MSI Press Blog

  Just sharing some thoughts, for Caturday, on our experiences with rescuing street cats and integrating them into our cat family. Food  Most street cats (all of them, in our experience) are not fussy eaters (unlike some domestic cats). Generally, once they are inside and have food at the ready, they don't really trust that will always be the case. We had one cat, who really was close to death from starvation, who did not leave the food bowl for two weeks, except to use the litter box. He would eat from it, sit beside, view the world from it, and sleep beside it. Eventually, he got the idea that the bowl would always be there, and he started exploring his environment. Litter Box Most street cats have little trouble adjusting to a litter box since they look for dirt outside for doing their business. We have seeded a little box with the litter of another cat if we are going to keep a newly rescued cat separated from the other cats for a while. Once our family of cats got big enough a

  Isn't it amazing how sometimes just a picture can brighten a day. Here, Intrepid shows how he earned his name. Always curious. Always fearless. Always wanting to be wherever the humans are -- and sometimes above them! Yep, he liked to help change light bulbs. (We lost him to lymphoma a few years ago, but his intrepid spirit remains.) For more Caturday posts, click  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  X ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com. Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information

  Rescuing cats can be take skill and patience in large quantity. For the skill part, we refer you to our earlier post, Rescuing/Adopting Street Cats . Intrepid, shown here, was rescued when his street mother died and he was still a very tiny kitten; his young age made adjustment easier for him than for an older cat. One of the older cats in our house adopted him and raised him, and they remained father and son until Intrepid met an early death as an 11-year-old from cancer three years ago. To this day, his "father" Murjan mourns him. For more posts on cats, cat books, and things feline, click HERE .

  Two years ago today, Carl Leaver, typesetter, graphic designer, and co-founder of MSI Press LLC , passed away after five too-short months of cancer of unknown primary . We all want a legacy, no matter how humble, and Carl certainly has one. To wit, Dozens of MSI Press authors loved his book covers -- and, in a kind way, they reached out to him in his dying days to tell him so. He edited one book, Overcoming the Odds , and co-authored another, Intrepid . Books almost always outlast us. He was Dad to four children (or seven, depending on how you count the three who moved in with us as teenagers) and three grandchildren, two of whom lost both their grandfathers in 2021, and daddy to a couple dozen cats; his very special cat, Intrepid, who preceded him in death, is buried with him. His name is engraved on a brick, shown above by Br. James, at the St. Francis Retreat Center in San Juan Bautista, reminding a number of people of him as they pass over his stone. His obituary is the second mo

In honor of Caturday, we are sharing photos of the cats who own MSI Press authors, starting with Sula, pictured above, who is herself an MSI Press author. Click HERE  to see Sula's works. Simon is owned by Joanna Charnas, author of chronic illness support books and A Movie Lover's Search for  Romance , who says he is her "foster failure." Click HERE to see Joanna's works. Jeremy Feig was owned by Shelly. He wrote a book about her, How My Cat Made Me a Better Man , that won a book of the year award. Click HERE   to read about Shelly, including excerpts from the book. Carl and Betty Lou Leaver are owned by Intrepid about whom they wrote a book, stuffed with illustrations, and five other cats. Click HERE to see Intrepid . In the picture, Happy (black & white) and Murjan (red & white) share a cat bed. Cindy McKinley Alder is owned by Watson, shown here wrapped in a ribbon. So cute! Click HERE to see Cindy's contributions to the field of teaching, parenting

One of the fun things that a publisher (or at least, an acquisitions editor) gets to experience is meeting more than one member of a family -- as authors whose work we publish. In this series of presenting family authors, we take note of the Leaver writers, who have written books in various combinations and solo. Above pictured is Betty Lou Leaver and Shenan (CB) Leaver, who collaborated on Mommy Our House Guest , a fun book that has gained a number of afficionados and been serialized in a magazine.  Betty Lou, who has written dozens of books, including, for MSI Press, Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star and The Invisible Foreign Language Classroom (with Laura Dabbs) and Carl, who typeset and designed the covers of many MSI Press publications and edited Overcoming the Odds , collaborated on the book,  Intrepid.  who unfortunately passed away in 2021 from Cancer of Unknown Primary, Carl, unfortunately, passed away suddenly in 2021 from Cancer of Unknown Primar

  A walk down memory lane is always fun, and here are some fun posts we have written that feature cats: Read posts about Sula the Parish Cat . Read posts about Shelly and author Jeremy Feig's Book of the Year finalist book about her. Read posts about Elly and her travels. Read posts about Noah and his puppy. Read about Intrepid and his adventures (a cat memorial, with lots of pictures).

