Cat Daddy: What the World's Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean

When all great movements are in their infancy, they are nourished basically on the mother's milk of righteous indignation. It is a time of red-faced screaming and finger pointing. That's a good thing - we need to be angry to move toward any systemic change. But ultimately the fingers have to stop pointing and the hand has got to get down to work - and the work is always messy.

This is what differentiates sympathy from empathy. No matter how much I care for you, it's not until I recognize me in you and you in me that the veil of gauze is lifted on the world.

If you've ever rubbed shoulders with insanity, he is a sweaty, foul-breathed cab driver who locks the door and takes you wherever he wants. The more you squirm to get out, the happier he seems to get. Insanity loves- no, needs-company.

[Y]ou are at the top of the energy food chain in your home. Your stress becomes manifested in your animal companions, as surely as it is manifested in your significant other, in your children. If you choose to share your life with others, you have a responsibility to check your shit at the door or others will suffer.

If you want to love them, learn to love like they do—firmly in the now.

When the picture your girlfriend conjures up in your head is of a cartoon skunk, reconsider the relationship.

We can achieve a world where no animals have to die needlessly; today, I truly believe this, to the core of my being.

Let me explain before another word is written: I have never once asked a cat, "So tell me what's up, Charlie?" and Charlie says, "Jeez Jackson, thanks for asking. A little annoyed by the fluorescent lights, and will you please check out this tiny piece-of-junk pan I have to crap in but, hey, I still got my legs, you know? Can't complain, pal.

My message, the message from all of us in the animal welfare community is simple: Take a picture of your Benny, put it in an imaginary locket. Then, with the love you feel for your Benny, hold it in your hands so tightly that you become an alchemist; the love you feel for one becomes the love your feel for all. It is all one.

We need a country literally full of cat guys and cat girls, bikers, politicians, clergy, and everyone in between, in order to keep millions from dying without homes.

we are all connected by the permanence of love and loss, the original inhabitants of the soul.

As an addict I take everything as a sign from God. It was pouring on about eight million people but I was the only one getting wet.

The first thing was not to panic, because all panic does is escalate the problem. (This is the first mistake that people make in situations like this: the cats lose their pee and the humans lose their shit.)

You can be a cat god and it doesn't mean shit at the end of the day if you don't have equal sympathy for the humans.

The funny thing about decisions based on signs or gut or visions is that they're usually nothing but noble outs. Just another way to sabotage yourself and keep your bigger life at bay.

Somewhere Else Discouraging, or training a cat away from a certain area is impossible to achieve as a human. This is because it has to happen within two seconds with consistent intensity every single time they come within the forbidden perimeter If you’re at work, you can’t spray the cat with water when she jumps on the counter. Do yourself a favor and get a remote training device! You won’t need it for more than a few weeks. For instance, one such device is a compressed air canister with an electric eye. The cat jumps up on the counter, the can sprays a spurt of air. The cat jumps down. She won’t have to do this too many days in a row before she just decides that the counter is unfriendly. That being said, don’t forget my rule of thumb when discouraging a cat from doing something: Behind every “No” there needs to be a “Yes!” If your cats are insistent about the counter, use your cat mojo and figure out why it’s so important. Then, give them a perch right nearby that’s acceptable to you and achieves the important objective for them.

Being obligate carnivores, cats have a short, straight digestive tract perfectly suited for eating raw meat. Besides, you never see a cat in a field roasting a mouse over a spit, right?

He screamed like a thirteen-year-old girl with Bieber Fever,