Editors Note

Having lived in a city for the majority of my life, I really enjoy the improvement in my quality of life since I moved to upstate New York about five years ago. And my cats definitely appreciate the change in location. Back then, a view from an apartment window revealed mostly traffic and pedestrians. Not a large number of birds and squirrels, and the lack of a truly comfortable place to perch anyway (apparently, a narrow windowsill is passable for a short stint, but hardly ideal).

For the past few months, Ive been preparing to sell my house in the Finger Lakes region of New York to move closer to my family and childhood friends who live in New York City and Long Island.

The two cats and I arrived in our new house in the Hudson Valley last weekend, and after a relatively uneventful four-hour car ride (if you can dismiss the nearly constant unhappy vocalization of Puja from within her cat box in the back seat of my car), I remembered some key things about moving into a new home.

Living in a new town has brought me around plenty of new people and a couple of old friends. One of these old friends is a woman who owns a local horse farm. Its been fun for me to stop by and do some chores, enjoy a little horse time and catch up on shared acquaintances and a little gossip here and there.

A brief car ride to the veterinarian can certainly unhinge many cats, so what do you do when you need to travel with them for a period of five hours - or even more?

At the beginning of each year, most of us write a list of New Years resolutions that we intend to keep - some with more success than others! But do you factor in some goals for your pets, as well?

Its a cat-care routine that youve read about in these pages, and probably considered starting in the future more than a time or two. Brushing your cats teeth is important. Why not start now? Consider that more than 70 percent of cats show some sign of periodontal disease by age three!

From when I was a very little girl, I was lucky to always have cats in my life. But I was a city kid, and growing up in an apartment meant that my family didnt have a big house on sprawling property, complete with numerous critters and barn cats.

After a long, snowy and very cold winter in the Hudson Valley of New York, I truly cant wait to get outside and start working in the garden.

Like most of us, I have a serious love for kittens. Ive resisted the idea of adopting one because I know that two would be better - and easier, in some ways - but I strongly resist becoming a four-cat household at present.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, well over 86 million cats currently live in U.S. homes. Two-thirds of them, the organization estimates, are indoor-only feline companions - their owners keep them confined within the home at all times. The remaining one-third are so-called indoor-outdoor cats -they are free to trot in and out of their owners houses as the mood strikes them.

Anyone who has ever been involved in animal rescue knows that, in a perfect world, we would wake up each morning and have the...