October is National Black Cat Awareness Month* and last Saturday (aka Caturday) to promote the cause, I shared a photo on several Facebook pages dedicated to black cats of my black cat rescue, Shadow, with the brief caption, “Celebrate! The Beautiful Black Cat.” The picture was simple – a closeup of him with an uncluttered, softened background, with my equally simple call to action in the text of the post: “October is Black Cat Awareness Month, so let’s celebrate this Caturday by sharing the awesomeness of black cats with pictures of your beauties today! This lovely model is our rescue, Shadow, who showed up at our doorstep about a year ago.” Read more

Then and now. Our Jazmine has matured into such a beautiful adult cat.

Seven years. Our precious, beautiful, and loving ginger baby, Jazmine, is seven years old today. When Dan and I first came upon her at Global Pet Expo in March of 2014 at the Imperial Cat booth as a rescue kitten up for adoption, there was an initial internal struggle of “do we,” or “don’t we,” despite her melting our hearts instantly upon looking at her sweet face. It wasn’t so much because we didn’t want to, it was more a matter of me specifically. We had recently lost our beloved Ragdoll, Jazz, in 2013 and I didn’t know if I was mentally ready for another cat in my life or acclimating it to our seven other residing cats in an already fragile cat dynamic, no matter how ridiculously adorable this kitten was. Read more

In this current COVID era in which time doesn’t seem to evolve, but drifts endlessly from one day to the next with nary a distinction between what day of the week it is, let alone what month, the same does not hold with my beloved senior cat, Zee. With him, I’m painstakingly conscious of every fast-paced tick of the clock that passes within this slow-motion world. Read more

For those that follow this blog, you may well have thought I fell off the earth it’s been so long since I’ve posted and in many ways I have. Once this COVID pandemic really kicked in several months ago, forcing the Cat Writers’ Association to cancel their 2020 Cat Writers’ Association 26th Annual Conference and Awards Banquet that was supposed to have been held July 16 – 18, 2020, in Iselin, NJ in conjunction the CFA/Garden State Cat Show and Expo, my life took on a whole new direction. Read more

Happy Birthday to a very special and extraordinary cat.

I’m nearly 60 years old and cats have been a part of my life all of those years, probably totaling at least a couple dozen during that timeframe. And I love them all – past and present – each with their wonderfully unique personalities. I won’t say I have favorites, that’s not my style, but I can say every once in a while one of them really stands out, having an extraordinarily special nature. Kizmet is one of those cats. He’s a cat in which the earth revolves on a very special axis – one that is exceptionally kind, tolerant, intuitive, loving, patient, and accepting. In other words, he’s what’s good and pure about this world and a cat we could learn from. Read more