Hi everyone! I have a lot to tell you today. First, I want to share what The Chicken Soup people had to say when I contacted them about their awful choices of stories. This is their response word for word:

Thank you for contacting us about “The Cat and His Boy” in Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Very Good, Very Bad Cat. We were alerted to this problem shortly after the book came out and we were embarrassed and chagrined when we re-read the story. We went back to the writer and she explained what really happened and revised her story. Her son had not actually treated the cat that way—she is a big cat lover—but she had been going for a more dramatic effect in the story, thinking it was amusing—which of course was wrong.

Please do not hold this against us. When you are combining stories from lots of people mistakes can happen. We rarely make a stupid mistake like this and we took immediate action when we realized it. We are known for our wonderful treatment of animals and our passionate support for shelters. We provide tons of free cat and dog food to shelters and we actively promote the adoption of cats and dogs from shelters in our books. We even make sure to feature stories about black cats and black dogs, senior cats and dog, and pit bulls—all categories that are harder for shelter to place with families. Royalties from our last four dog and cat books go to the American Humane Association.

Please accept our apology and our assurance that the story has been revised for the next printing of the book and that we will be more careful in the future.

I am glad they already took action as far as this story was concerned. I wrote back and asked about the other stories I complained about written by people who don’t like cats- I am waiting for that response.

Now, I have big news- you all know how we love to hop. Annie of McGuffy’s Reader and I  were sad when Hilary Grossman of Feeling Beachie stopped doing her Friday Fill-Ins so we asked her if she would mind if we did it. And she said yes ! Thank you Hilary. So next Friday we will be co-hosting our first of hopefully many hops. There will be 4 fill-ins , 2 from each of us. We hope this will help us all get to know one another better. The fill-ins will be listed next Thursday.

Special thanks to Jamie Swimm ( who also designed my logo and header) for designing our badge: If you want to see more of his incredible work, check out his website.

We are very sad to see another beloved pet leave for The Bridge, if you haven’t already, please visit Whitley’s Mama, she is brokenhearted.