure that he appreciated that even though he was very housebroken I left my terrace door open 24/7 so he wouldn’t have to stress.

That wasn’t as easy as it sounds. When certain people in my family ( I won’t mention names, Cheryl) came to visit they tried very hard to make me close the door when the temperature went to -10.

Even when I proved that Ray enjoyed his nightly toilet (pronounced twah-let) :

That unnamed person (Cheryl) could get ugly.

He became more and more comfortable with the living situation.

Slowly he caught on that simply staring at something would make me get up and give it to him.

Into the second year he let it be known that me sleeping past 6 am was beginning to irritate him so he’d either tap me at the bottom of the bed where he had shoved me or stand by the bedroom door shrieking in a tone that I believe he picked up from a pekinese that he had tried to attack on 59th Street.

I first saw his picture on June 6, 2014.

It was then that I knew that I had to save a life.

Mine.