MSI Press Blog

  In last week's Caturday post, I shared our death watch over Happy Cat . At 11:52 pm, I updated the watch. At that time, we lost Happy Cat. He had been dozing on the bed beside my paraplegic daughter, Fawn. Suddenly, he urgently scrambled to get into her arms. Then, with two big, agonizing gulps of air and a shudder, he crossed the Rainbow Bridge while cuddled in Fawn's arms. We hope he is now cavorting with his pals Snyezhka,  Bobolink ,  Intrepid , and  Murjan  who crossed before him. Happy Cat taught us some important in his last days, some important for cats and some important as well for humans: Near the very end, cats sense when they are going to die, and they prepare by looking for dark places. Happy Cat would go into cubbies that he was never interested in before. (It's a tip-off for owners.)  Near the end, owners sometimes are allowed a sense that their journey to the Rainbow Bridge is reaching its goal. I felt an otherworldly presence the day bef...

  Question: What is a precerpt? Answer: A precerpt is a brief excerpt or preview of a book (or other text), used to give readers a taste of the content before they read the full piece. It's like a sneak peek that hooks the reader's interest (or at least, we hope it will hook yours).  Beginning today, we will offer Friday precerpts from our forthcoming books. Some are closer to being released than others, but you can anticipate that once a month another precerpt from the same book will be presented so that you can get a pretty good taste for the flavor of the book buy the time it is released. At the moment, the four forthcoming books from which we will share precerpts are: Grandma's Ninja Training Diary (Renz and Leaver) on the first Friday of the month Charming Cats, a series of books, the first of which is Raising Happy Cat Families  (Norwood)  The Curse of the Maestro (Walker) on the third Friday of the month Nothing So Broken (Richards) on the fourth Friday of ...

  Question: What is a precerpt? Answer: A precerpt is a brief excerpt or preview of a book (or other text), used to give readers a taste of the content before they read the full piece. It's like a sneak peek that hooks the reader's interest (or at least, we hope it will hook yours).  This Friday's precerpt is from  Raising Happy Cat Families  by Luna Norwood --  GAINING A CAT'S CONFIDENCE (part 2) So, how did Boulder became Bobolink? How did I gain the confidence of this scared baby? In the following ways that can be generalized to a number of scaredy cats:   LEAVE THE INITIATIVE TO THE CAT; RESPECT THE CAT’S SPACE. I left the initiative to Bobolink. He could join the rest of the family when he was ready and was not forced to do so before he was ready. Bobolink’s cubby on the cat tree was there as his protective fortress; I did not disturb him there—did not feed him there, did not try to pet him there, removed him from there only once a day for his so...

  Happy Cat in one of his dark places Happy Cat's days of valiantly fighting his brain tumor are drawing to an end. We are now on death watch for him as he valiantly trues to stave off death even though he knows it is hovering over him, calling. Happy Cat was one of those cats who never asked for anything, not even for a home. He was an alley cat, and he would wait until all the other street cats had finished their turn at the handouts from local residents, including us, before he would approach and finish up the remnants. We got to know Happy Cat from afar, seeing him every day hunkered down under the juniper bush, watching the other cats eat. (One of those cats was Snyezhka , his pal, whom we captured and adopted.) He would only come eat after they were done and he thought we were gone. Then, he became very ill. Something prompted him to trust us to help, and we found him spread-eagled outside our second-story entrance door one morning as we were departing for work. Cat lifted i...