If Trevor were human instead of an orange and white short-haired cat, he’d be the kid who was always getting into trouble at school. And his adopted feline “big bud” and role model, Trey, would be there to get him out of a scrape.

“It’s a day-and-night situation,” the cats’ owner, Ronnie Teich of Westminster, wrote in an email. (That's Teich with Trevor in the photo at right.)

“Trevor is into everything! He’s destructive, yet lovable. And whatever Trey does, Trevor wants to do too, like drink water from the bathroom faucet.”

Talk about being a copycat.

Both cats have helped their owner get through hard times. Teich adopted Trey, a long-haired, orange cat, as a kitten from a pet store in 2007, just after her 11-year-old cat had been put to sleep. “I literally must have some fur in my house!” she wrote.

Trey, now 8, is independent, set in his ways and extremely aware of his feline dignity, though Teich once coaxed him into wearing a miniature Orioles helmet during an impromptu photo shoot (as evidenced on the cover of this section). But Trey accommodated himself surprisingly quickly after Teich brought Trevor, now 18 months, home from the Carroll County Humane Society last year.

Teich wrote that when Trevor came to live with her, “I was in a very dark place in my life. ... Slowly as his crazy zany funny self got comfortable, I fell more in love with him. He calmed me down a bit and literally turned the light back on in my life.

“Just who rescued who?”

mary.mccauley@baltsun.com