Mail Call
Posted: September 30, 2011 Filed under: animal artwork, cat artwork, cats, great rescues calendar and gift book, honor/award, photographs | Tags: award for blog, award for illustrations, cat artwork, cat writers association, cats, illustration, pets, photography, the creative cat, writing 13 Comments
Warm Winter Sun, oil pastel © B.E. Kazmarski
Well, The Creative Cat has won a Certificate of Excellence in the Cat Writers Association (CWA) Communications Contest!Thank you, Namir, for inspiring me to do this!
And so has Great Rescues as a gift book, as well as the illustrations and the notebook paper, “22 Cats” in the back of the book!

Mimi and Mr. Sunshine keep an eye on the birds.
In addition, and article, a photo and an illustration have won, “On Dying and Death, and Remembrance” in an edited version and “Birdwatching“, both published in Meow, the newsletter for the Cat Writers’ Association, and “Peaches“, the portrait I painted last year for Ingrid King and then published as one of my set of Feline Art Cards.

Peaches
The award letter reads that “the standards for winning a Certificate of Excellence are very high and this award is a recognition of your outstanding work.” Also, winners of the coveted CWA Muse(TM) Medallion are chosen from among the Certificate of Excellence winners, all of which will be announced at the annual conference in November.
What a wonderful ending to a somewhat frustrating week! It’s like a reward, and all the thanks go to my family of cats, yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s.
Read more about the Cat Writers’ Association and their annual Communications Contest. If you are a writer, illustrator, videographer, artist or in any way create public communications about cats, please read up on the organization and consider becoming a member!
Congratulations to all the other winners as well, since we’ll probably all get our packages at about the same time!
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All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used in any way without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in purchasing one as a print, or to use in a print or internet publication.
My Creative Process on “Buckley’s Story” by Ingrid King
Posted: February 16, 2010 Filed under: cat artwork, my household of felines, pet portrait | Tags: animal art, animal artist, buckleys story, cat writers association, commissioned pet portraits, creative process, ingrid king, pet loss in the first person, the conscious cat, turning loss into creativity 2 CommentsAs both an animal artist and photographer and a commercial artist and designer, my cats are my muse, even if they aren’t the subject of my creative endeavor.

Ingrid and Amber
Ingrid King, author of Buckley’s Story, has featured me again on Buckley’s Story in “The Creative Process” as I get to offer my understanding of how I create a piece of artwork, writing or a poem, and how my cats have been my muse and encouragement all along, even in commercial art.
While you are there, take the time to read about Buckley’s Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher and about Ingrid’s holistic approach to animal wellness, and make sure you visit The Conscious Cat as well.
I met Ingrid King at the Cat Writer’s Association annual conference in November 2009 and heard her speak about her book. From her loss of Buckley, a joyful and affectionate tortoiseshell cat who was diagnosed with heart disease after only two years, came an entire book, written immediately after Buckley’s passing. Since then it has received glowing reviews in the pet and pet loss industries.

Buckley's Story
I featured Ingrid and Buckley’s Story in my series Pet Loss in the First Person in the article entitled “Turning Loss into Creativity with Ingrid King and Buckley’s Story”. Ingrid tells how her career wandered around, forming into a helping, healing profession until Buckley joined, then left her life. She began writing in the midst of her grief, with a goal of having the book available to others by the first anniversary of Buckley’s passing, like a promise kept.
Life Lessons My Cat Taught Me
Posted: January 31, 2010 Filed under: books, books about cats dogs and animals, cat behavior | Tags: allia zobel nolan, books about cats, cat writers association, humorous books about cats, lessons my cats taught me 3 CommentsSure, we start out with a kitten or puppy or bird or other animal companion juvenile or adult, and we think we need to teach them how to live with humans. In some important ways, we do teach them a few household manners, but in the end we who love animals know that our animal companions teach us more than we could ever hope to teach them. That is, if we are willing to listen…and admit that we needed to learn the lesson.

Allia Zobel Nolan with Angela and just a few of her recent titles.
Author Allia Zobel Nolan, friend and fellow member of the Cat Writer’s Association, was published on Beliefnet.com, completely unashamed to admit that living with her three angel cats had taught her seven important lessons that she was compelled to share with others. Silly human that she is, Allia had a little “prodding” from Angela , Sinead and McDuff (can you tell there’s a nationality thing going on here?) who apparently “kneaded” her until she was convinced to share the story.
Not that Allia needs a whole lot of prodding to write something. She’s the author of over 170 books for children and adults, was a Senior Editor for Reader’s Digest Children’s Books for almost ten years and just three years ago went freelance as an author and writer. Her illustrated books about cats (actually, I think her cats used her as a medium) include Purr More, Hiss Less, Heavenly Lessons I Learned from My Cat, Why Cats Make Great Kids, and the series expounding the virtues of living with cats beginning with 101 Reasons Why a Cat is Better Than a Man, and that’s the short list. To see all of Allia’s feline-inspired volumes, visit the Cat Books page on her website.
Energetic and overflowing with a non-stop sense of humor, she’s been busy working on what sounds like five books at once and she managed to work a few of my kids into one that will be published this year, Cat Confessions. We’ll write more when that book is released. Seeing all this experience, I’m glad to have her generously coaching me as I write up my first book proposals and look for publishers.
So here’s a link for you—see for yourself what kind of teachers her three wonderful puddies are: http://www.beliefnet.com/Love-Family/Pets/2010/01/Cat-Life-Lessons.aspx
To see more about Allia, her cats and her books, visit her website at www.alliawrites.com, and her blog at kittyliterate.blogspot.com.
Turning Loss into Creativity with Ingrid King and Buckley’s Story
Posted: January 20, 2010 Filed under: books about cats dogs and animals, pet loss | Tags: books about cats, buckleys story, cat writers association, ingrid king, lessons from a feline master teacher, pet loss, publishing a book 9 CommentsFifth in a series of “pet loss and grief told from personal experience”
The loss of a pet brings a profound change to our life and our self, no matter what we do or who we are, but sometimes the loss and how we deal with it opens a door inspires us to make a change in our lifestyle or job, or to follow through with a life dream.
The change may not be something related to the pet who was lost or to animals in general, it may just be that the need to change our surroundings in response to grief spurs us to keep going with that change and before we know it we’ve come up with an entirely new way of thinking or living.
And then the change may be all about the pet who was lost, and we may also have the product of an immense creative effort inspired by that pet.

