I’m a crafty person by nature, so it was bound to happen one of these days… Yup, I’ve designed my own line of custom-created cat ears, so that you too, can unleash your inner feline!

It’s no secret I’m known as the “leopard lady.” It’s also no secret that I love to wear cat ears, to the point if I didn’t wear them (along with my leopard garb) at cat-related events, I’m not sure if people would know who I was! I decided to take my cat ear loving passion to task and have been a busy little kitty creating custom cat ears of my own to sell at POP Cats Miami, a venue I will be attending this October 28 from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. From black cats, white cats, spotted, striped, and everything in between, there’s sure to be a style to tickle your feline fancy!

If you’re in the South Florida area I really hope you’ll think about attending. It’s a cat lovers dream come true under one convenient roof where you’ll be able to shop and find unique, fun, and creative merchandise for cats and humans from your favorite brands from the pop-culture world.

Unfortunately Zee and Zoey won’t be joining me at POP Cats, but there will be lots of great cats up for adoption at the event!

Need gifts for birthday’s, Christmas, and the like? Want something for yourself? This is the place to be! There will also be a cat-riffic lounge that will feature adoptable cats you can interact with and a portion of ticket proceeds will benefit one of my favorite 501c organizations, The Cat Network, Inc.

I’ll be there, unveiling my handmade cat ears, along with a new t-shirt I designed (with coffee mugs and magnets to match) as well as with all of my books at a special discounted event rate (The Chronicles of Zee & Zoey – A Journey of the Extraordinarily Ordinary; Purr Prints of the Heart – A Cat’s Tale of Life, Death, and Beyond; and Makin’ Biscuits – Weird Cat Habits and the Even Weirder Habits of the Humans Who Love Them) for those who would like autographs.

Please excuse the dreadful picture – it was raining outside and I didn’t want to get the camera wet! This is my newest creation – the “Cat Lover from MEOW to eternity” T-shirt!

Author of 3 books and contributing author to another…I would have never dreamed it possible years ago when I started blogging in 2010!

And even better, I’ll be donating $5.00 from each sale of the book, Rescued Volume 2: The Healing Stories of 12 Cats, Through Their Eyes, to Riverfront Cats, a Miami rescue organization that promotes cat rescue, focusing on black cats which are often overlooked for adoptions. Our rescue Jazmine is one of the featured stories in the book and I’m so honored to be able to help Riverfront Cats out.

Jazmine is doing a double-take at the cover of Rescued, Volume 2 because yes, she’s one of the kitties on the cover!

Speaking of Riverfront Cats, Christine Michaels, founder of the organization and my dear friend will also be with me at POP Cats. That alone is reason enough to attend! And she’ll be bringing two of her black cat fosters who are up for adoption – Rocky and Ray Ray! We’ll also be featuring several raffles to raise funds for her 501c organization, Pawsitivley Humane, and, of course, we’ll be educating the public on all sorts of cat topics like spay/neuter, TNR, and more.

This is Rocky and Ray Ray. Ray Ray is sporting the cool shades and is a special needs cat, as he is blind. Christine promises they’ll both steal your heart and we hope to find them loving furever homes at POP Cats! Photo courtesy of Riverfront Cats.

If you’d like to go, click the link for ticket details – plug in the special code ZZPC at checkout and you’ll receive a 10% discount off your order! Hope to see you there!

National Pet Week – the bond with a pet is a life-long commitment of love and responsibility.

May 7 -13 is National Pet Week and while it’s fun to reflect on all the joy our pets bring into our lives and we would all agree that every week should be pet week, it’s also a time to reflect on the seriousness of responsibility we have to our pets. It’s a lifetime commitment – from the happy to the sad, to the easy to the hard. National Pet week was created 35 years ago by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) to help pet guardians manage that responsibility and this year they are highlighting a specific need each day of the week to remind us what every pet owner should consider to ensure that their pet lives the longest, healthiest life possible. Read more

Editors Note: I was driving to a dental appointment yesterday, planning in my head the new post I was going to write for World Spay Day. When I got to the office, naturally I had to wait, so I opened up my phone to check my emails. It was then I saw the devastating news that a dear cat loving friend of mine, Darlene Arden, had succumbed to her long fight against ovarian cancer. Darlene was a huge advocate for cat care and she and I initially struck up a friendship as fellow members of the Cat Writers’ Association back in 2012.

As time went on, our relationship took a unique turn. She turned me on to my most beloved, guilty pleasure – playing a game called Fairyland on Facebook. She warned me once I started the game that I’d become addicted and she was right! She and I had a ball growing our gardens and sharing conversations with one another that way.

She was also part of my most recent book, Makin’ Biscuits – Weird Cat Habits and the Even Weirder Habits of the Humans Who Love Them. When I reached out to her to let her know I included her book The Complete Cat’s Meow – Everything You Need to Know About Caring for Your Cats as a resource in Makin’ Biscuits, I know that pleased her to no end. She didn’t always love social media but she did love Twitter and I was so honored that she tweeted to her followers that they needed to add Makin’ Biscuits to their library! 

That was Darlene. She had a sharp wit and a sharp tongue. She was brutally honest and pulled no punches. She didn’t believe much in competition – her thought was simple – she wanted to help cats, so why not cross-promote the work of others? In her memory, I am sharing a post from last year that I wrote for World Spay Day. I’m just not capable of new words at the moment – I’m going to take a break and go play Fairyland while thinking of the times we shared together. 

It only takes one brief encounter for a female cat who is not spayed to become pregnant – please share this informative graphic to help spread the word.

While every day is a good day to promote the virtues of spay/neuter – not only as a safe and humane means of reducing cat overpopulation – but as a procedure to help ensure your cat live a longer, happier, and healthy life, with today being World Spay Day, it makes it all the more relevant. It’s a concept I like to call “Spay it Forward,” meaning we need to put as much factual and useful information as we can into tiny, digestible sound-bites so it can easily be shared to educate and impact change. To aid in the effort, to follow are some basic 101’s of kittens, cats, conception, cat overpopulation, and how spay/neuter relates to it all. Read more

Jazmine, a rescue cat herself, makes the perfect poster cat for adoption!

Many of us are excitedly waiting for season 4 of the wildly popular Netflix series, Orange is the New Black (OITNC). Based on the life of Piper Chapman, a woman in her 30’s living in New York City who is sentenced to 15 months in a minimum-security prison, the show gives us a glimmer into the day-to-day life she and her fellow inmates face in prison. I bring this up because it’s National Adopt a Shelter Cat Month and it got me to thinking of all the cats that are in shelters across the county – not necessarily a prison – but for many cats, it’s a lockup of sorts. Read more

It only takes one brief encounter for a female cat who is not spayed to become pregnant – please share this informative graphic to help spread the word.

While every day is a good day to promote the virtues of spay/neuter – not only as a safe and humane means of reducing cat overpopulation – but as a procedure to help ensure your cat live a longer, happier, and healthy life, with today being World Spay Day, it makes it all the more relevant. It’s a concept I like to call “Spay it Forward,” meaning we need to put as much factual and useful information as we can into tiny, digestible sound-bites so it can easily be shared to educate and impact change. To aid in the effort, to follow are some basic 101’s of kittens, cats, conception, cat overpopulation, and how spay/neuter relates to it all. Read more