The Buddhist practice of Zen involves living fully and authentically in the present moment to bring us face to face with our true original nature, unencumbered by cultural conditioning and stressful neurotic tendencies. Each moment is to be filled with a profound peace and clarity and is to have infinite depth and significance. This is achieved through deep mediation and no creature has mastered the practice of Zen more so than a cat. Read more

Today is the two year anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan that resulted in killing some 19,000 people and triggered a devastating meltdown in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. More than a million homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged by the natural disaster and of the roughly 470,000 people who fled during the initial catastrophe, more than 315,000 people still live in temporary housing. It will be headline news around the world for the day and then the event will fade into nothing but a distant memory to be replaced by the next headline. Read more

I don’t know about you, but I find it impossible to look at Kizmet’s sweet and precious little face without my heart melting. Our darling boy who could never do wrong turned 8 months a few days ago and he is the most endearing and intelligent cat I have ever known. We don’t know his lineage, but he has the wise mind and soul of someone who has seen other lives and traveled to faraway places. Read more

Years ago, doing taxes was as simple as an EZ form, declaring my two boys as deductions and crossing my fingers I didn’t owe any money back to the government. Today things are a bit more complicated and Dan and I use the assistance of a CPA to help us out. We have used the same guy for several years and the routine is pretty basic – he comes to our house with his computer and we plug in all our information while sitting at the dining room table. It takes a couple of hours in total and after he leaves we don’t see him again for another year, which happened to be a couple days ago. Read more

A couple of weeks ago I had to provide a bio page for the Catster site and one of the questions they asked me was, “What are my pet peeves?” to which I glibly replied, “I’ve never had a pet peeve. Where do you get one? I’ve had cats, dogs, rabbits, frogs, guinea pigs, and hamsters … do they count?” Wow, well color me corrected, because it turns out I DO have a pet peeve and it is a BIG ONE. Read more