A passion helps charity

Published August 31, 2017 | By Ant Press

How “Completely Cats” was born, by Ant Press author, Beth Haslam, and Ant Press editor, Zoe Marr.

Both book-mad, our friendship was forged on Facebook in a group called We Love Memoirs. Chats about what we’d recently read quickly morphed into discovering a mutual passion for animals, and particularly cats. Between us we share our lives with several, so gossiping about our felines’ latest antics became the norm.

One day our dialogues developed into a decision to try and do something to help cats in need. We asked ourselves, why spend our time chattering away, when we could actually be making a difference?

The challenge was set.

Working under the name, Completely Cats, we decided to pool our skills as commissioning editor and author, and produce a book of short stories about cats. We would choose a charity with an excellent reputation for making things happen in the feline aid world, and help support their work through donating funds raised from book sales and online social media promotion.

One of us lives in New Zealand, the other in France, so going for a charity with a global reach made sense. We chose International Cat Care as our designated charity.

Its mission was a perfect match for our criteria:

To engage, educate and empower people throughout the world to improve the health and welfare of cats by sharing advice, training and passion.

We contacted the charity and quickly forged a superb working relationship. International Cat Care was, and is, everything we hoped for and more. Their vision that all cats, owned and unowned, are treated with care, compassion and understanding – are perfect ideals for us.

One of the ways we support International Cat Care is by promoting their information about feline care, and spreading the word about the charity. Every day we link in with other cat lovers on Twitter and Facebook, to chat about their cats, share messages from other organisations about cat care, and encourage would-be owners to adopt rather than shop. Our followers are amazing, and steadily increasing in numbers. But that’s just part of what we’ve been up to.

After months of hard work gathering story contributions from around the world, our Completely Cats book is now launched. A true team effort, we’re very proud of it. This treasure is packed with stories to amuse, amaze and even cause a tear to fall. Paperback and ebook versions of the book are now being sold worldwide via Amazon, and we have pledged a proportion of the funds to International Cat Care.