While this popular shirt that Jackson Galaxy is wearing might be trendy, the fact that men love cats is nothing new to me.

I don’t like to use the word, trend, because it implies something elusive that is happening at the moment, with an expiration date just waiting for the next fad to replace it. So, to some, the increase of the male presence in the cat world might seem like a trend, but I believe in fact, that men have been involved in the care and loving of cats far longer than mainstream ideology would tell and that we are just becoming more aware of it now. I do not believe that one day we will wake up to find people such as Jackson Galaxy of My Cat From Hell, Kent Butler of Catnip Chronicles, Terry Frum of Brian’s Home, Kevin Hattori of Animal Shelter Volunteer Life, multi-award winning pet expert, Steve Dale, and Peter Wolf of Vox Felina finding cats to no longer be relevant or integral to their lives.

Another man with a strong passion and caring for cats is a dear friend of mine, Michael Ostrofsky of Five Pet Place. I had met Michael early in the year via social networking when we were trying to save the Loews outdoor cats residing on the Universal hotel properties in Orlando and I met him in person at BlogPaws. A man with boundless energy, talent, and vision, he created Five Pet Place to provide cat guardians a line of high-quality and exquisitely designed cat products such as scratching posts, window beds, and water/food servers. But, more than that, he understands the spiritual connection we have with our beloved feline companions.   Read more

With each day that passes, our feline model Mia, becomes more and more like her wild Mama Zoey – her gait is unmistakably strong and confident, perfect to accompany this popular quote by Rosanne Amberson.

I try with each Feline Quotable Photo that I share with you, to include a bit of history on the author of the quote. Much as I tried, I could not find anything on Ms. Amberson, other than that she was the author of a couple pet books, including “Raising Your Cat a Complete Illustrated Guide,” that was first published in 1971 by Crown Publishers. I also managed to find this image of the hardcover book – whoever previously owned it sure did seem to refer to it often based on how dog-eared the cover is!

I celebrated my 52nd birthday this past Wednesday and so naturally it got me thinking of the passing of time. We are told to live each moment as if it could be the last, with quality and purpose, and yet so much of time is spent waiting to get from one point to another, with seemingly no purposeful meaning at all. Standing in the wrong long line at the grocery store, waiting on hold to speak with a live human on the phone for a customer service issue, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for your name to be called, and on and on. How much of our time is collectively spent in those often very frustrating moments? Read more

On the heels of crowning Katie of Glogirly as the official Cat Ruler of the World last week, we still have a few more announcements to make and prizes to give away. As you may recall, the dapper Austin of CATachresis was unable to win the runner-up prize of 1000 cat food meals from Halo / Free Kibble for the shelter he was campaigning for, Freshfield’s Animal Rescue, because they cannot ship outside of the U.S. and Austin is a Brit through and through.

Being the benevolent chap he is [this might be an exaggerated and unconfirmed point], he offered to donate his share of the meals to a U.S. shelter and we loved the idea so much that we asked readers to leave a comment as to which shelter they wanted to donate them to.

The response was absolutely overwhelming – so many wonderful people are grateful for all the shelters across the country and we are so glad that the drawing was random, because all the shelters are so deserving. Now that we have the winner, we decided that Austin should get to wear his tux one more time and make the announcement. We are also letting him announce all the $20.00 gift certificate winners provided by our friends at Meow.com, as well as who won our Tiniest Tiger Tote from the Red Carpet Cat Twitter Party that we were part of last week.

We also decided not to tell Katie about giving this honor to Austin, but somehow I don’t think she will mind. So, please Austin, the winners are: Read more

 I always find the study of genetics particularly fascinating, especially in the feline world. Zoey had four kittens that were born relatively within minutes of one another and we know without a doubt who the father was. Yet these siblings are as different as the Yin and Yang of night and day, despite that they were virtually impossible to distinguish from one another since birth and often still are. We kept three of them – Mia, Peanut, and Rolz, so all things considered equally at their current age of three, they live in the same environment, eat the same food, and get the same stimulation and care via human interaction. Read more