Some books are read with on edge anticipation, such as a murder mystery, some are read at stolen moments before you go to bed, such as a romance novel, and some are meant to be read to cleanse the soul and rejuvenate the human spirit. That would be the case of Purrs of Wisdom – Conscious Living, Feline Style by award winning author, Ingrid King.

A collection of heartfelt and earnest essays based on her popular “Conscious Cat Sunday” column on The Conscious Cat blog, each essay will strike a unique and personal chord with readers as King offers her “purrs of wisdom” to us harried and over-achieving humans in the form of lessons learned from her feline teachers – both past and present, who have perfected the art of living life without undue stress, anxiety, and guilt. Read more

I find myself reflecting quietly in my own Catwoman style as Julie Newmar brings my life full circle.

Editors Note: The giveaway for this post is now closed.

Without belaboring the point, my dad was an alcoholic and definitely not a good father to my younger brother and I. He and my mom divorced when I was about 10 years old and we had an intermittent relationship throughout my adult life until one day, approximately 10 years ago, he made the conscious decision to vanish from our lives and has not been seen or heard from since.

I tell you this not for pity or sympathy, but merely to state a fact. I have long since come to grips with this part of my life and no longer let the actions of others determine who I am as a person. Granted, the path to my own self-worth was a long and often difficult journey, but I happen to like who I am now and I have come to learn to look for the silver lining moments in life when the road becomes a rocky one. With my father, finding those moments were few and far between, but one cherished memory that remains dear to my heart were the brief times I would come home from school and watch TV with him. Read more

When the subject of feral or outdoor community cats comes up, the opinions are as varied as a discussion on politics or religion and they range from complete ignorance, meaning some people may not even be aware that cat populations are living outdoors within their communities, to people who believe them to be mangy, disease ridden creatures that are nothing but bird killing machines to be frightened of,  to debate from people whether they can be tamed or not, to people who downright hate them and would prefer they all be exterminated, to people who feel they should be treated with respect and dignity and are actively finding ways for them to peacefully coexist in the community via managed methods such as TNRM (Trap, Neuter, Return, Manage).

What we typically don’t hear about, is the opinion of the outdoor cat itself, and that is why I was instantly drawn to the story, Taming Me: Memoir of a Clever Island Cat, by Cathy Unruh that is written in the feline voice of Lucy Miracle, a formerly feral cat that was adopted by this first time author after a very long window of trust building between the two of them. Read more

While seeing birds outside our window like this is an everyday occurance, the cats always find it new and exciting!

At our house, we have a lot of stuff – lots of cats, lots of windows, lots of birds, and lots of sun.  So, when a Sunny Seat sample arrived in the mail for Zee and Zoey, it wasn’t too hard to figure out why it was sent to them. The only real question was which of our seven cats would take to it first? 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