  Personal experience from the editor: When three of our six cats were diagnosed with cancer, it was at a late stage. (The number is normal; 50% of cats over the age of 10 end up with cancer.) Even talented feline oncologists cannot turn the clock back. They can try to stop the clock, but sometimes the damage is too great.  We lost Intrepid to cancer three years ago (and wrote a book about him). He survived only a month of chemotherapy; he was diagnosed too late, and several important organs were in the process of failure: kidneys, pancreas, stomach. His older "brother" (not biological) who came from Jordan as well was diagnosed at the same time.  Murjan  managed to survive three years on chemotherapy, but by the time he died last Sunday, he was on seven medicines, periodic hydration, and down to 5 pounds (from 16). He fought valiantly, but ultimately the cancer won. Likewise, our young Lynx Siamese cat, Snyezhka, has breast cancer, diagnosed at stage 4, treated with surgery,

  Our beloved 12-year-old cat, Snyezhka , a Siamese mix whom we rescued from a life on the street when she was 1-2 years old, pulling her from a fight with two tom cats that she seemed to be winning in spite of unfair odds, has appeared in Caturday posts before. So, if you want to see more information about her -- and more pictures -- just click on the link. Snyezhka went from street cat to lap cat not immediately but gradually, with time, gaining confidence in her relationships with the humans and other felines in our house. She immediately recognized Happy Cat because he had been rescued from the street before she was, and they had bonded. That helped her to blend into the family (of six cats and three people) fairly quickly. She became my lap cat, always snuggling up to me even when there was not a lap available. Clearly, she loved her family. She had no desire to go back on the street nor to take even a step outdoors when a door was left accidentally open although she loved sitting

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with Intrepid  by Carl Leaver and Betty Lou Leaver.  Available at discount (currently on sale) at the  MSI Press webstore .  Read more posts about Carl Leaver, Betty Lou Leaver and their books HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our  Authors' Pages .    

  his is a series of Caturday posts on the topic of taking in  feral cats .  General information (from previous posts): For a few decades, we have rescued feral cats. In fact, with only one exception, our "domestic" cats have been ferals that we brought inside to join other ferals, already domesticated, as part of a bonded cat family. Right now, we have five cats (alas,  Murjan , the single non-feral cat we had, died from cancer last fall, and Intrepid , closely bonded to Murjan, died three years ago from the same kind of cancer), all of whom get along pretty fabulously. Of course, all of that is easier said than done, and the bonding took time -- lots of it. Here are some of the things we did to create our cat family, some of which is not at all typical of what others have done, but it has worked for us. We don't trap the feral cats at all; we win them over and invite them in. We do this by feeding them a distance from the house and walking away, then moving the dish clo

  Last Sunday, 3-20-2020, would have been the 52d anniversary for Carl and me had he not died in August. I make this post here and not Cancer Diary, although Carl died from Cancer, because Carl was an important member of the MSI Press staff from its inception in 2003 until the month before he died. He was still working on typesetting tasks on July 23, 2021 when he fell and was admitted to Stanford, then sent home on a very short 10-day hospice.  I am also including it here, on Caturday, because our cats were a very important part of Carl's life. Particularly Intrepid, who lived up to his name yet snuggled with Carl every night and, like Carl, died of cancer three years ago, resulting in a book named after him, and Murjan, shown here, who never know whether he was dog or human but certainly did not consider himself a cat, could be found at Carl's elbow every day, especially at mealtimes. He was a very polite cat and would wait his turn for food, and one could have a fairly long

 Murjan, born in Jordan, traveled to the USA when he was just a couple of years old. He is the only domestic cat among the six cats, but he quickly established himself as the alpha cat. He sometimes thinks he is human and likes soft and warm sleeping spots. Other times, he is certain he is a dog, likes to be walked on a leash, and rolls over to have his belly rubbed.  Murjan loves to communicate, especially having night time discussions with his human.  He will even listen to and obey little ones.   For many months,  Happy Cat hung out in the bushes, waiting for the other feral cats to finish eating the food that had kindly been set outside. Then, one day he became very ill, climbed the 17 steps to the Leaver front door, where he fell, exhausted. Betty Lou discovered him there, scooped him up, and took him to the vet. Happy Cat had a serious lung infection. Once healed, it was not safe to let him outside. That did not matter because he was delighted to have found a home and will not ve