Great Rescues Day Book

When I first designed Great Rescues Calendar in 2011 I wanted the book to be beautiful and inspiring and useful as a calendar. I also wanted it to be useful to those who loved and lived with cats, and I maintained that section when I republished the next year as Great Rescues Day Book. Just over a decade ago clear and accurate information wasn’t always easy to find unless you knew where to look, and inaccurate or outdated information was still very present.

For that reason I decided to add an extra section to the back with information about cats, cat health, behavior and care, which I’d been writing about for at least 20 years, along with caring for my evolving family of felines and fosters with the guidance of amazing veterinarians who taught me so much. Here are the first two pages of 13 pages of resources.

Feline resources pages in Great Rescues Day Book.

Today information is constantly updated

But some sections have needed updates to the point they would have to be completely reworked because of the huge number of feline health and behavior studies, some begun as long as 25 years ago, completed in the last decade. That’s a good thing! I’ve been writing on them over on The Creative Cat and for the publications and websites who’ve published my articles—as well as putting the information into practice in my family of felines and in practicing TNR and helping others with cats. The studies given us results to use now, many are ongoing considering cats are living longer and longer.

I loved putting my “Feline Lifestages and Age Equivalents” chart together with my pencil sketch of Stanley who lived to be 25, and the section on the importance of spay and neuter and the practice of TNR because much of it was completely new to most people I talked to, and readers thanked me for it.

“Lifestages of Cats and Human Equivalents”

AND it’s everywhere!

Not only do we have that information, it’s actually highly accessible because the universities who have conducted the studies have websites devoted to the information, veterinary universities offer the information on their websites whether they did the studies or not, and organizations devoted to individual feline welfare issues or all of them have websites and outreach to be sure to reach everyone with cats, and our veterinarians have posters in their offices and brochures to give to us for topics that we need to know. You almost have to work hard to avoid it in order not to find it!

But now that information is constantly updated in trusted online resources as conditions and studies and practices change I want those who purchase Great Rescues Day Book, which is usable in perpetuity, to be able to use all of it for many years, and there’s no way I can predict the future for what we might need to know a decade from now.

Some changes with the next reprint…

So with the next reprint this year I’m going to edit that section to just the timeless information that I hand out to people all the time, and add something more. For one thing, readers have always enjoyed using the “22 Cats Note Paper” so I’ll be adding a few more pages of it.

“22 Cats” Notepaper

…and a clearance of the remaining books…

I have a dozen books left that regularly sell for $20 including shipping, handling and taxes. I’m going to cut that price in half so the clearance sales can help finance the reprint. I hope to have the reprint ready for September. This clearance is only available here, on my website dedicated to this book. You can order some at the clearance price right below.

And someday soon a new Great Rescues Day Book!

I designed and published the original calendar in 2011, including portraits of rescued cats I’d done up to that point. I have enough new portraits to be able to do at least one new volume. I don’t think I can have that ready this year, but I’m going to begin designing it, because, why not?

©2011-2025 Bernadette E. Kazmarski | All Rights Reserved.

No content may be used without WRITTEN PERMISSION from the author.

Great Rescues Calendar and Great Rescues Day Book are published by Beauty of a Moment Publishing

Site designed by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Great Rescues Day Book

Many of you may be familiar with the Great Rescues Calendar and Gift Book—this is the follow-up to that book. I had wanted to introduce the Great Rescues concept with a product that everyone uses, a desk calendar.

But by nature calendars are dated and the product I had in mind was a more timeless day book for tracking events and anniversaries and birthdays and other annual reminders and happenings, and for taking notes and organizing information to be kept over a long period of time. This way, the art and stories can stay with you for as long as you use your day book—I’ve used my current one for over 20 years—and I don’t have to wait another full year to publish the next calendar.

Because I had a limited number of 2011-2012 calendars printed I am publishing my first Great Rescues Day Book with those same 16 portraits and stories so that others can still enjoy them, and I can continue work on the next one without worrying about a strict publication date because of the calendar in it.

The left-hand page of each spread features the portrait and rescue story, and each month still has its theme reminder, but in place of the calendar is a page of lines with numbers so you can write in a birthday or annual event on the line for that date and not be concerned about the day of the week.

Sample day book page.

These day books also come in handy for keeping track of your pets’ birth/adoption and health records.

Most people keep track of contact information digitally, but I have included a few pages for address and phone information.

And behind that is a section of the “22 Cats” notebook paper for your notes to yourself or to others. These books are also printed on a matte-finish stock through the entire book for greater ease in writing note with markers and gel pens, and even with pencils. In addition, because I hope you’ll use this constantly for years to come I’ve given up the die-cut cover for now and created a solid cover on heavy-weight matte-finish cover stock.

Sample page of 22 Cats notebook paper.

©2011-2025 Bernadette E. Kazmarski | All Rights Reserved.

No content may be used without WRITTEN PERMISSION from the author.

Great Rescues Calendar and Great Rescues Day Book are published by Beauty of a Moment Publishing

Site designed by Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Bernadette Kazmarski calls Great Rescues, her one-woman work of wonders a “calendar,” and it is, but that’s just for starters. Literally. The first thirty-two pages of the 8”x8” spiral-bound book comprise a sixteen-month calendar that runs from September 2011 to December 2012. Each two-page spread features the true story of one or more rescued cats, together with Bernadette’s exquisitely detailed portraits of them (all in all, twenty-two cats are pictured).   The calendar pages have room for appointments, some blank lines for notes,  a famous feline-friendly quotation, a tip that sets the tone for the month, and more special days that honor cats and other animals than you’ve ever seen listed in one place.

The middle section of the book contains a few pages to update the rescue stories and discuss the making of the individual portraits, then a dozen pages of resources.  A cat rescuer herself for twenty-five years, Bernadette states that the information she has chosen to include is what people most commonly ask about.  All the basics are there, and they reflect the central theme of the book—which is the human/cat bond: adoption, routine and emergency veterinary care, spay and neuter, household hazards, pet loss support.

At this point the book becomes a journal.  There are forty pages with lines ready to record all the clever things your cats do or to track their growth or maybe chart their veterinary visits and medication schedules. Or not.  Here’s a different plan:  How about committing to one action per day, small or large, in support of cat rescue? S-t-r-e-t-c-h your imagination to come up with as many different actions as possible, maybe even a different one for every day of the year. Bernadette has sprinkled ideas throughout Great Rescues that will spark your creativity.

This book is dedicated to Bernadette’s first family of cats. All long since departed from the physical world, she notes that they are made immortal in everything she creates. That’s a lot of immortality, as she has drawn the portraits, written the stories, compiled the resources and then designed the thing and finally published it herself.  Lovely to look at and read and hold in the hands, Great Rescues is an altogether “up” experience, where people are compassionate and good, and however troubled their beginnings, all cat stories have happy endings.

Marion Lane

Former Editor, ASPCA Animal Watch Magazine

Cobleskill, New York