This wonderful volume celebrates the moments we share with our feline friends—those both tender and amusing. It reminds us of the unique idiosyncrasies that keep us in their thrall: their independence and their affection, their mystique, their playfulness and, yes, even their disdain.
Deep down, all cat lovers know that the animals they love are great big lions in disguise. This romantic notion is captured in the photographs, stories, poems and witticisms that grace these pages.
This wonderful volume celebrates the moments we share with our feline friends—those both tender and amusing. It reminds us of the unique idiosyncrasies that keep us in their thrall: their independence and their affection, their mystique, their playfulness and, yes, even their disdain.
Deep down, all cat lovers know that the animals they love are great big lions in disguise. This romantic notion is captured in the photographs, stories, poems and witticisms that grace these pages.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them: A Collection in Words and Photographs
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Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them: A Collection in Words and Photographs
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Overview
This wonderful volume celebrates the moments we share with our feline friends—those both tender and amusing. It reminds us of the unique idiosyncrasies that keep us in their thrall: their independence and their affection, their mystique, their playfulness and, yes, even their disdain.
Deep down, all cat lovers know that the animals they love are great big lions in disguise. This romantic notion is captured in the photographs, stories, poems and witticisms that grace these pages.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781453280577 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicken Soup for the Soul |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2012 |
| Series: | Chicken Soup for the Soul Series |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Jack Canfield is co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, which includes forty New York Times bestsellers, and coauthor of The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. He is a leader in the field of personal transformation and peak performance and is currently CEO of the Canfield Training Group and Founder and Chairman of the Board of The Foundation for Self-Esteem. An internationally renowned corporate trainer and keynote speaker, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Mark Victor Hansen is a co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Hometown:
Santa Barbara, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
August 19, 1944Place of Birth:
Fort Worth, TexasEducation:
B.A. in History, Harvard University, 1966; M.A.T. Program, University of Chicago, 1968; M.Ed., U. of Massachusetts, 1973Website:
http://www.jackcanfield.comRead an Excerpt
Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Sharon J. Wohlmuth
Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC
Copyright © 2012 Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLCAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8057-7
CHAPTER 1
THE CAT WHO KNEW HOW TO LIVE
Cookie was a working cat. He lived in a New York grocery store that he kept mouse-free. Cookie was no slouch, and there wasn't a self-respecting mouse that would dare cross his path.
After patrolling the nooks and crannies of the store at night, he had the run of the neighborhood where he would spend his days wandering. As evening approached, you could almost set your watch by his return to the store. He would arrive promptly five minutes before the store closed.
One cool October evening, Cookie disappeared.
The store's owners and their children searched for him in vain.
The kids were brokenhearted. As autumn turned to winter, the snow began to fall, covering the streets. Everyone worried about Cookie, alone in the freezing weather. "How will he survive?" the kids asked.
Miracle of miracles, the following spring, Cookie magically reappeared, looking healthy and clean. Everyone figured Cookie must have been sowing his wild oats in another neighborhood.
Everything went back to normal at the store. Cookie once more checked all the nooks and crannies of the store to make certain there had been no unwelcome visitors while he was away. He did his job perfectly until autumn, when Cookie once again disappeared!
Once more there was considerable consternation by his owners and their children. How would Cookie weather the winter snows and the freezing cold?
The next spring, just when the baby leaves started to form on the trees, Cookie returned again!
Cookie's owners began asking neighbors for any information as to where he might have been. The kids asked their friends if any of them knew where Cookie went during the freezing winter months.
No one seemed to know.
Finally, one of the children rang the bell of an older couple who lived in a private house near the grocery store.
"You say, a big black cat?" the woman asked. "With white little paws? Oh, yes. My husband and I hated to see him out in the cold. So I gave him a saucer of warm milk. After that he hung around our house almost every day. But we were going to Florida for the winter, as we do every year. I felt so bad about leaving that poor little creature here with no one to take care of him in the freezing weather. So we bought a cat carrier and we've been taking him to Florida with us every year for the past two years. He seems to like it down there. Has loads of friends. But, between you and me, I think he prefers New York in the summer. I think he has a girlfriend up here."
