1 . Animals help lift my spirits in the darkest of times.

“You should get a cat,” my therapist (治疗师) said. “A cat?” I couldn’t even look after myself. I took a deep _________ and carefully considered the idea of _________ a pet friend into my life.

When Elaine came home, it became increasingly _________ that she didn’t understand “no”, “stop it” or “don’t do that”. I was beginning to _________ my therapist’s advice.

Elaine used my bed as a litter box, and after visiting a vet (兽医), she concluded that she just wanted my _________. She fought tooth and nail to get a(n) _________ of my meals. She’d _________ lick (舔) sharp knives when left unattended and eat anything that fell on the _________.

She stole my heart with her bravery and kept me busier.

I decided to start taking Elaine for _________, I could hardly leave the house before, but my heart couldn’t say __________ to her. Elaine showed me what __________ looked like. She didn’t stop to __________ the possible outcome of a situation; she __________ went for it. If there was a dog nearby, she would run toward __________. She jumped without knowing where she would __________.

And following her journey of adventures every day, I got the same __________ as she created.

Elaine __________ after a medical accident, leaving a cat-sized hole in my heart. I’m no stranger to __________, but that was one of my most confusing emotional experiences.

Our time is often cut unpredictably, unmistakably __________. Elaine was supposed to help me through more of my life. She no longer wakes me up at 5 am __________ for breakfast, but she’s still the reason I get up every morning.

2 . I looked down at Paisley the Dog, my stomach filled with butterflies. This was our moment. This was what we had _______ for.

I didn’t want anyone to know it was our first _______. I remembered what my teacher had told me. “If you _______ your dog while you’re doing the heeling exercise (随行训练), it looks like you don’t _______ your dog.” So I looked straight _______, marching across the grass.

The whole exercise went _______. I knew we were impressive. Usually in training classes, people would keep _______ while watching Paisley follow my movements. But why were they whispering now? “About turn!” the _______ called. I turned crisply, making sure not to look at Paisley. I needed to _______ that I fully trusted her. ________ spread through the crowd. What was so funny? I stood taller still. I was a kid, sure. At fifteen, I was the ________ at the trial. But I knew what I was doing. I had no ________ for jealous (忌妒的) people.

The judge called a few more moves and then our task was ________. I was about to reach down to give Paisley a well-deserved scratch when I found she wasn’t there. It was then that I ________ the dog had been sitting aside, watching me do the entire heeling exercise ________. My face burned with embarrassment.

3 . The last time Jack Hanson took an airplane, he was a junior at the University of Vermont. To return from a term abroad in Copenhagen, he flew from Denmark, ________ in Iceland, and landed in New York.

But the next term, one of his professors asked students to ________ their individual energy usage. And when Mr. Hanson did the ________, he realized that just one leg of that international flight ________ more energy, and more greenhouse gas emissions(排放), than all the other things that year ________ — the driving and heating and lighting and eating and everything else.

He was ________. “I just couldn’t ________ it,” he says. “It really is an extreme. It’s an extreme amount of energy, an extreme amount of ________.”

So Mr. Hanson decided to stop ________. Since then, he has traveled by train and bike and car, and has even written a song about the ________ of getting home to Chicago on an overnight bus. But he has not been on an airplane.

And he has never found travel more ________, he says. He knows that some people find this hard to ________, including many friends and family members. They decide Mr. Hanson’s approach is ________.

Go more ________, and travel begins to return to what it once was: a slow change of one place to another, a sense of space, an unwinding of time.

4 . Lulu was a pet pig owned by Jo-Ann from Pennsylvania.

One day in August, Jo-Ann was at home when she ________ with terrible pains in her chest. She knew it was a heart attack ________, as she had ever ________ one the year before. But she was unable to reach the phone to call for help and felt ________ when lying in pain on the floor. She ________ she might die alone.

Sensing the woman’s great worry, Lulu ran over to ________ her. It made the most ________ sounds, with tears falling. Jo-Ann ________ that the pig was crying for her. But Lulu was not just there to show its ________. Feeling its owner eagerly needed ________, the pig suddenly ran as fast as it could toward the back door and ran into the ________. Each time a car came down the street, Lulu ran out in front of it and lay down. It repeated this ________ several times, with most drivers simply avoiding the pig and driving past.

Eventually, Lulu managed to stop one driver. ________ about the animal, the driver got out to ________ As he followed the pig and ________ the house, he found Jo-Ann lying on the floor through the window. Help finally arrived.

5 . China becomes a world leader in clean technology by fighting environmental pollution, sharing experience.

