Mordecai Siegal Archive
COOL CATS
The great Louis Armstrong used to refer to all of us as "cats." And if he admired anything at all about you personally he said you were a "cool cat." After all these decades, the expression still has the same meaning. What greater compliment is there than to be a cool cat according to the Satchmo
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THIS 'N THAT
Manhattan's answer to the Starbucks Empire is the proliferation of independently owned neighborhood coffee bars. You should not confuse these small spaces with the old coffee shops of another era where a guy in a white paper hat slammed down a splashing cuppa Joe on the Formica counter as he offe
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BLESSING THE McPets
In early October, I received an e-mail invitation from my dear friend, Chaplain Cherilyn Frei, the Director of Spiritual Care at Ronald McDonald House of New York. It was to attend a special Mass in celebration of The Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, Patron Saint of Animals and Nature. She refer
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They May Lose Their Mittens
The following column is reprinted with permission from an article by Mordecai Siegal, which appeared in the beautiful "Cat Fanciers' Association Inc. 2007 CFA Yearbook." It can be purchased online at : http://www.cfainc.org/catalog/ye
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The Stacks
Because of low metabolism, it takes me more than an hour each morning for the blurry sleep to burn off like fog and open my eyelids. To put it mildly, I’m not sharp first thing in the morning. It takes strong coffee (2 jiggers Columbian to 1 jigger espresso) to give me a jolt from one large, fla
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Rolling Dog Ranch
In April of this year, I received a letter from an animal rescue
worker, Ms. Jean Cullen from Pahrump, Nevada. In it, she asked me
to look over the material she sent me about a "wonderful place,
Rolling Dog Ranch Animal
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Gussying Up Gus
I used to know a cat named Gus, and he would clear a room faster than a kid sucking on a lemon. Way back when, we were a group of young adults who used to get together for fun a couple of evenings week, like the first act of La Boheme. We were all friends then, and I even married one of them, lon
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The Norman Conquest: Author Norman Mailer Receives The Legion of Honor, Highest Honor from France
When I was much younger and uncertain of my future as a writer I often heard about sightings of Norman Mailer walking his Standard Poodle along the beautiful Promenade that forms a belt around Brooklyn Heights. My friends and I, young aspiring writers living in Greenwich Village, were intrigued t
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Bogart, Here's Lookin' At You Kitty
I sort of knew a cat named Bogart back in the Sexy Sixties, and now it can be told that he sort of lived at a very popular hangout, a restaurant and bar on a busy avenue in Greenwich Village. It was a sort of secret at the time because the Health Department Code of New York City forbids animals f
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With a Wink and a Wonk
Wonk is computer-ese for an expert in a given field and appears to have
derived from spelling the word know backwards. You can stop grinning,
because this word refers to those who want to be taken seriously (although you
are allowed to wink). I suppose it applies to most of yo
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Pigeon Feathers
There are twelve beautiful trees gracing my block on Charles Street. I consider myself very lucky to have them. From the glass door leading to my terrace, I watch the seasons change as these very trees sprout buds, tender leaves and then large green ones that look like open hands. At this time of
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In The Moment, Then and Now
I guess
I am no different than anyone else when it comes to the crisp, cold-weather
holidays, from Thanksgiving (my favorite) to New Years Day. It is all
a matter of what you choose to anticipate, mind you. What is on my mind
right now is the day I
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Reflections on Hurricane Katrina and the Aftermath
So much has been said about the horrors visited upon the Gulf Coast cities and towns it seems almost useless to add to it. Of course, it is always useful to express your feelings. When I was a very young man in the U.S. Air Force in the early 50s, I was stationed for almost a year at Keesler Air
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The Lady and the Panda
The ink is barely dry on her new book, The Lady and the Panda (Random House), and author Vicki Croke is already getting her fair share of attention in a tough month for authors that have seen the new Harry Potter installment and the Woodward and Bernstein deep throat thriller hoggi
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Collaborating With the Enemy
Wait a minute. This is not about treason; it's about that misunderstood term, co-author. The title of this piece is just a smart-ass way of saying that writing with another person sometimes feels like that, even if it is not true. Of the 33 books I have written, 11 of them were with the sa
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Ode to a Grecian Dog
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Perpetual Questions
To my surprise and disquiet a features writer from the Wall Street Journal interviewed me for several hours during the busy days leading up to the Westminster Dog Show. In other good times, I have been interviewed by our own Steve Dale, among others, for his syndicated newspaper column and radio
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The Dusty Keyboard
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since
goodnewsforpets first crackled in the electric vapor.