Arnold Fine
CHAPTER 2 UNDER HIS SPELL
I can feel him watching me
Through golden eyes, unblinking,
And I can't help but wonder
Just what it is he's thinking.
I know his habits, I know his ways
But his moods are hard to tell
The only thing I know for sure is
He knows I'm under his spell.
For eating he's claimed my nicest dish
To nap, my favorite chair
And anytime I want to sit,
He's comfortably resting there.
For play, he's got expensive toys
To chase and romp and caper
But still he's only happy with
A balled-up piece of paper!
He's always begging for attention
To be scratched beneath his chin
And when my writing takes me away from him
He steals my writing pen!
Despite our unique relationship
People ask, "Just who owns who?"
It's really nice to have someone
To look forward to come home to.
And so, I stay enchanted with
This crazy pet of mine
For nothing keeps you spellbound
Like a furry, finicky feline!
Tami Sandlin
CONVERSION
I have always been a "dog person." As far back as I can remember, there were dogs in my house. Not cats, dogs. So when two coworkers found a tiny gray kitten eating out of the Dumpster near our office building and asked me to take him in, I agreed, reluctantly. "Only temporarily," I proclaimed, "I'm a dog person." My coworkers nodded their heads knowingly and handed me the warm little bundle.
The kitten was three months old when I brought him home. Weighing in at barely three pounds, he rode peacefully in the passenger seat, atop my gym bag, and waited patiently while I went into Wal-Mart, befuddled in front of the cat items trying to decide what to buy. I knew I would need cat litter and a pan, some cat food, maybe a toy or two. I made my purchases and returned to the car to find his small gray face with green eyes soften at the sight of me. Something inside me shifted a little bit.
Don't get attached, I told myself, it's only temporary.
I took him to the vet the next day, calling him John Doe. I announced loudly in the waiting room that I was in possession of a cat in need of a permanent home. Meanwhile, I tried not to notice the warm feeling I got as I felt John Doe purring in my arms.
Several months went by with no responses to my "Cat Needs Good Home" posters. Since he had started responding to my calls (as much as cats will respond), I officially named him Bonaparte. I thought it was a funny name and I wasn't keeping him anyway.
At some point during those months, Bonaparte started sleeping with me at night. He had a curious habit of laying down in such a way that his body always touched mine. When I shifted, he stood up, waited for me to get settled again, then lay down against me again.
I had never known cats could be so affectionate.
He performed the usual kitten antics that caused me to scream with frustration. He brought the curtains in my bedroom down so many times that I started telling friends that he was redecorating. His sudden bursts of energy that caused him to race frantically around the house in pursuit of invisible bugs left me shaking my head in amazement. He yowled every night by the front door to go out—until I got him neutered. He woke up at five every morning and parked himself on my chest; paws folded neatly under his body, staring at me intently until I finally woke up and drowsily stroked him.
Then there was the constant purring that never ceased to delight me.
When he was two years old and I had long since fallen in love with him, Bonaparte became deathly ill. He spent three months in and out of intensive care at the vet's office, and he required a feeding tube for most of that time. One night, when I had to take him to the emergency clinic, I slept by his cage because I didn't want him to wake up and not find me there. I took him to a specialist one hour from home, where he stayed for almost a month. I drove there every day to visit with him, cuddle him and brush him because he was so sick he had stopped grooming himself. The vets were grim about his prognosis. I remember standing in the hallway one morning, sobbing, begging them not to give up on him.
See, there were these cold nights that I had to get through without his warm body snuggled up against mine. The hole in my heart left by the loneliness was tremendous.
The vet finally determined that a risky surgery had to be attempted, although there were no guarantees for Bonaparte's survival. It was his last and only chance. Miraculously, Bonaparte came through, recovered and was able to come home a few weeks later.
Today he is six years old, and over the years I have brought home two other stray cats. Bonaparte worked his magic on them just like he worked it on me. They were unsure, insecure and frightened, yet practically melted in his presence. He grooms them, lays against them while they sleep, or touches noses with them as they pass in the hallway. His heart is so big that it spills out and touches the cold, hidden places in other hearts.
