Everywhere in the world, we can observe and be touched by acts of kindness. People from all walks of life, faiths, and cultures extend themselves beyond the call of duty to help others unconditionally. Through their noble deeds, humanity as a whole is elevated.

To commend virtuous actions and encourage more people to be inspired by their examples, Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly created a series of awards, including the Shining World Leadership Award, Shining World Compassion Award, Shining World Hero and Heroine Awards, Shining World Honesty Award, Shining World Protection Award, Shining World Intelligence Award, and Shining World Inventor Award, to recognize some of the most exemplary, generous, caring, and courageous people who walk amongst us.

Ho Ho Ho! Season’s greetings, warm-hearted viewers! Christmas is just around the corner; a day celebrating the birthday of Master Jesus Christ. On this joyous occasion, our hearts are in full bloom; the spirit of Christmas lifts our souls as a sweet loving chorus fills the air. The smiles of people everywhere herald the coming of Christmas, a time of miracles. The Nine Lives Foundation in Northern California, USA, a recipient of the Shining World Compassion Award, honors the miracle of life every day!

There is not a single time, even if it’s five years in the future that I will not accept one of my cats back if something happens; the home changes, there is a divorce, and there is an allergy that presents, we’ll always take our cats back no questions asked, we just want to make sure that they are safe back with us, we don’t want them to ever go through the shelter system again.

It all started in 2003 when Monica Thompson, a compassionate animal doctor who has practiced veterinary medicine for over a decade founded a nonprofit veterinary hospital, called the Feline Well-Care Clinic.

I’ve been a vet for almost 11 years, and graduated from Washington State University (USA), but I’m a California (USA) resident and worked in private practice for about four years when I first graduated. And then I started helping some rescue foundations around the Bay Area (Northern California), and I started to really feel that I had an itch that I hadn’t explored before in veterinary school, so I started working for a few of the organizations.

I started a little tiny clinic called the Feline Well-Care Clinic, which originally was supposed to do vaccines and de-worming and, toenail trims. And over the first six to eight months I became so popular that I had to expand my one-room practice into a three-room practice.

Besides her regular work at the clinic, Dr. Thompson also began rescuing cats from local shelters that she worked at.

My first mission was to try to help rescue kitties that were in shelters, that had some kind of medical or physical disability, that were going to be passed over or euthanized. Usually it was because of an injury, an abscess, a fracture, an eye missing, chipped teeth, or scabs on their body from being covered in fleas. And all those cats, because there are such space issues in most shelters, are discarded right away. They don’t even make it to the adoption floor so someone has a chance to look at them.

In my first week working at a local shelter, I had taken 17 cats on my first day, and 58 by the end of the week, all were doomed for euthanasia, all of which I saved, made well again and adopted out.

In the following year, Dr. Thompson established the Nine Lives Foundation, a community-based nonprofit organization, comprised of her clinic and a no-kill cat shelter.

The Feline Well-Care Clinic is actually where I get the money to support my foundation. I spend six or seven days a week working in my clinic to make money to keep my foundation running, so it kind of all runs together. We house about 220 cats at any time in a 5000 square foot building.

“No-kill” means the cats that are taken in are never euthanized, except for a humane reason such as pain and suffering or when a cat has severe medical problems with a poor prognosis.

A lot of the organizations and facilities around the Bay Area call themselves “no-kill.” What that means is they won’t euthanize an animal for space, but they may not accept it in their organization if it has a disability or difficulty.

So we are very different in that respect, that we do not discriminate based on injury or illness, those are actually the ones that I look for. It’s very gratifying to be able to take a cat who looked like there’s no way he would come back from his terrible situation, and get him (healed) in six to eight months, in six to eight months, on him and send him for adoption.

Dr. Thompson is a strong advocate of spaying and neutering felines so that kittens who potentially will have no one to look after them are not born.

Cats are able to procreate so many times per year and it, with so many offspring per time that just leaving two unaltered cats alone for seven years you’ll have over 450,000 offspring. So if you know of someone in your neighborhood that’s cast out their male or female and just moves away and leaves them outside, if they were to get together and start having kittens, seven years from now you might have made almost half a million unwanted kittens in that neighborhood.

