I’ve always disliked speaking to groups of friends or people in a formal settings because the second person plural pronoun ‘you’ has never felt  quite right. This grammatical unease has been a source of discomfort my whole life, but without having an outsiders’ perspective on English grammar, I was  never able to quite understand my dissatisfaction with the word ‘you’ when applied to groups.It was not till I took my first Spanish class that I realized the source of my dissatisfaction. Spanish has two pronouns for groups of people: Vosotros  and Ustedes. With the first being informal, and the second, formal. Since we don’t have a comparable pronoun in English, the closest term we have is the  slang: you-all.

I recently watched a documentary on animal psychology, which presented an entertaining collection of testimonials by biologists, zoologists, vets and other animal experts. One of the scientists told a story about his family dog which jumped in front of a moving car to save his brother, who was trapped in pot hole in the road. No doubt, animal martyr stories must top the list as the flashiest examples of pet heroism, and as persuasive anecdotes that support claims that animal have brains and feelings too. After watching this documentary, I realized they forgot to interview one important witness of animal heroism: myself. It's now time for me to come forward, and tell my story, of the cat who saved my life.