Erik Solheim, former executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme, said he is __________ with China’s phenomenal achievements over the past decade in fighting environmental pollution and climate change, and in its march toward __________ development.

This is very __________ to his Twitter followers. Solheim’s latest tweets include one about China ranking first globally in planted forests and forest coverage growth, __________ a quarter of the world’s new forests in the past decade; one about China producing 60 percent of global solar energy last year and 80 percent of solar panels; and another highlighting the fact that 80 percent of the world’s new offshore wind capacity was installed in China last year.

He believes that it’s time for the rest of the world to __________.

For Solheim, who is also the former Norwegian Minister of the Environment and Minister of International Development, China’s achievements on the climate and environmental fronts all started with its fight against__________.

“People wanted to see beautiful skies over their cities,” he told China Daily. “The __________ fast reduction in air pollution in Chinese cities over the last decade shows how fast China can act. This has now spilled over into renewable energy, nature protection, electric mobility, tree planting and a lot more. Today, China is the world leader in all __________ technologies.”

The latest __________ from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment prove Solheim’s observations that the country is rapidly switching to a more sustainable path.

Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu told a news conference on Sept 15 that the country’s toughest measures and greatest progress on the ecological and environmental front have occurred in the last decade.

He said that __________ painstaking efforts to combat pollution, clear waters and blue skies have become more commonplace.

While poor air quality used to be a source of frequent public complaints, the average __________ of hazardous airborne PM2.5 particles dropped from 46 to 30 micrograms per cubic (立方的) meter between 2015 and last year.

About 87.5 percent of days last year were rated as having good air quality, up 6.3 percentage points from 2015, making China the country with the biggest __________ in air quality in the world.

In the last decade, the __________ of water at or above Grade III in the country’s five-tier water quality system rose 23.3 percentage points to 84.9 percent, close to the levels in developed countries. Carbon intensity, or carbon emissions per unit of GDP, has declined by 34.4 percent, with coal __________ for 56 percent of total energy consumption, compared to 68.5 percent a decade ago.

China has has legislated or revised roughly 30 laws and regulations, some of which focused on water resource protection, including the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law, which was modified in 2017, and the Yangtze River Protection Law, which __________ last year.

6 . Thanks to their evolutionary ancestry, domestic cats are, actually by their nature, more independent than dogs. Our cats, whose wild ancestors didn’t enjoy living in social groups as dogs do, _______, during the process of domestication, gradually developed the capability to form social relationships not just with other cats, but also with people.

Although independent cats may not _______ upon people to gain security as dogs do, they show affection for their guardians and seem to attach importance to the _______ of their human companions. Their strong attachment to humans is partly _______ by their experiences of being cared by people as a kitten. Cats behave towards humans in the exactly same way that they respond to their feline friends, so the secret of whether your cat feels _______ to you lies in their behaviour.

Cats have successfully gained an edge for their outstanding ability to communicate with other cats over long distances and even when no longer _______ present. Our pet cats have _______ this “supersense” and depend heavily on this form of communication. Particularly, cats use scent to identify members of their social group or family, by sharing a group scent profile. Cats have specific scent glands on their flanks, head and around their ears, and often rub their heads against people and objects that are familiar and _______. The soft sensation you feel against your calves is actually your cat _______ you as a friend and is a huge compliment.

One of the most signs that your beloved pet is keen on you, is the way your cat greets you. When cats greet members of their social group, they ________ to show signals to indicate friendship and a desire to move closer. Also, Cats show these signals to humans. Rolling over and________ their vulnerable under belly to you is another distinct gesture that a cat has ultimate faith in you.

Besides, your cat might also be secretly signalling their affection by changing the way they look at you. When cats ________ strange humans or other cats they aren’t familiar with, they usually greet them with an ________ stare. But they are more likely to slowly blink at cats they have a good relationship with. Research indicates slow blinks are ________ a positive emotional state and can be a sign of trust, contentment and affection, ________ to a genuine human smile.

7 . A single tremble shook beneath my feet. The trees above me began to sway(摇摆) hard. Then came the deadly_________that could only mean one thing, destruction. Every house and object was now_________. My vision blurred (模糊) even more when I saw the remains of my house. The house that used to_________all the happiness in the world was now_________a pile of ruined pieces. I_________all the times I played with my little brother and sister. Images of them were_________in my mind, so I let the darkness sweep over me completely so I could see them vividly one last time. I regained a bit of my_________after lying on the ground for some time. My eyes viewed different things, but I walked on mindlessly, with no_________to anything around me at all.

Years have passed since the disaster that_________me years ago. I never thought I would be okay again after this__________event.