Let’s now meet some of the brave patients at the clinic!

This kitty here, we almost lost her because she had a very, very weird skin condition all underneath her belly where her skin was just being eating away. Dr. Thomson did not want to give up on her and we put her under anesthesia, cleaned her up. We had to suture where all the skin was sloughing off and just give her antibiotics and a lot of TLC (tender loving care) and she’s thriving now. Her skin’s all better, it’s grown back a different color, (Yes) but she’s all better.

You could see where all the white is back here, is where she had the problems. She’s a beautiful kitty. She’s shy but she’s doing really well. These two kitties were born with a condition where they were born without eyelids.

Dr. Thompson did do a surgery on both of them actually to kind of lift their eyelids up a little bit because there is also what’s called entropion, where the fur will curl under and scrape the eyeballs, so what she did was an entropion surgery to fold the fur back up so it doesn’t get in the eyes, and they’re doing very well. One eyed boy, he’s just the sweetest little thing ever, but he’s a very old boy. He had some problems with being able to go poop.

So Dr. Thomson did some surgery on him and he’s really happy now. He is a very regal boy. He very quietly sits up and looks at you with his one eye and just asks for food very nicely and polite. Jack. Here sweetie. Hey! We love him too, he’s a great, great old man.

Before approving an adoption, the Nine Lives Foundation makes sure that whoever is the potential human-daddy or mommy is a good fit with the cat so that the feline friend will be truly happy and comfortable in their new residence.

A screening process is really important because we want to make sure our cats go into permanent homes. Our screening process really involves us getting to know the people that we’re adopting from, and our facility allows them to come and mill around and be there for many hours. Our adoption counselors kind of get to know the personality, and we watch the way the cats respond to the adopters.

If we sense there is any mismatch, the cat is not comfortable being picked up by this person then we’ll decline that person for that particular cat, and try to move them toward a cat that we feel is a better match. So we’re very interactive, it’s not just a piece of paper that they fill out, we really want to make sure that there is a match, that there is a match that’s going to last for a lifetime. And a lot of times people say that they pick our cats, because they’re almost chosen by our cats.

They’ll go and sit in the middle of a big enclosure, and the cat will come up and jump on their lap, and they’ll say, “I never would have looked at you, but here you are on my lap, and you seem comfortable with me, and I’m happy that you’re here,” and I would say 50 or more percent of the time that’s how we find our matches, the cats help us that way.

The Foundation’s philosophy is that when kittens below a certain age are adopted, they need to have family support so that they can better adapt to their new home.

We want our kittens always to go in pairs. We feel that taking a kitten out of a situation where he may have been with all his brothers and sisters for the first eight weeks of his life, taking him out as a single and casting him into a home and having him left at home all day, not only leads to behavior problems, scratching of furniture, climbing curtains, biting, but it leads to a cat who’s lonely and depressed.

And we really want cats again to find their forever home and a good match for them. So any kittens under six months are adopted in pairs, unless our prospective family has another cat at home who is of appropriate age.

For those cats that are not adoptable due to a severe medical condition or other reasons, they need not worry. The Nine Lives Foundation promises lifetime care.

Maybe 10 to 15% of our population are cats that really aren’t adoptable. We would consider them special needs, so we’ll let them go out to foster care, then we’ll take care of all the medical expenses for people who will foster for us, but there really are 20 to 30 cats that really, their time is limited, or they have a physical disability that really precludes them from having a normal life, that someone really who wants a cat might want to have.

We have many cats who require fluids every day, medication, periodic X-rays, blood work, routine blood work on some of my cats. Hyperthyroid cats, kidney cats, cancer cats, we run the gamut.

Our sincere thanks Dr. Monica Thompson and Nine Lives Foundation volunteers for your selfless love and dedication in nursing injured and ill felines back to health and helping them to find good homes.

For more details on the Nine Lives Foundation, please visit:

There are more miracles to come! Please join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for part two of our program where we’ll meet Christopher the Miracle Cat who overcame life-threatening injuries and now helps care for and heal others in the clinic as well as see the presentation of the prestigious Shining World Compassion Award to the Nine Lives Foundation.

