Below are the winners by category. If you’d like to read the winning entries, you may download a pdf (160 K) by clicking HERE. To open and read a pdf document, you will need Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is a free download from Adobe.com.

Category – 19 years old & up, Rhyming:

First Place – Sarah L. Gordon – In Praise of the Piano Cat
Second Place – Juliet Staveley – The Feline Phenomenon from Philly
Third Place (tie) – Karen Batesole – Nora’s Gift and Rosemary Gilbert – Nora’s Message

Category – 19 years old & up, Non-rhyming:

First Place – Carlos Silva – In the Quiet Corner of a Steel Cage
Second Place – Cindy Ward – Of Summer
Third Place – Sue Norton – Cute Adorable Nora

Category – 13-18 years old:

First Place – Krissy Hamilton – Music is Life
Second Place – Wyatt Counterman – Nora Limerick
Third Place – Sarah Butler –It’s Just that Cat

Category – 9-12 years old:

First Place – Chelsea Carrington – Nora the Piano-Playing Cat
Second Place – Elizabeth Sullivan – Music
Third Place – Davey Hiester – Piano!

Category – up to 8 years old:

First Place – Emely Jimenez – Untitled
Second Place – Anna Grace Rosenthal – Untitled
Third Place – Maggie Mota – Nora the Great Piano Cat

Category – Best Haiku:

First Place – Rachel Ward – Nora
Second Place – Carolyn Clink – Untitled
Third Place – Elizabeth Core – Paws, Pause

Category – Best Limerick

First Place – Lynne Campbell – Untitled
Second Place – Elizabeth Core – Imagining Lear’s Take on Nora

That’s Max on the left. It’s no secret that he and I have never gotten along. But he is a member of my family, and B&B love him just as much as the rest of us, so for the next week or so I will be adopting an attitude of tolerance toward brother Max. That should give him plenty of time to fully recover from his upcoming surgery. You see, on Wednesday the 17th he’ll be having a benign growth removed from his neck, as well as having an infected tooth pulled. I’ve been to the vet, so I sort of know what he must going through. I wish him all the best. Please send him your purrs. Who knows, perhaps this event will give him a new perspective on life, and by life I mean me.

My personal assistants, Betsy and Burnell, are hard at work reading all the poetry that was submitted to my recent contest. Their decisions are forthcoming, I have been assured. The winners will be notified shortly.

Lithuanian composer and conductor Mindaugas Piečaitis discovers the YouTube videos of me playing the piano and becomes inspired to write a concerto based on my playing. He then contacts my personal assistants, Burnell & Betsy, and the rest is history. CATcerto is born and performed in Lithuania, the UK and the USA. The piece is performed by live chamber orchestra with me appearing as guest soloist via pre-recorded video projected onto a large screen behind the other musicians.

Next, the folks over at the Guinness World Records office get wind of it and decide to grant the award to Piečaitis for the world’s first ever concerto written for a cat. Look for it in GWR book for 2012, published in September of 2011. How cool it that?

He’s cute. There’s no question about that. This little fellow has been drinking from the solar-powered Buddha fountain out in front of my house. He’s also been burying nuts in Betsy’s flower boxes. And I know that Rennie, Clara, and Ellie (I don’t know about Max and the others) have been entertained by his antics in the garden outside the window in the student waiting room. Me? I’m much too busy with my piano to get involved in something as passive as spectator sports. I’d like to think that if we ever met face to face, my finely honed intellect would overrule instinct and that he and I would become fast friends. For his sake, however, he should probably remain outside.