Our senses are how we connect with the world around us. By seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting, we appreciate life in its fullness as both an individual and a shared experience. Most of us are blessed with five fully functional senses, and it’s difficult to imagine how to get through life without any one of them. But how much time do you spend on a daily basis truly appreciating all of your senses?

I’m pretty sure cats appreciate their ability to smell every moment of every day – because that’s one of the primary ways they experience the world. Continue Reading

I’ve previously written about the benefits of unplugging, and about how difficult I find doing it. No matter how much Allegra and Ruby remind me that there’s more to life than technology, whether it’s via walking across the keyboard or chasing each other around my monitor, or, as in the photo above, Ruby insisting that I get out of the way so she can watch some cat videos, I still find it very challenging to completely disconnect from all of my devices. Continue Reading

Do you ever feel restless? Do you get that nagging feeling that something should be happening, or is about to happen? You’re slightly on edge, maybe fidgety, and there’s a nagging sense of “there’s got to be more than this?” Your cats give you the stink eye because from their perspective, your energy is all messed up?Continue Reading

Two weeks ago, I attended a one-day Mastermind event with the amazing Peter Shankman. Shankminds is designed to get CEOs, entrepreneurs and small business owners out of their comfort zone and help them take their businesses to  the next level and beyond. What does this have to do with cats?

Hang in there with me, you know I’ll get to that.Continue Reading

Are you content like a cat in a sun puddle with your life? Are you happy with the choices you made that got you to this point? Or are you so busy just getting through your daily to do list that you don’t have time to pay attention to your life?

I was listening to an old Matchbox 20 album the other day, and there were two lines in the lyrics of “Sleeping at the Wheel” that really struck a chord with me:Continue Reading

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.- Henry David Thoreau

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow is Labor Day in the US, which marks the unofficial end of summer. As a summer girl, I always get a little sad this weekend. I love everything about summer: long days, plentiful sun and heat, and the more relaxed pace of life. And even though I’ve been out of school for more decades than I care to admit, I still get that “back to school” feeling this time of year – and school, as a child and young adult, was not one of my favorite things. Allegra and Ruby are summer girls, too. Even though they don’t go outside, and know that sun puddles are plentiful throughout the year, they will miss the warm breezes wafting in through our screened windows.Continue Reading

No matter how much you love your life, your environment, and your routine (and I do), sometimes, it’s good to have a change of scenery. Changing your environment can get you out of a rut and stimulate your creativity. A change of scenery can be as small as taking a different route to work and as big as a trip around the world.

I got to do something somewhere in between the two last weekend: I visited friends in New York City. New York City is my favorite city in the whole world. I love that you can walk everywhere you need to go, there are a so many great restaurants on every block, there’s Central Park, and there’s the incredible energy of a city of millions of people. But my primary purpose for this visit had a cat theme: I got to meet my friends’ new kittens for the first time!Continue Reading

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun
it and call it hard names. – Henry David Thoreau

I frequently write about adopting a positive mindset in my Sunday Purrs columns. I believe that it helps you cope more easily with whatever life throws at you. I think Einstein had it right when he said “the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Adopting a positive mindset is a conscious choice.Continue Reading

Summer is my favorite season, and I always feel that it passes much too quickly. So far, it’s been a great summer. Even though up until last week, I was buried in a deadline for my two new books (I turned them in to my publisher last Friday), I still made time for summer pleasures. Now that my schedule isn’t quite so intense, I’m going to make sure that I savor each warm, sunny day and make plenty of memories to get me through the cold, dark days of winter.

Think back to some of your favorite summer memoriesContinue Reading

Last Sunday, I wrote about feeling overloaded. This week, I tried a little experiment: every time that overload feeling crept in, I stopped for a moment and asked myself: why do you feel so overloaded right now? And I’m sure I’m not alone with the answer I came up with: more often than not, it was because of the never-ending influx of email.Continue Reading