Somehow Bonaparte found that place in my heart. He found it before I even knew what was happening. And every night when he climbs into bed with me and arranges his body so that every part of him is touching me, I feel my heart fill with love all over again.
Kelly Stone
CHAPTER 4 JOY
Joy is
a cat's purr
that bursts forth
suddenly
and for no reason.
A rumble
amidst couch cushions
in late afternoon sunlight that
becomes rhythm.
Laura Cota
OPERATION "FELINE JUSTICE"
From the moment the cat carrier door swung open in our living room, Clyde the cat established his territory. He jumped out, hissing, and hopped up and down on the living room sofa. Certain that he had cowed the enemy into submission, he set out on his patrol through the house, establishing a watchtower atop the refrigerator and a safe house among the towels in the linen closet.
Clyde was the undisputed feline ruler for several years; he even grew a little soft, letting the human civilians pet his belly when he was sure no other animals could spy him. One day, another cat carrier arrived in the living room. Clyde was on a routine patrol of the perimeter when he spotted it. He circled around it, sniffing, and when he heard the tell-tale meow, he knew that times had changed. Operation "Feline Justice" must begin.
Clyde knew he couldn't proceed with a direct attack. The humans would send him scurrying from his adorable nemesis with a swat on the rear end. This wouldn't be dignified for the undisputed ruler of the house. But something had to be done, especially once the interloper had discovered his safe house and was found sleeping on the best towel in the linen closet.
The humans had a box that they put food into. They would push a few buttons, and minutes later the food emerged hot. Clyde spied on them from atop his perch on the refrigerator. He began to stand in front of the machine, pushing buttons with his paw to see what would happen. For days, nothing. Then, the door popped open and the light came on. Clyde walked in, pretended to sniff around, and, with the patience of a veteran soldier, waited. Soon the interloper hopped up on the counter and walked into the machine. And in a flash, Clyde was out. He pushed button after button, waiting for something to happen. Then ... disaster. The humans.
"Why's the microwave open? Clyde, what are you doing? Bad cat! Don't play with that!"
Clyde ran to his former sanctuary, the linen closet, and waited until the coast was clear. He need only bide his time. There was another box, a box in which the humans put their clothes, and it had that interloper's name all over it.
Elizabeth Butler-Witter
CHAPTER 6KITTY COURT
There we were, the five of us, at home on a Saturday morning, puttering around our condo in typical weekend style: I in my idiosyncratic human fashion, a sequence of sitting, pacing, then sitting again; they in the forced acquiescence of domesticated, furred and feathered creatures. We share 1,000 square feet on the second floor, Mochi, Merlin, Kuzu, Rashi and I: two orange felines—one shorthaired, the other long—a cockatiel and a small but mighty parrot. The reality of natural enemies cohabitating in such a small space is certainly noisy at times, but much more peaceful than one would expect.
On this particular Saturday, our weekend routine was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. I opened the front door and was greeted by a woman in uniform. I think she was carrying a gun, but I can't be sure. She definitely had things dangling from a holster-like belt. Could have been a cell phone, maybe a walkie-talkie.
I greeted her with the mixed signals of a welcoming smile and a raised eyebrow. Slightly nervous, I uttered one of those classic "hellos" that ends on a higher note than it begins, more of a question than a real greeting. She identified herself as an officer of the county's animal control department. She asked if I had any pets. With no hesitation, I answered, "Yes." She then asked if they had their "necessary" rabies shots. I balked a little, hemming and hawing, and eventually said, "No." Then, unsolicited, I rambled on about my belief in a holistic lifestyle, how my cats were only fed special health food, that they never left the apartment, that I didn't go to doctors myself so why should they, except for an emergency of course. And the clincher: how my favorite cat, Scooter, died years before when I took her to the vet—on the way to the vet, no less! Surely, these were justifiable reasons for keeping my cats housebound and inoculation-free.
Steely-eyed, the stout woman with the long blond braid listened patiently to my story and when she finally found an opening to speak, simply said, "Well Ma'am, your cats have to have rabies shots. It's the law." I had thirty days to comply.
