the cat as doctor

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C. Howard Young suffered from a number of ailments during his life, and even so managed to live a decent span of days (1853-1927).  His 1897 memoir, Sunny Life of an Invalid, isn't as grim as you'd think (a little of it is).  In fact, most of it is chatty, informal, witty and self-deprecating, and appreciative of every comfort that came his way.  He dedicates an entire chapter to "Cats as Doctors: A Debt of Gratitude Paid to Cats."  Here's one of the tribute tales:
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I should allude more at length to the pussy who cared for me at Asbury Park, NJ.
Sitting on the veranda, one summer eve, a poor, woe-be-gone cat slunk by, with pitiful appeals. It was soon to become a mother.
We called it, but in vain. It feared. All men's hands, it felt, were against it. And men's feet, too.
My sister, who had sympathy for all that suffered, always had good influence on all animals. She followed it, and talked soothingly, and soon came back with it. We petted it a few days, and then my sister prepared a bed for it in the woodshed. Large oyster shells were placed around the interesting patient, with various delicacies in them, and the feline population of the United States of America was soon augmented by six.

The next day, that cat appeared in my room with one baby kitten in her mouth. As there was another bed in my room I had it covered with journals. The kitty waited patiently, sprang up, and laid number one on the bed; then emigrated to import the other five kittens.
That cat then took care of the six kittens and myself, and at times brought them over for a visit to my bed. It seemed to regard me as a kind of godfather. Also seemed to regard my bed as possessing superior accommodations for cat housekeeping. "Cast your bread upon the waters." Well, it was this same cat (cats seem to apply the injunction to increase and multiply) that later, with a new family under the stoop, chased away a burglar, by fastening her claws in the calf of his leg at midnight. Possibly, or even probably, she thought the intruder was after her feline family, as well as her adopted human family, but "One good turn deserves another." From the oaths I heard on the veranda, I can see that the burglar felt that one bad turn deserves a scratch. Several!
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Young, C. Howard 1853-1927. Sunny Life of an Invalid. Hartford, Conn.: Press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1897. pp. 163-4.