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The following story comes from the introduction to LIFE’s special issue, Cats: Companions in Life. One morning, some years ago when I was living in New York City, I gathered Kaya into an old blue shawl and carried him eight blocks to the animal clinic to be put to sleep. He had been my cat since I was in the ninth grade. I named him after the Bob Marley album.…

They say you can’t beat mother nature, but every now and then people give it a shot. Every now and then it works—rivers are rerouted, new crops are introduced. So in 1963, Maine figured it would try to get its caribou back. Caribou were once plentiful in pine tree state, during the early years of the United States, but then because of hunting and disease destroyed the population around the…