Not the answer I was hoping for. "Could I challenge the law," I asked, "by enrolling the support of a veterinarian?"
"You can try, but it is the law. Thirty days," she repeated.
We said little more. She wrote something up that looked like an oversized traffic ticket and off she went to knock on more doors. Apparently, my town had a sophisticated service of door-to-door animal control. Interesting. It would take a few months before I would regret opening the door.
A peculiar intrusion, I thought. It was so uncharacteristic of my routine that I simply went on with my day, with my life, and filed the experience in that part of my brain where, thanks to my age, information takes up no space by evaporating almost immediately. The visit was forgotten.
Six months later, I received two pieces of mail from the animal control department. Tearing open the first, I saw the name Merlin printed on the document and the word "citation" emblazoned across it, asserting that I owed the county more than $100 for neglecting to inoculate my cat. I ripped open the second envelope and there was another ticket citing Mochi for the same offense. In fine print, there was some verbiage about an option to appear in court. In all of my forty-seven years, I had only set foot in a courtroom once, and that had simply been for jury duty. I had been excused; so, short of mailing checks to civil attorneys to avoid traffic court, I had never participated in the county justice system.
What a shock. Thanks to me, Mochi and Merlin now bore the mark of kitty criminals. After spending an entire morning researching my options, I decided to appeal my case in court, animal court, that is. But after many phone calls, I found that even veterinarians who labeled themselves "holistic" would not come to my aid.
I finally located a mobile veterinarian who would make a house call, saving my sixteen- year-oldMerlin from a road trip to the vet and, in my mind, impending doom. Her pronouncement forced me to let up on my principles: Give Mochi a rabies shot (it's the law) and exempt Merlin because of his age. One hundred and fifty dollars later, I had proof of Mochi's fight against rabies and a waiver for the senior orange tabby cat to live the rest of his kitty life without shots.
I went to "kitty court," paperwork in hand, and found myself among what I considered to be very serious offenders. My cats and I were "pussycats," if you'll excuse the expression, compared to this lot: neglectors, abusers, owners of dogs that bit small children. My appearance before the judge should be painless, I surmised. In this room filled with true criminals, I was a conscientious objector, a model citizen, a model pet owner. My choice to avoid giving my boys shots was deliberate. I was the perfect candidate for a show on Animal Planet.
After I sat through eight other cases, they finally called my name and I approached the bench. To my left, in a lineup of officers I spotted the blond, braided one. As I approached the judge, so did she. Situating herself to my right, she nodded and smiled at me while a male officer stood to my left. Once the judge announced the reason for my appearance, I broke into the same oration previously heard by the officer to my right, about my strongly held beliefs and how I lost a cat on the way to the veterinarian. This time, I interspersed some smiles to my words and made an effort to project my persona of a loving and responsible "parent."
The verdict? I would have to pay half of the citation and commit to inoculating Mochi on an annual basis. A small victory, I thought. I backed away from the bench bowing like a Buddhist with a mouthful of "thank yous" and more nervous smiles. Next stop, the bailiff 's desk to write a check and continue to express my gratitude.
A year went by and a small blue postcard reliably arrived in the mail to remind me of Mochi's impending shot. This time I didn't dawdle and called my trusty mobile vet to attend to the matter. The beginning of our now annual event, we chased Mochi down. His pupils turned into giant black saucers and his shedding fur tumbled around the room from fear. The doctor did her deed. We wouldn't see her for another year.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Sharon J. Wohlmuth. Copyright © 2012 Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
The Cat Who Knew How to Live Arnold Fine,Under His Spell Tami Sandlin,
Conversion Kelly Stone,
Joy Laura Cota,
Operation "Feline Justice" Elizabeth Butler-Witter,
Kitty Court Kim G. Weiss,
Vavoom's Lesson in Love Jean Fritz,
Miracle from Mulberry Street Kim Chase,
The Cat Charles Baudelaire,
The Wings of an Angel Joni Strohl,
The Fog Carl Sandburg,
Of Dogs and Cats Heather M. White,
Can I Go Home with You? Pat Holdsworth,
Contributors,
Permissions,