Amazon Buckley's Story Category:  Pets/Pet Care Publisher: iUniverse ISBN-10:  1440166242 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 132 Copyright: September 2009 ISBN-13: 9781440166242 Buckley’s Story is the story of how one small cat changed the author’s life in ways she never could have imagined. In this warm-hearted memoir, Ingrid King shares the story of Buckley, a joyful, enthusiastic and affectionate tortoiseshell cat she meets while managing a veterinary hospital. When Ingrid leaves her job at the veterinary hospital to start her own business, Buckley comes home to live with her and Amber, another tortoiseshell cat who had adopted the author several years earlier. Buckley is diagnosed with heart disease after only two years of living with Ingrid, and caring for Buckley through her illness only deepens the bond between cat and human. Interspersed with well-researched information about cat health in general, and heart disease in particular, the author describes the challenges and rewards of managing illness in a feline companion, and ultimately helping her through the final transition. Ingrid shares both the day-to-day joys of living with a special cat as well as the profound grief that comes with losing a beloved animal companion. Buckley’s Story is a celebration of the soul connection between animals and humans, a connection that is eternal and transcends the physical dimension. Excerpt I met Buckley that spring of 2005. I had been managing the Middleburg Animal Hospital for seven years at that point. For the first four of those seven years, I had shared my office with Virginia, a beautiful tortoiseshell cat who had adopted me as her person and loved me utterly and completely. After she died in 2002, the office felt empty, but the right cat to take over this important position had not come along—until that spring day, when I walked into the kennel area of the hospital. Liz, our groomer, was brushing out a scruffy looking mixed breed dog, and we chatted for a while. “Have you seen the cute little tortie in the back?” Liz asked. Everybody at the animal hospital knew I was partial to tortoiseshell cats. There was something about the beautiful coloring and the distinct personality that is typical for these cats that appealed to me. “No, I haven’t,” I responded. “Where is she?” Liz pointed to the bank of cages at the very back of the kennel, and I went to see Buckley for the first time. And I fell in love. Hard. And fast.

Buckley's Story
Most true animal stories will break your heart, and Buckley’s Story by Ingrid King is no exception. At the same time, when pet lovers take the time and energy to share the story of their beloved animal, they’re sharing the love and joy that animal brought to their life. King’s book, Buckley’s Story, is subtitled Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher because of the lessons the author learned in three short years from her beloved Buckley.

King first met Buckley at an animal hospital in Virginia, where she worked as office manager. The tortoiseshell cat immediately captured King’s heart, and in the next year, Buckley’s spirit pushed King to spread her own wings, going into business for herself. She started a business called Healing Hands, doing Reiki for animals and humans, but it took her a couple tries to make the big step of bringing Buckley home from the office, and adding it to her small family, Ingrid and her cat, Amber.

Unfortunately, Buckley had health problems, and over the next couple years, they only grew worse. But, Buckley had taught Ingrid lessons in that short period of time. One lesson involved enjoying every day, and focusing on the joy of life. So, King says, “Rather than telling the story the way it was – she had been diagnosed with a serous heart condition and had been given a poor prognosis – I choose to tell the story the way I wanted it to be: she was a happy little cat who was enjoying her life to the fullest.”

Anyone who regularly reads animal books will know where Buckley’s Story ends. Even so, it’s always inspiring to read of the love that animals bring into lives, and the changes they cause. Ingrid King choose to tell Buckley’s Story to share those lessons of day to day life, lived with joy and love.

Lesa Holstine, Lesa’s Book Critiques http://www.lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/



Buckley's Story - Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher
If you’ve ever had the great honor to share your life with a pet, “Buckley’s Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher” will not come as any surprise to you, but it will certainly make you shake your head in agreement and cause you to smile often, particularly when you’ll reach some parts which will greatly remind you of your pet’s habits. Animals could – and do! – teach us so much, if only we stop for long enough and truly listen to them.

