I meet a lot of people when I attend blogging and writing conferences and I also have a circle of friends via social networking channels like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter. Some of them actually know who I am, as in Deb Barnes, but the vast majority of them know me as a visual image they associate with “The Leopard Lady” or Zee and Zoey’s human. Not sure how THAT happened says the lady in cat ears, but this is called branding and because so many people think of me in those terms, I get a lot of fun emails and Facebook shares sent to me with stuff that instantly reminds people of me, the brand! Read more

Please forgive the abundance of words of this Wordless Wednesday, but I have been informed by the BlogPaws committee that Zee & Zoey’s blog has been nominated as a finalist in the Nose-to-Nose Pet Blogging Social Media Awards in the category of Best Blog Writing and I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for your support and kindness over the years to make this honor possible. Read more

What is it about cats that they cannot control the urge to chase the red dot from a laser pen? As you well know, if a cat doesn’t want to do something, they won’t. But yet, take the laser pen out and they will wake from a deep sleep or stop whatever they are doing to chase that dot – almost like when a light changes from yellow to green and it’s full speed ahead, all systems go! Even the laziest cat on earth, our Miss Harley is powerless to the spell of the laser pen and is unable to NOT try to capture this elusive red monster. Read more

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