Since I spend a significant amount of time social networking, I can’t help but notice there are A LOT of really creative cat names that I have seen on blogs, facebook, and twitter. Clearly, and rightly so, choosing a name for your cat is an event. Sometimes the process is almost instantaneous and a name will pop right into your head as immediately perfect and sometimes it can take weeks (or longer) to figure it out as you bond with your cat and try to get a feel for what name best suits the personality, or markings, or breed, or whatever… Read more

Flawed. No, not the book or the story, but people in general. Whether we care to admit it or not, it is the one thing as human beings that we all have in common. None of us are perfect and most of us have our share of hardships, realities, hurts, pains, bad choices, and mistakes that hopefully we can learn from to make us better people. Some of us prefer to keep those moments buried deep inside, private, and some of us will tell our story to a stranger in line at the grocery store. I happen to be one of those people who prefer to keep my life private, and so does Jackson Galaxy, cat behaviorist and author of “Cat Daddy – What the World’s Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean.“ That being said, ironically, both of us have written books that not only share our lives with the world, but in Jackson’s case, every raw, exposed, unadulterated, honest, and unhinged moment that brought him to the apex of where he is today. Read more

No doubt about it – I love my sweet Zoey with all of my heart and soul. Happy Birthday my precious one…From the moment you came into my life, that tiny little ball of fur you were…Until now, still a tiny ball of fur, but with a larger than life personality…You bring me joy each and every day and I am so grateful to have you.

Love from me, but also from the human male who loves you as much as I do. Love also from your cat soulmate, Zee, your children, Mia, Peanut, Rolz, and Zeuss, as well as your other feline roommates, Harley and Jazz.

Sometimes, no matter how perfectly crafted the sentence or how compelling the verbiage, there is just no way to do justice to certain events and tie them up with a pretty bow to make sense of them and move on with clarity, acceptance, and understanding.

Several months ago Dan’s youngest daughter, Jackie, shared the amazing news that she was going to be one of the ice skaters performing in the Ice Chips 2012 Show in Boston where she lives. 2010 Olympic Champion Evan Lysacek would also be performing and we decided then and there that a visit from Florida to Boston was in order and began to make plans for our trip at the end of March. Dan’s oldest daughter, Crystal, who teaches a 3rd grade class thought it would be a wonderful idea for me to come in for a few hours the day we were scheduled to arrive as a guest author and share with the students the many steps involved in writing a book. I was looking forward to it and began to formulate a lesson plan in my mind. 

Three weekends ago on a Sunday night, Dan and I were getting ready for bed and caught wind of a freak accident whereby a car had driven off the road and hit a hotel restroom cabana here locally and killed the woman inside who was 7 months pregnant with her unborn son. Not to be disrespectful, but tragic stories seem to become part of the daily news background and don’t really connect to your own personal reality. You mutter to yourself how terrible that is, then you turn off the TV and go to bed. The next morning Dan woke up to a string of texts from Crystal – the woman and unborn child who was killed was her classroom assistant teacher who was on vacation in Florida with her husband and they were just freshening up before they headed off to the airport for home. This was real and it was unspeakably horrible with no rational explanation as to why it had to happen. No single platitude or cliché in the world could possibly justify that it was her time and that it happened for a greater cause. Read more

To see full beauty of image, please click to enlarge

Sure, there are times that my cats judge me – when I dare to sleep in the morning, when I do not feed them at precisely 6:00 pm on the dot, and when I have the audacity to remove them from my numb lap when I have to get up and use the bathroom. They do not judge me, however, when I am not wearing makeup or if I am wearing ratty old sweatpants. They have no interest whatsoever in what my political views are and they are not remotely impressed that I am an author while holding a full-time job. They live by their own rules and I think that is why I respect cats so much, as did Andre Norton of this prolific quote. I love the contrast of Peanut in this image against the black background of the patio furniture and the stunning juxtaposition of the ceramic zebra next to her. It all seems to imply that we should accept life for what it is without discrimination. I also love the connection between cats and creativity. In light of my circle of cat friends, I would agree wholeheartedly.

 Andre Alice Norton (1912  –  2005) was an American science fiction and fantasy author who published her first novel in 1934 and was the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1977. An important role in Norton’s books is often given to animals — both ordinary terrestrial ones, such as cats (with whom she had much personal experience) and exotic fictional ones, whose characteristics are meticulously worked out. Many of Norton’s animals are highly intelligent without being anthropomorphic, acting as virtually full partners to the human protagonists and in many books forming telepathic links with them. (Wikipedia)