Sincere viewers, thank you for your company today on our program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May our world be filled with noble thoughts and deeds.

Everywhere in the world, we can observe and be touched by acts of kindness. People from all walks of life, faiths, and cultures extend themselves beyond the call of duty to help others unconditionally. Through their noble deeds, humanity as a whole is elevated.

To commend virtuous actions and encourage more people to be inspired by their examples, Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly created a series of awards, including the Shining World Leadership Award, Shining World Compassion Award, Shining World Hero and Heroine Awards, Shining World Honesty Award, Shining World Protection Award, Shining World Intelligence Award, and Shining World Inventor Award, to recognize some of the most exemplary, generous, caring, and courageous people who walk amongst us.

Today is Christmas Eve, a treasured time of the year when many families gather to celebrate the birthday of Master Jesus Christ. With the brilliant holiday spirit in our hearts, today we feature part two of our program on the Nine Lives Foundation, a community-based non-profit organization established by veterinarian Dr. Monica Thompson. The Foundation operates the Feline Well-Care Clinic and a no-kill cat shelter in Northern California, USA.

“No-kill” means the cats that are taken in are never euthanized, except for a humane reason such as pain and suffering or when a cat has severe medical problems with a poor prognosis.

We are probably the only no-kill (organization) that does what we do. There are several other no-kill organizations, but they don’t really have a physical space where they keep their animals, they’ll be in foster care. We actually physically house them in a building that’s staffed seven days a week, full time. And we, unlike a lot of other shelters, we do not exclude animals based on medical issues.

This is Smokey, he was actually born missing part of his foot, and he does pretty well without the foot. He gets around, he goes crazy, jumps, and does everything he possibly can. He was also feral when he came in. So he and his sister, they both were born with the same deformity and they were both very feral. And with some TLC (tender loving care) this is what we ended up with – he’s probably one of the most friendly cats that we have in the building.

The Foundation’s most famous feline is Christopher the Miracle Cat, who shows deep concern for the welfare of all the cats around him.

We have a blind kitten that was found outside a home in Millbrae (USA), screaming, starving, completely crusted over.

Apparently his eyes are actually missing; he was born without his eyes. (We ) brought him in here and we put the little baby in the bed with Christopher and he cleaned the baby from one end to the other; the baby started purring and eating immediately and snuggled up with Christopher for the rest of the day.

His name is Oliver, and it’s like he has a little daddy and he’ll even start nursing on Christopher even though there is no milk, but he feels so content, to be with this cat. It’s an amazing thing, I’ve never seen another cat like him that has the sense to take care as he does.

Papa Christopher, an orange Tabby, truly has nine lives!

Let us now hear how he came into Dr. Thompson’s life.

We received a call in March (2010), cyclists had been riding, not too far from here and found a cat in a drainage ditch, who was as I would call a “train wreck,” (he) had been run over. His pelvis was crushed, his back legs were not moving, he was emaciated, covered in mud and he was taken to the Humane Society locally, where he was evaluated and determined that he was very severely injured. They at the time didn’t have any space to keep him so they found out about my organization and called me.

I saw him and I just fell in love, the first day I saw him. And I took a look at his X-rays and I couldn’t believe he had such a good spirit and a willingness to be here. His hips were just crushed, his long bones were okay but the pelvis, which holds his back end up was just disintegrating, it was just falling apart.

And we decided to try a cage rest method; just put him in a cage on some very soft bedding and see for a week or two does he seem strong enough to go through surgery. He was so thin that there’s no way he could manage to go through a procedure to have orthopedic surgery. But he seemed to have a will to live and be here, so every day we nursed him along, we gave him fluids and food and pain medication.

And weeks went by, he was getting stronger every day and one day while we were cleaning his cage, he stepped out, we opened up the cage door and he stepped out, (walking) and walking. Went walking right across the floor and we were all just stunned. I know I cried, I think Michelle cried as well because we couldn’t believe that he had healed himself well enough to decide to venture out.

