THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
By Eileen Novotny, co-author of the book “THE CATNIP DIARIES – The First Year” and creator of this site. Helen Grundmann is the co-author of the book and a contributor
to this site:
In May 2012 I had to put my best friend in a nursing home. Then three weeks later our beloved 11 year-old German Shepherd died of a heart attack. I was in a deep depression.
My sister, Helen, encouraged
me to adopt a cat since they are loyal, give unconditional love. and are fun to have around. Sparkles was the cat that I adopted from the animal shelter in July 2012.
After emailing my sister, Helen, describing what kinds of trouble Sparkles
was getting into, we decided to write a diary of his antics. Helen has her own cat, Kittie, so we combined the antics of both cats to have an entry for every day for a full year. Most of the entries are fiction, but we believe they could happen.
Other characters in the book are fictional, but they add depth and color to the diary entries. Helen came up with most of the ideas and I put the ideas into diary entries.
Anyone who is owned by a cat can visualize their own cats being just
as naughty - or nice.
When 365 entries were on the books, Sparkles disappeared. In my heart of hearts I believe Sparkles was an angel sent to bring me out of that depression.