I respect cat people, and am fascinated by them.

They love animals in a particular and committed way. Unlike dogs, cats don’t give it away. They challenge us to love them and trust them without the slobbering and groveling that dogs have mastered so well.

Cats thrive among people by being independent, dogs thrive by being dependent.

Dogs thrive by kissing our butts, cats thrive by showing us theirs.

Good news for cat lovers, there is a new blog just for you. It’s called CatsinCambridge.Net and it is published by Carolyn Smith, who moved from Seattle to my town recently with the 14 cats she rescued from a rescue group that floundered.

She signed up for writing help. She has responded beautifully to my urging – you have heard it before – to publish a blog, to help her overcome her shyness and reticence, and to connect her with cat lovers everywhere, she will love you and you will love her.

It took her months to get her blog up, she is phobic about technology. Carolyn has lived all over the worked for British Airways and cat triumphs and dramas and tragedies have followed her everywhere. She has put her flag down near my town, and surrendered to her cats.

It is a great and somewhat unusual experience to find a student who listens and is on fire to write well. Carolyn listens and she writes well. She is honest and thoughtful.

“It’s hard to believe that there was a time in my life when I was not owned by cats. Never-the-less, it is true. Not that I regret it for a single moment, but it all began when my friend Tim decided to buy a house,” she wrote in one of her first blog posts.

If that doesn’t hook you, then you are probably not really a cat person at heart.

I tell all of my students to start a blog, it is the best way to find voice, most blow me off and some don’t. Several have blogs now  – Jackie Thorne, Susan Popper, Rachel Barlow, Now Carolyn  –  and it has become  a central element in their lives, and in finding their voices, so critical for any writer.

None of them regret it for a second, it has given them voice insight. Like the runner who jobs every day, the writer who writes every day will soon learn  how to write.

I believe people can find their voice and meaning through writing and blogs are one of the great boons to individualists who seek purpose in their lives and passions.

On a blog, you can find your people. I know, I have.

Cat people have their own language and sensibility. They need one another, just like the rest of us do.

Cat lovers always seem a culture apart for me, I have never related to cats the way I have to dogs or donkeys, I am close to Flo and fond of Minnie, they are barn cats, not pets.

I have always  been fascinated by the emotional interactions between people and animals and this is the turf that Carolyn mines so thoughtfully and honestly.

Cat people are passionate and intense, they are often subject to ridicule and dismissal by people and media, the phrase “cat woman” is often a put down, as if cat people are somehow crazier and more obsessive than the rest of us.

Carolyn Smith is a new student in my Writing Workshop, her  life revolves around cats, and she is not stereotype in any sense of the word.

She has learned how to live with 14 cats and also have a clean and beautiful house. She knows and loves each one. She has also been all over the earth and has great and evocative stories to tell. She knows the language, and writes in an elegant way (although sometimes gets carried away with her cat dialogues.)

She’s a  Brit, with all of the horror stories of a detached family and a cruel boarding school.

She works for cats now, and loves it.

You can find her blog here. If you love cats, or just love animals, I think you will be grateful for Carolyn. Nag her to write every day, please. I’ve looked at a lot of cat writing, much of it goes over my head. This is the real deal.