Buckley was a small cat with a huge personality and an even bigger heart. She entered Ms. King’s life with a whisper, as the “office cat” in the veterinary hospital which was managed by Ms. King at the time. An extremely affectionate tortoiseshell cat, she became a constant companion who was very much missed when Ms. King decided to explore other career paths and left the hospital. After a couple of not immediately successful attempts to assimilate into Ms. King’s household, Buckley finally came home for good. Amber, the “original” cat sharing Ms. King’s home, had to adapt to the new situation, and she learned to share “her human” with another cat quite quickly. Sadly, Buckley was diagnosed with a heart condition after two years of her arrival into the new home, and the second half of the book deals with the treatments, challenges and final acceptance of the situation. The many moments of pure joy were always tainted with sadness over the inevitable final outcome of this situation, and Ms. King managed to capture the process of ultimate acceptance in incredible vivid detail.

Warm, intelligent and wise, this is a beautiful book that will touch the hearts of animal lovers, particularly those who are grieving over the loss of their companions or who are living with the knowledge that their companions will not be able to share their lives with them for much longer. It shall also prove useful to anybody who might be thinking of adopting an older and possibly not so healthy animal, showing very clearly why that might be a particularly good choice. The detailed information on Buckley’s diagnosis and treatment course, with clearly described challenges and rewards, might very well make some pet owners reconsider the path they are taking and make them realize that oftentimes we would do better to follow our instincts more and feel less obliged to blindly accept the mainstream information. And more than anything, “Buckley’s Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher” by Ingrid King should make you realize again how much we should and do learn from the animals who graciously share their love and life with us.

Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views
http://www.readerviews.com/ReviewKingBuckleysStory.html



Buckley's Story
There’s little doubt that we Americans love our pets. According to the American Pet Products Association, we’ll spend an estimated $45.4 billion on our non-human dependents this year alone. And what do we get in return? Well, that’s not so easily put into dollars-and-cents terms. The value our pets bring to our lives is, of course—both literally and figuratively—immeasurable. Thankfully, we have authors like Ingrid King to remind us of this fact.

In Buckley’s Story: Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher, King introduces us to Buckley, a tortoiseshell cat rescued from a farm in southwest Virginia who’d become the office cat in the veterinary hospital King managed. Despite her rough and tumble past—or perhaps because of it—Buckley took to her new life with great enthusiasm (though not without some of the expected “tortitude”). “Buckley loved everyone,” writes King. “She checked out anyone who came into the office and, with rare exceptions, she would end up in a visitor’s lap.”

When King left to start her own business (using Reiki on pets), she was astonished by how much she missed her office buddy. “While there had been animals I had come across in my years of working at veterinary hospitals who had tugged at my heart strings,” King writes, “there had not been one that I fell for as hard and as fast as I fell for Buckley.” And so, despite her misgivings about integrating a new cat into the quiet home she shared with her cat Amber, King adopted Buckley.

Amber and Buckley, it seems, knew all along that it was the right move. “I was the only obstacle,” recalls King, a self-proclaimed worrier, “in making the process go smoothly.” While King was getting settled into her new career, the cats were getting settled into their new lives together. But their easy existence was interrupted when, during a routine visit, Buckley’s vet discovered a heart murmur.

Such diagnoses—however unsettling for us humans—seldom mean much to our cats. Indeed, Buckley was thriving with her new family. “The word that probably defined Buckley more than any other,” writes King, “was ‘joy.’”

“She was a joyful being and she brought joy to everyone who came into contact with her… Her entire being was an expression of joy, and her every activity was infused with the essence of joy. She played, ate and loved with abundance… Buckley demonstrated to me how to find joy in every day. By living in the present without worrying about the future or letting thoughts of the past drag her down, this little cat showed me how to find the small joys in each moment.”

Finding those small joys proved increasingly difficult as Buckley’s health took a turn for the worse, and King began devoting more and more time to caring for her. The last few chapters of the book, in which King chronicles Buckley’s decline, are to be savored—though not without a fresh box of tissues at the ready.

• • •

There’s something rather magical about certain pets, the ones with which we form an immediate, intense connection. Regardless of how much time we spend with them, they leave an indelible impression. Buckley had been with King for only three years, but, writes King, “I was not prepared for the depth of my grief… it was as deep as if she had been with me my whole life. When these special animals come into our lives and then leave us much too soon, they leave us forever changed.”

Buckley’s Story is sure to resonate with animal lovers, whether they’ve suffered the loss of a beloved pet or not. King’s memoir illustrates the powerful nature of the human-animal bond, and—in sharing Buckley with the rest of us—reminds us of what we love in each of our own cats.

Review by Peter J. Wolf for Moderncat