Our very own peach -Miss Jazmine!

The Pantone Color Institute named its 2024 color of the year, PANTONE 13-1023, “Peach Fuzz,” declaring our need for compassion and human connection in the year ahead. This velvety and soothing tone represents “our desire to nurture ourselves and others” and “whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.” The sentiment is greatly needed and one we should embrace every year and every day. I thought it was fitting to end the year with peach, too, hence featuring my lovely ginger Jazmine in this year’s holiday card I designed.

From all of us at Zee and Zoey’s, we wish you a joyous holiday and best wishes for a peaceful and loving New Year.

Last Saturday, October 15, 2022, the Cat Writers’ Association (CWA) held its annual communications contest to honor the pool of talent that represents excellence in writing, blogging, photography, graphic design, poetry, and more. Now the third year in a row as a virtual event, for those of you that missed it, but would like to watch the ceremony, you can enjoy the YouTube video to follow at the end of this post.

CWA president, Cassandra Morgan, hosted the event and a big round of applause for a wonderful production. The video started in honorarium to the Immediate Past President, dear friend and beloved by so many, Paula Gregg, who we tragically lost on May 2 of this year to pancreatic cancer. She will be forever missed and is a reminder to be kind and loving to one another, as you just never know when it will be someone’s time to leave this earth.

While I am a writer by nature, due to a variety of reasons, I’m not able to blog or write with any frequency any longer, but I still try to dabble in another passion of mine – graphic design – so I was thrilled to find out I won a MUSE award in the Photographic Art category for my 2021 Greeting Card Collection featured on my Zee & Zoey’s Cat Creations shop on Zazzle. The series featured:

Bengal Cat Happy Birthday (cat model: Zoey)

Ginger Cat Thanksgiving (cat model: Jazmine)

Black Cat Halloween (cat model: Shadow)

Bengal Cat Holiday Greeting (cat model: Zoey)

Black Cat Happy Birthday (cat model: Shadow)

I had a lot of fun designing the cards and if you want to see them, or any of my other card designs, t-shirts, mouse pads, and more, please visit Zee & Zoey’s Cat Creations (you can also click each card image to be brought directly to the shop). Zazzle frequently has sales, too, so don’t forget to look for discount codes before you shop!

Take care everyone, enjoy the ceremony, and congratulations to all the winners!

Hi everyone! Whew, while I am no longer president of the Cat Writers’ Association (CWA), I’m still heavily involved in the organization, specifically, helping to coordinate our 27th conference and awards ceremony that was held October 22 – 23, 2021 and it was a lot of work to pull it off! The conference was virtual this year – a first for us – and while it presented some technological challenges, overall, it was a great event with some superb speakers. Registration was required to attend the sessions, so I can’t share specifics on the sessions, but what I can share is our communications contest awards ceremony which was open to everyone (details to follow)!

As I’m sure most of you notice by now, I don’t have the time to blog like I used to, so I really don’t have many pieces I can enter in the contest. That said, I’m honored to have received three prestigious MUSE medallions. One for a post I wrote last year, “Ten Great Reasons to Celebrate Jazmine for Her 7th Birthday,” one for an article I wrote for Catster magazine – Cool Cats: From Motherless Kittens to Ambassadors, (published in the May/June 2020 issue; about the decreasing Florida Panther population) and my Zee & Zoey’s Cat Chronicles Facebook page for Rescue/Advocacy.

With limited time at my disposal – between my day job and trying to write my next latest and greatest non-fiction novel, Facebook is my primary source of communication, so I was really thrilled to receive recognition for the page. If you don’t currently follow the page, I hope you will after this.

And for those of you that would enjoy watching the CWA awards ceremony in full, check out the video below for your viewing pleasure! Thank you all for your support over the years as well. You all are so dear to me and I appreciate you sticking by me and my feline gang!

P.S. One of my proudest moments as CWA president was starting the tradition of holding a fundraiser for a cat rescue in conjunction with our conference. I’m pleased to say that tradition continues and there is still time to donate if you want to participate in this year’s fundraiser. Donations are welcome by anyone and we have some great door prizes, too. This year, our rescue partner is Help With Cats, a nonprofit organization that coordinates resources to help community cats in the Greater Phoenix Area with their primary focus on targeted and sustained trap-neuter-return.

Help With Cats was chosen by the incredibly talented Kate Benjamin of Hauspanther, our keynote speaker this year, to receive our support for cats who are in need but often forgotten. You can learn more about Help With Cats, the fundraiser, and the prizes, by checking our fundraiser page here.

My first CWA conference in 2011 – White Plains, NY. I’m here with friend and fellow blogger/writer, Janiss Garza.

Wow. It’s been ten years since I’ve joined the Cat Writers’ Association (CWA) in 2011 and with a blog, three books under my belt, and several national print and online freelance writing gigs, it still sometimes feels like a dream. I didn’t start life out thinking I’d be a published writer, it just sort of fell into my lap when a tough economy in 2009, along with my two cats – Zee & Zoey – who had a litter of kittens that helped get me out of deep depression and inspired me to write my first book – The Chronicles of Zee & Zoey – A Journey of the Extraordinarily Ordinary, that it all changed. Read more

Me, a book, and my cats. My everyday happy place…

Each year at the beginning of March, school children kick off National Reading Month by celebrating the birthday of the wonderful Dr. Seuss, who was born on March 2, 1904. Teachers develop contests, family literacy events, and more, and with the help from Read Across America, they hope to motivate kids to read every day of the year. For me, it’s a subject dear to my heart in so many ways. I was painfully shy through nearly most of my school going years, and I was also persistently bullied which triggered me to withdraw into a shell even more. Books were my comfort, my solace, my safe island, and my friends. Without them, I don’t know how I would have gotten through the day. Read more