This week I published my ninth book. It is different from the eight that came before it. This one has whiskers, an attitude, and a tuxedo.
The CatFather is a book of true stories about rescue cats. Not the easy ones. The other ones. The cats who sat in the back of the cage while everyone walked past. The ones whose paperwork carried warnings.
Too angry. Too old. Too sick. Too sad. Too much.
The world looked at them from three feet away, judged them, and moved on. And every single label was wrong.
How This Book Found Me
For years I have volunteered at an animal rescue, and somewhere along the way the difficult cats became my cats. The hissers. The hiders. The ones who had given up on people, usually because people had given up on them first.
At the rescue center they started calling me the cat whisperer. My closest friends went further. They called me the Catfather, and they made me the hat to prove it. The name stuck, and eventually it became this book.
The friends made the hat. The hat made the book.
But here is the truth, and I put it on page one: I am not special. There is no gift, no secret language, no mystical talent. What I do, anyone can do. Including you.
I kneel down. I slow down. I stop asking the cat to meet me where I am, and I go to where the cat is. I let a frightened soul set the pace, and I offer love without conditions and without a clock.
Sometimes healing is not complicated. Sometimes healing is just love, offered at eye level.
Twelve Cats, Twelve Lessons
In these pages you will meet twelve unforgettable cats. Each chapter is one true story, told with the humor these little souls deserve, because make no mistake, cats are dignity and comedy living in the same small body. And each story ends with the lesson the cat taught me, about patience, about trust, about grief, about starting over, about love that asks for nothing in return.
Because this book was never only about cats.
Every one of us has been handed a warning label at some point. Too sensitive. Too quiet. Too broken. Too much. We were judged from three feet away by people who never knelt down to look into our eyes. And many of us made the world's labels our mirror.
What I watched happen in front of me, again and again, is what happens when a soul is finally seen instead of labeled. It softens. It remembers itself. The hissing stops, the hiding ends, and something that was there all along comes forward. Cats do it in weeks. People can do it too, the moment someone, even if that someone is you, looks at them with new eyes.
An Invitation
If you have ever loved an animal, this book will feel like home. If you have ever been written off, it will feel like hope. And if there is a shelter near you with a cat in the back of the cage that everyone walks past, maybe this book will change what you see when you look at it.
The CatFather is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. It is the most fun I have ever had writing a book, and I believe it carries some of the most important lessons I have ever been taught. My teachers just happened to have four legs.
Offered with love, at eye level.