Inmates welcome cats orphaned by Katrina

Here's a feel-good story: Female prisoners provide shelter, love for felines abandoned during storm.

It makes me wonder about the rehabilitative effects of companion animals in prisons. I imagine that the tough-on-crime crowd would object, not wanting to "coddle" prisoners, but there is something to be said for teaching people who have taken a wrong turn in life something about being emotionally connected to another being. First animals, then humans? Why not? I think, for example, of the Birdman of Alcatraz, a hardened lifer who turned his life around and eventually became an expert in canary diseases. It all started when he decided to care for an injured bird that fell into the prisoners' exercise yard.