Mitzi’s future in West New York, N.J., where she lived in a down-and-out pocket of town, didn’t look particularly bright. She might have ended up on the street, like so many of her peers, if she hadn’t caught the eye of a beloved New York hair colorist named Grato Longoria. Within a year of that chance encounter, she was living on upper Madison Avenue, rolling around in 330-thread-count Matouk sheets and maintaining a meticulous grooming regimen.

Given her youth, she’s remarkably proficient in her work as a professional house cat. “She’s got the loudest purr I’ve ever heard,” said Gene Kennedy, who looks after Mitzi with his wife, Peggy Kennedy, an ash-blond artist who met Mitzi through her colorist, Mr. Longoria.

Every so often, a fairy tale story like Mitzi’s hits New York  consider the legend of Natalia Vodianova, the young Russian model who went from selling fruit on the street to modeling for Vogue, marrying into a British real estate fortune and owning a huge chunk of TriBeCa property, all within a matter of a few years.

Ms. Vodianova’s story, of course, is one in a million; if you’re a cat or dog living in West New York, your odds of a rags-to-riches transformation are much higher.