This may not be easy to admit in an office full of dog lovers and to the thousands of you who board dogs on a daily basis, but I’ll put it out there: I’m a cat person. That wasn’t always the case, though.

When I was a child, I spent two years begging my parents for a dog. (I blame Wishbone, one of my favorite TV shows at the time, which starred a talking Jack Russell terrier with a great love for classic literature.) I promised to feed it, take it for walks, and do everything good dog owners were supposed to do.

And then one day my mom came home from work and asked, “How would you like a kitten?” Her coworker’s cat just had a litter, and one of the kittens was mine if I wanted it. “Okay,” I said. We had to wait eight weeks before taking it home, and during that time of great anticipation, I drew pictures of my ideal cat. He would be gray with dark gray stripes, and I would name him Snuggle.

Eight weeks later, the doorbell rang, and there stood my mom’s coworker with a plastic carrier full of kittens. I sat on the living room floor holding one of the kittens – he was gray with dark gray stripes – as his calico sisters and an identical-looking sibling played around me.

Snuggle turns 16 in July, and he is still a much-loved member of our family. He may not be as agile as before, but he certainly lives up to his name. Many of your clients may also have beloved feline family members, so Pet Boarding & Daycare is starting to incorporate more articles about caring for cats. In this issue, Virginia Donohue writes about how to handle aggressive cats (“Cat Aggression”), and Susan Briggs has great suggestions for fun activities for your feline guests (“Are Your Pets Having Fun?”).

Not to leave out all of our dog lovers, this issue also features a special section on a not-so-fun topic: canine respiratory disease.

Dr. Bernadine Cruz addresses the medical side of the issue in “The New Canine Social Disease”, while Joan Nieman offers her advice on managing your facility and customers in the wake of a canine flu crisis (“Managing Canine Respiratory Disease”). We hope these articles will help prepare you and your facility for “doggy cough and cold season.”

– Cindy Agoncillo, Managing Editor

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