The ink wasn’t even dry yet and I already had myself as a guest on the Ellen Show and a high-visibility table in Barnes and Noble displaying my best selling book with matching Zee and Zoey plush animals! Whoa… Slow down girl! What actually happened next is a bit more technical – I registered ZeeZoey Partners (ZZP) with the state of Florida as a Limited Liability Corporation and contacted my friend and graphic designer, Madalina, to help me come up with a logo concept for ZeeZoey Partners – no point in moving forward with a book, if I did not have a professional image.

I literally poured through thousands of images of cats, leopards, leopard prints, Bengals, Maine Coons – basically anything and everything related to the feline world to help inspire me as to what I felt the image I wanted would look like. I made copies of clip art, did rough Photoshop layouts, and badly drew many pencil sketches to bring to Madalina to help her understand what I wanted – I gave her carte blanche to use her imagination and creativity, she did not necessarily have to find inspiration out of what I gave her, but I knew I wanted the logo to portray the love Zee and Zoey had for one another, as well as to showcase each cat individually as a specific breed.

What happened next was a bit unorthodox – Madalina was days away from visiting her family in Romania. Dan and I felt it was critical she read the book before she began designing the logo – it just seemed really important that she “get to know” Zee and Zoey before she began the creative process. So, my book actually boarded a plane and made the first of its many more trips to follow (the book’s passport currently includes in order of trips, Romania, New York, Illinois, and most recently, Pennsylvania). Madalina was gone for three weeks and I was on pins and needles wondering if she liked the book. After all, she was the first person besides Dan who had actually read it, and he might just have a slight bias. So, when I finally got feedback from her that she absolutely loved the book, I was very much relieved that I was heading in the right direction with my story.

So, the next thing I was waiting for was for Madalina to interpret what she felt would be the ideal Zee and Zoey logo concepts to present to me. It was by no means an overnight process and was a lot of hard work, despite the subject matter being so close to my heart. Thankfully, Madalina and I work very well together – she is able to reach into my mind without too much effort and translate very closely to what I want with a wonderful sense of style and artistry. She sent me several drafts to chose from – all of them were very good starts – we finally narrowed it down to one choice and went through the back and forth process of fine tuning to the point of where I felt we had achieved absolute purr-fection. There was some compromising as well – I was willing to give up a “whisker placement” issue, but was adamant that I wanted more leopard spots! So, back and forth – more spots, move the tail up a pinch, widen the eyes on Zee, but not Zoey, elongate the whiskers more, and so on. She and I spent many hours collectively emailing one another to tweak this logo to its final version and it became a standing joke with me, that I was starting to go dizzy around Zee and Zoey. For me, they became “walking logos” and I was looking at them in a structural, animated sense, as if they were logos that had come to life like some sort of wonderful Disney inspired movie! I was starting to see leopard spots, the letter Z and hearts in my dreams and I was a “ZZP’ walking 24/7 zombie!

I am absolutely thrilled with the results – Madalina did an amazing job and the logo portrays the love that Zee and Zoey share and has such a playful elegance to it. Zee has the big bushy tail of a Maine Coon and a fuller mane. Zoey is slim and petite with lots of leopard spots and the tails connect in a beautiful heart design. I am quite enamored of the heart we created, and, in particular, I love the little heart design we incorporated into the “y” of Zoey’s name. You will see these little hearts all over my blog site and we even designed a special Z/Z monogram with the hearts as well! Seeing business cards, letterhead, and envelopes created was just so exciting and amazing. To have an actual image come to life is so much more thrilling than words can possibly describe. Thankfully I no longer look at Zee and Zoey as logos, they are back to being cats again. As far as my mind calming down, well, that’s a whole other story and not likely to happen any time soon!

And the most incredible thing, since Madalina began working on the whole ZZP project with me, her life has become inexplicably intertwined with cats. Just days before she left for Romania, a relative of hers had to give up her cat, Skittles, and Madalina has adopted her as part of what was her existing cat family – a beautiful domestic long-haired named Tux. Two days into her trip to Romania – it was a cold and rainy night – she and her husband found a tiny, sick, helpless kitten outside in a parking lot that they nursed back to health. Her parents have kept it and they named her “Itsy.” Currently, they have a temporary feline house guest named “Cashmere” who they are babysitting. I’m not saying it’s my fault per se, but it does seem there is some sort of  “cat karma” in the air in so far as Zee and Zoey are concerned…