Some soulmates walk into our lives as people.
Some arrive as pets we choose.

And then there are the unexpected ones — the kind we never saw coming, yet somehow feel like they were always meant for us.

For Fenella, that soulmate wasn’t a person.
It was a tortoise.

Charlie wasn’t supposed to end up with her. He had belonged to an elderly man who passed away, leaving behind several sick tortoises at a vet clinic. Most people saw animals too old and too ill to care for.
But Fenella — founder of Wee Companions, an animal rescue in San Diego — saw a life still worth loving.

She adopted one, brought him home, and named him Charlie.
She thought he was a girl at first and called him Charlotte for years — but he didn’t mind. He only cared about one thing:

That someone had stayed.

What began as a rescue turned into a 14-year bond built on routine, gentleness, and quiet companionship. Every year, Charlie brumates — a deep reptile sleep — and every spring, Fenella wakes him with the same tenderness a parent uses to wake a child. She gives him a warm soak. She talks to him. She tells him stories. She waits for him with the same patience he gives her.

Charlie is nearly 70 years old, but to Fenella, he is still her baby.
And when she speaks, he listens — the way only a creature who trusts completely can listen.

Their friendship isn’t loud.
It isn’t dramatic.
It’s something rarer: a soulmate bond that asks for nothing except presence.

Because sometimes the soul that understands us best…
moves slowly, lives quietly, and carries its love in silence.