"Stretch! Zimmerman!" Ming Lau shouts, beckoning stray cats he's befriended and named on the edge of Yonkers. "Come on!"

The retired police officer feeds small feline colonies around the area throughout the day. That and tinkering on friends' cars keeps him busy.

"It helps me cope," Lau said. "It’s a blocking mechanism I developed."

Lau has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a variety of physical ailments connected to the work he did at Ground Zero, after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. A police officer in Yonkers, he volunteered in Lower Manhattan, on and off, for several weeks.

He's had flashbacks ever since.

"I’d seen death before. It didn’t bother me," he said. "But you see so much of it in one shot. That's what got to me. It softened me up."

Lau, 51, forced into retirement in 2005. He has worker's compensation and retiree health benefits, but he gets federally funded trauma care at Mt. Sinai Hospital from experts not available through conventional insurance.

This additional care is in jeopardy because lawmakers let the James L. Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act expire in September. Despite bipartisan support from New York’s delegation and lobbying from other elected officials and advocates, Congressional leaders have not permitted a vote to renew it. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said the re-authorization vote will take place this week as part of an omnibus spending package, but at press time Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered no similar assurance.

Lau is one of an estimated 33,000 World Trade Center survivors, emergency responders, cleanup workers, volunteers and downtown residents who receive treatment funded by the Zadroga Act. Congress passed the law in the closing days of 2010, but after heated debate, Democrats had to settle for five years of funding rather a permanent commitment from Washington to maintain the program.

Money already allocated will cover healthcare costs, like the weekly treatments Lau receives at Mount Sinai, into 2016 but after that patients would be on their own — unless the law is renewed.