Buckley's Story
So it was for Ingrid King, author of Buckley’s Story: Lessons of a Feline Master Teacher. From her loss of Buckley, a joyful and affectionate tortoiseshell cat who was diagnosed with heart disease after only two years, came an entire book, written immediately after Buckley’s passing.
I met Ingrid King at the Cat Writer’s Association annual conference in November 2009 and heard her speak about her book. Since then it has received glowing reviews in the pet and pet loss industries.
Most of us have had more than one pet, and while we love them all we could probably each say that one of them was special in some way, an angel come to teach us a lesson, leaving us enriched in a way no other relationship ever could.
For Ingrid, Buckley was that angel who taught Ingrid how to live a joyful life even as Buckley slowly yielded to her heart disease. That relationship was powerful enough for Ingrid to write the book she had always intended to write, with Buckley as its subject.
Here, Ingrid tells how her career wandered around, forming into a helping, healing profession until Buckley joined, then left her life. She began writing in the midst of her grief, with a goal of having the book available to others by the first anniversary of Buckley’s passing, like a promise kept.
My Journey to Being a Published Author – Making a Dream Come True
By: Ingrid King

Ingrid and Buckley
I have been an avid reader all my life. My parents encouraged me to read at an early age. I remember weekly trips to the library with my mother – I would be allowed to pick out three or four books each week, and they never seemed to last for the entire week. Even back then, I remember thinking how cool it would be to write my own book. As a teenager, I kept journals, and there was even an attempt at fiction, or rather, romantic fiction, about a soccer player I had a crush on. Thankfully, that creation disappeared somewhere along the way during one of my moves either from my parents’ house to college, or to my first home – I can only imagine how reading it now would make me cringe in embarrassment.
The Reiki Cat
Posted: January 11, 2010 Filed under: books, cat writers association, feline health | Tags: buckleys story, cat writers association, cats with special abilities, health benefits of pets, ingrid king, master reiki practitioner Leave a comment
Author Ingrid King and "Buckley's Story"
We always knew the sun rose on our cats, but perhaps we didn’t realize that they had some unique abilities that made them special beyond our affection for them.
After numerous reports on how interacting with a cat or dog can lower blood pressure, how therapy animals in nursing home or hospice settings can elicit a response from an unresponsive person, how assistance animals can help a traumatized serviceperson, how animals in general can both sense physical and emotional changes in us, even if we are strangers, it’s no surprise to find that they can also help to heal us in very specific ways.
A colleague of mine who practices reiki recently wrote a blog post about a cat who was very special to her and who had very clear healing powers. Buckley sought out the animals and people in greatest need while living at the animal hospital, and later when living with the author assisted in reiki treatments. Author Ingrid King also references another post discussing the healing powers of a cat’s purr as the frequency is in the range for healing bones, muscles and tendons.
I met Ingrid at the Cat Writer’s Association conference in November. She’s written a wonderful book after the love and loss of that very special tortoiseshell kitty, Buckley, who helped Ingrid transition her life to a more joyful, intuitive place, then when Buckley was diagnosed with heart disease, went on to teach Ingrid lessons of love in the face of loss. You’ll be hearing more about and from Ingrid here on The Creative Cat, so here is an introduction:
Ingrid King is the author of Buckley’s Story – Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher. A former veterinary hospital manager turned writer, she publishes the E-zine “News for You and Your Pet,” covering topics ranging from conscious living to holistic and alternative health. She shares her experiences with consciously creating a joyful, happy and healthy life for pets and people on her popular blog, “The Conscious Cat.” Ingrid lives in Northern Virginia with her tortoiseshell cat Amber. For more information about Buckley’s Story and about Ingrid, please visit http://www.facebook.com/l/61d4b;www.ingridking.com .
Here is an excerpt from her post:
As a Reiki Master Practitioner, I transfer energy to my client by placing my hands either directly on or slightly off the body. I work with pets and with people, and I’ve found that animals, especially cats, are incredibly receptive to the Reiki energy. Some even say cats invented Reiki. While that may be a little far fetched, cats seem to intuitively know how to utilize the energy for their greatest good.
Please read the rest of her guest blog post “The Healing Powers of Cats” on Mind-Body-Spirit Works. A link to her post on the healing properties of a cat’s purr are linked in the first paragraph of that article, but just in case you can read it in The Cat’s Purr – A Biomechanical Healing Mechanism?
And here are a few other articles I’ve found around the internet specifically about cats’ powers of healing:
Cats Help Shield Owners From Heart Attack (US news and World Report)
Lower Your Cholesterol — with a Cat! (Catster)
A cat’s special sensitivity:
A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat (New England Journal of Medicine)
And the benefits of pets in general:
Can Pets Help Keep You Healthy? Exploring the Human-Animal Bond (National Institutes of Health)