For those of you who are familiar with my 2012 album Glimmer In The Dark, you'll know that I have great love and respect for felines. When I picked up the Glimmer CDs from the manufacturer 11 years ago, I cried tears of pride and joy - not for my own work, but for the beautiful album cover and lyric booklet featuring photos of my cat Bliss. His incredible patience during the hour-and-a-half-long album photo session yielded such beautiful results. My producer Karen Kane and I even gave him his own vocal track on the album, a soulful a cappella lament aptly named The Voice of Bliss. My beloved boy crossed the Rainbow Bridge 3 years later, and I continue to draw great comfort from the way he has been memorialized. Many other MEWsicians share my great love and respect for cats, including one of my earliest and biggest songwriting influences, Mr. Billy Joel. As a teen-aged fan girl, I learned through Billy's Root Beer Rag newsletter that he loves cats, and that he had a cat named Claws at that time. Like me, Billy has contributed to cat rescue work. While my work has involved cat adoption counseling and driving, Billy gave a great deal of money to the cat rescue program at Beth Stern's North Shore Animal League. The league now has two Billy Joel-themed Cat Rooms. The “Piano Cat” room features a piano focal point that is both a cat climber and a working piano. (Note: like me, Billy is a fan of Nora The Piano Cat, and once sent her a photo autographed "To the Piano Cat from the Piano Man"). The “New York State of Mind” room sports cat-sized replicas of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Yankee Stadium facade, and Empire State Building. So here's to cats and the MEWsicians and other folks who love them! We hope you're FELINE FINE today >^^<