Holy Plasma Screen! It's older than my computer. Imagine. My "new"
ThinkPad is old enough to be embedded with the dusty exhaust of
Manhattan's electrostatic air. Not only
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Paw Prints In The Dust
One of
my pleasures each morning is watching my neighbors from the terrace
of my little Greenwich Village apartment as they give their dogs their
morning stroll. I stand near the ledge, sip coffee and sometimes talk
to a friend on my cordless phone.
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Driving Miss Daisy
Taken
in part from a keynote address given at an awards dinner for the Hillsborough
County Veterinary Medical Society in Tampa, Florida. A friend
of mine lives with a dog named Daisy, who has more pent-up energy than
a nursery
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Dog Writers Win Awards
The Dog Writers Association of America was appropriately born in
a back room at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in 1935. It
started with 30 editors and publishers. Today, members also include
broadcasters and online columnists, and total over 500 who make
their living reporting about '
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Two Different Worlds
Those who
know me are aware of my aversion to country living. For me it is all
too quiet among the trees and very, very dark at night. Then there is
the cacophony of the evening crickets and the cicadas to break through
the silence along with an oc
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The Write Way
If I could
afford the side trip, I would enjoy teaching what I have learned about
writing over the past 53 years to those who have a burning desire to
fill blank sheets of paper.
Unfortunately,
teaching is a luxury I simply cannot in
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What's A Nice Dog Like You Doing With A Joint Like This?
Nestled between the many disadvantages of living in New York City there is the benefit of always having something current to write about and something interesting to do at lunchtime.
It all began when Lea-Ann, our founder, l
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Say It Again, Sam
One of lower Manhattan's busiest thoroughfares is Houston Street. Hold it, guys. New Yorkers pronounce it, HOUSE-ton Street. Recently, I was in the city of Houston (pronounced: HUE-ston) to attend the Cat Writers Conference and to s
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The March of Thyme
As we leisurely stroll down life's bucolic lanes and roads, with a lollygag here and a vegetative gaze there, resembling a giraffe staring into a camera, we barely notice subtle changes such as the dulling of our taste buds and the growi
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A Midwinter Night's Dream
The Westminster Week splashed bright colors and beautiful noise in Manhattan this past February despite the purple-gray skies, the unrelenting, bitter cold and the frequent threat of an icy blizzard, which eventually blew into town, a
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Dogs, Divas and Delights
The cutting chill of winter is slowly, grudgingly giving it up for spring which is lurking somewhere just beyond the weatherperson's pointer. It is now a game of temperature numbers; today it is 520, tomorrow it will be 57<
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A Cat in the Hood
When I was a married man, my wife and I owned a summerhouse on the south shore of Long Island which we sold so that we could have a third child. We were there for seven years, staying in what was essentially a vacation cottage from Memor
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The Cat Days Of Summer
With my birthday in late July, I am left with only one more year as a sexagenarian (look it up, it's not what you think). One of the benefits of this, in addition to discounts at the movies, is that nostalgic moments creep in on little
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Dog Soup for Dummies
In a galaxy far, far away, we lived on MacDougal Street when it was the coolest street in America. The problem was that we could only walk our dog early in the morning and late at night because the sidewalks were jammed with tourist
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Channa, The Chanuka Cat
Once upon
an ending, years ago, oh, so many years ago, there was an old woman
who lived with a large, gray cat, in a deep-down basement on a winding,
twisting street in that strange and curious place
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The Run For the Rosettes
For me it all began before Christmas on December 9th, 2003, at one of Manhattan's truly fabulous restaurants, the Blue Water Grill, which is not a place where dogs usually hang out. They can't afford it. It was an upscale PR luncheo
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For Pets Sake
The only person I ever met or interviewed who wrote about dogs as a professional and didn't own one or live with one was the late Walter Fletcher of the New York Times who for many years covered Westminster and all the important dog
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Entering the Heart
I only know of one instance where heartworm disease actually did some good for a dog and a person. The dog was a rescued Golden Retriever named Dakota, who it turned out, had extraordinary qualities, qualities beyond anything you c
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From The Terrace…and other perspectives
Before sitting down to work each morning, I always stand in front of the glass door that separates my small apartment from my even smaller terrace. With a luke-warm mug of coffee I squint out at the narrow street below and t
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Write From the Beginning
Growing up in Philadelphia with no money or contacts was an inauspicious start for a kid with a desire to write. All I ever had was a bit of lunch money. I studied journalism in high school, wrote a column much like this one
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