A Book of Bothersome Cats is now Released for Pre-order

 My illustrated book of rhymes for anthropomorphic cats, A Book of Bothersome Cats is now ready for pre-order. This book was largely created last spring, while I was preparing to go to Romania. Follow the link to order a copy. Here is some advance praise from my very generous dust jacket blurb writers: 

“Janet Kozachek dares us to underestimate her. Light verse? Anthropomorphic cats? Listen and look deeply into this beautiful book for all the layers the author has laid for us like gentle surprises. Tucked into corners and borders, the delight lies in the details: Procrastinator Cat’s bedside reading; Bully Cat’s elaborate jacket; the Guru Cat sitting on a rattlesnake; a cigar held in the paw of the floofy Fat Cat; suggestive portraits on Proper Cat’s dining room wall; and my favorite, the marvelous, coiling tunnel to the rabbit underground of Conspiracy Cat.The author sets an expectation for twists at the turn of every page. 

As a polymath and multi-artist, Kozachek has way too much understanding and artistic ammunition to take her magnificently annoying array of cats less seriously. Her book has both softness and claws, and her wry, rhyming wit also holds compassion for human folly.

In the tradition of Eliot and Lear, A Book of Bothersome Cats sent this pandemic reader laughing back to Stanley Kunitz’s more serious concerns. In our darkest days, he advised us, “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Kozachek’s book howls quietly, with a big, silent grin and a twitching tail that does not go away.” 

– William Epes, founder of the online arts resource group “strand line break,” host of the multi-arts, open mic series Tuesday Duets.

"Janet Kozachek’s A Book of Bothersome Cats, a sequel to her Book of Marvelous Cats, is playful and fun. Its rhymes and colorful feline characters make it seem suited to children, but the foibles and flaws the bothersome cats possess are decidedly adult maladies. Her illustrations, as always, are precise and intricate, inviting long study to encourage appreciation of every detail. Like all cats, the bothersome cats are complicated characters who are nevertheless endearing and well worth getting to know.”

  –  JoAngela Edwins, Ph.D. Professor of English, Francis Marion University.

 Poet Laureate of the Pee Dee Region of South Carolina. Author, Play. Winner of the SC Academy of Authors' Carrie McCray Nickens Poetry Fellowship, Pushcart Prize.

“A famous artist once said that art was a poem without words. A famous poet once said that poets create art with words.  In A Book of Bothersome Cats, Janet Kozachek does both.  I encourage you to buy this book; in fact, buy several and give them as gifts." 

– Al Black, Founder and President of Mind Gravy Poetry, author of I Only Left for Tea and Man with Two Shadows; co-editor of Poets Respond to Race.