And from that day forward we would leave his cage door open and he would go in when he wanted to, but for the most of time he just decided he was going to walk around the clinic. And that began the saga of Chris. He would then start seeking out other injured cats and other sick cats, go up to the cage and paw to try to get into the cage where the other cats might be that might need his help. So he’s almost a magnet for anybody who has an ailment that needs just a little something.

Dr. Thompson now shares an absolutely amazing story of how Christopher helped to save a young kitten’s life.

A friend of mine who runs a rescue locally had a kitten who was collapsing from severe anemia. The red blood cell count of this kitten was almost non-existent, and the cat’s gums were white, she couldn’t stand, her head was down and she was going to die without a blood transfusion. So I had to make a quick decision about which cat I was going to choose.

Christopher was very insistent when this kitten came in that he kept going around my legs, he kept jumping up on the exam table and I’d put him down and he’d jump back up again. And I’d put him down and he’d jump back up again. And he was nudging me and he was licking the kitten and then I thought you’re going to be my blood donor. And I’m just going to hope that you guys are both type A, most cats, most domestic short hair cats are type A.

Well it turns out that Christopher is a type B, which is a very relatively rare blood type. And as it turns out it even more miraculously, the kitten in question was also a type B. Had I chosen any other cat in the hospital, most of my blood donors are type A, I would have killed that kitten, inadvertently, but Christopher wasn’t going to let me choose anybody else. And he sat with that kitten through the whole blood transfusion and within about four hours when the transfusion was over the cat stood up. And by the next morning the cat was eating and is still here today.

Christopher has love for all species and he stirs the heart of everyone who has the fortune to meet him.

Almost every cat has been willing to have him as a roommate. We’ll put them in the cage together; Chris will immediately put his arm around the cat, groom him, him or her from head to toe. He’s just a very restful cat, he just has this aura about him, it’s an amazing thing to watch him.

And also we found out by accident that Christopher will also take care of dogs. We had a volunteer here who, her dog had an abscess tooth so we decided to go ahead and treat the dog for the tooth and we put the dog on the floor to wake up from anesthesia, and the next thing you know Christopher went straight over to the dog and started grooming the dog and taking care of the dog.

Touched by Christopher’s, Dr. Thompson’s and the Foundation staff’s outstanding efforts in protecting and comforting our feline friends, their selfless spirit of service to the community and enlightened example which helps to convey the important message for people to respect and treasure every single life, Supreme Master Ching Hai honored the Nine Lives Foundation with the Shining World Compassion Award. The following is an excerpt from Supreme Master Ching Hai’s loving letter to everyone at the Foundation.

With both the human staff and Papa Christopher caring for newcomers, all felines who arrive at Nine Lives Foundation soon discover that they really do have another (and much better) chance at life. As a no-kill shelter, Nine Lives is an inspiring example of dedicated compassion. Thank you for uplifting our world with your inspirational example of love in action.

For selflessly providing for the needs of our beautiful feline friends, for your loving kindness, professionalism and long term dedication to the welfare, regardless of condition upon arrival, and for being a very fine role model for all animal shelters, we hereby applaud and celebrate the compassionate deeds of Nine Lives Foundation and its wonderful chief veterinarian Doctor Monica Thomson. With Great Honor, Love and Blessings, Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Wow, that is beautiful! I’ll have to put it somewhere where the cats can’t knock it over. I don’t know where that’s going to be. I am so honored.

Supreme Master Ching Hai also contributed US$10,000 to the Nine Lives Foundation to further their noble work.

I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much, this couldn’t come at a better time. Well, thank you very much, I’m really, really honored, thank you.

The Foundation was gifted Supreme Master Ching Hai’s #1 international best-selling books, “The Birds In My Life,” “The Dogs In My Life,” and “The Noble Wilds,” as well as selection of her DVDs and CDs. Finally, Master sent her hugs and kisses, toys, veg treats, and vegan cat food for caring Christopher!

Love indeed works miracles every day. Our gratitude to Dr. Thompson, Christopher and all Nine Lives Foundation staff and volunteers for making life a heaven on Earth for many of our feline friends.

For more details on the Nine Lives Foundation, please visit:

Good-hearted viewers, thank you for your lovely company today on the Shining World Award series. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May the lives of our gentle co-inhabitants forever thrive in Heaven’s loving protection.