Mimi Spender was born and raised with animals. The family cat was born on her birthday – October 13 – and her father kept two pure-bred, hot-blooded Irish Setters for duck hunting season. On page five of the family album a newspaper clipping, headed: "Dog Saves Woman from Burning House" sported a photograph of Mimi's grandmother with her arm around her pet German Shepherd. Not to mention the notorious woman, Aunt Celia, who raised and trained racing horses.

With a family tree that was partial to animals, nobody raised an eyebrow when Mimi, against anti-feminine odds, made up her mind to become a veterinarian.

At the age of nineteen she entered the University of California at Davis in the school of Veterinary Science, an unexpectedly unique field for a girl of Mimi's equally unique physical stature.

A tall, chestnut haired girl with locks that had never been clipped, Mimi Spender was a traffic-stopper. Lanky and limber, her body moved in rhythm to the sway and jounce of her thick, waist-length hair that in the sunlight shimmered with red highlights. A modest smile and apple cheeks accented a perky up-turned nose and freckles that disappeared with her golden summer tan. Shy and unassuming by nature, her eyes, the color of swimming pools, twinkled with a suspicion-raising non-chalance.

Her agility was near to animalistic. Mimi could ride and train horses as well as any six-shooting, gun-toting Zane Grey character. Maybe it was this potentially ego-deflating quality of her's that put men off. Men (… or boys, really) seemed to be afraid of her. A girl in veterinary school? Had to be something weird about her!

But that was not to say that Mimi didn't need sex as much as any healthy female. These days her love life seemed doomed to emptiness, and that disturbed her greatly. Men and money… those seemed to be her two pitfalls.