Today I am going on a trip to California to help__________of a recent earthquake. Then, I see her. A young girl is weeping into her arm. I walk toward her. Losing family was__________, but because of my life changing experience, I am strong, and I can__________the lives of those who are suffering as I was. When I reach the girl, she stares at me with sad eyes, and I gently stick out my hand for her to hold to. One day, she may__________others the way I did for her. She holds my hand tightly, and together, we look for a brighter future where we can help those around us and__________the world starting with one disaster at a time.

8 . Milo is a rescue dog, adopted by 20-year-old Makayla Swift. One morning in November 2021, Swift opened her front door in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Milo _______ running. Milo ran to the house across the street. He seemed unsatisfied with this house, so he ran to the one next door, Swift on his _______.

“He started _______ on the front door,” Swift says. “I’m thinking, ‘Why is he literally trying to _______ the house?’” She was _______. Not everyone wants a strange dog on their _______. But as she tried to drag Milo away, she could hear a sound coming through an open upstairs window. It was a voice yelling “Help!”

Hours earlier, around 4 a. m., Sherry Starr had _______ from her bed. “All of a sudden, standing there between the toilet and the bathtub, I _______,” she says. “I went down hard on the floor.” Starr is 85. “I could not move at all,” says Starr, who was stuck between the toilet and the bathtub. Starr was _______. “I’m thinking: I’m just going to die here,” she says. Her best ________, she decided, was to listen for the letter carrier in the afternoon and scream at the top of her lungs.

“Her voice was very ________,” says Swift. “You had to be right at the front door to hear Mrs. Starr yell for ________ unless you were Milo who ________ heard Starr when I opened my own front door.”

Swift called 911. The rescuers thought they’d have to remove the toilet, but they gave one last pull and out she popped. Though injured, Starr ________ a trip to the hospital. Swift has known her share of pain. Two years ago, her mother died. She says Milo has helped her with her grief. “That dog is a ________,” she says.

9 . I was walking through the bush when, suddenly, a baby koala rushed to me through the sky. Through quick thinking, I managed to catch it in my _______. “Oh Doodah, are you —_______ to see me today?” I asked the koala. Doodah, a baby koala, was just one of the many koalas that had come into my _______. And while I might be his favourite person, I loved all of these animals _______.

Ever since I was a girl, I’d loved animals and at 18 had started work at the Curmmbin Wildlife Sanctuary as a _______ collector. Selecting leaves for the koalas brought me so much joy as the koalas _______ them for food. Through hard work and _______ I eventually became a koala specialist, which saw me working in China, where I _______ in koala-breeding programs.

My son, Jett, always been with koalas and comes out _______ them with me. But we’ve both become concerned over the __________ of our beloved koalas. I knew the best way to stop them from dying out was to __________ the young like my son because the future really is theirs. So I wrote a children’s book, Have You Seen a Tree for Me?, which I hope will help them understand we’ve got to __________ our beloved wildlife.

There are lots of __________ things kids can do to start helping now; Keep dogs and cats locked away from wildlife, plant a tree that will encourage native animals to visit and __________your family to drive slowly in wildlife habitats and areas. That might only sound __________, but if we all do this, it can make a big difference.

10 . In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919), America’s 26th president, signed the American Antiquities Act. The law ______ him—and future presidents—to take immediate action to protect important cultural or natural ______. During his time ______ (1901-1909), he established five new national parks and 18 national monuments. He became ______ as “the conservationist (环境保护主义者) president”.

Roosevelt’s______ for the land and environment came from the time he spent in the Dakota Territory. In 1883, he came to Dakota in ______ of hunting huge animals called bison and had a great ______ in the Western frontier lifestyle.

Roosevelt soon developed an interest in ______ cattle. He entered the business and ______ $14, 000 to build the Maltese Cross Ranch (牧场). Roosevelt returned to New York while workers constructed the ranch. But, in 1884, he experienced two great ______ losses. His mother and wife ______ illnesses on the same day.

Roosevelt again ______ west and sought to ______ the reminders of his recent losses. Roosevelt ______ between New York and Dakota. In 1885, Roosevelt published his first book about his ______ as a rancher and hunter. In it, he predicted that the cattle industry was not sustainable (可持续性的). In other words, it would not ______.

Roosevelt was right. Severe weather ______ the area in 1886 and 1887. In the winter, a terrible ______ killed many cattle. The animals that survived the cold soon starved. The experience, however, influenced Roosevelt’s beliefs about the need for ______ in America. Those beliefs, in turn, helped ______ his policies as president.