Starred Review
“The Cast of characters includes a wisecracking marmalade Tom, an angora diva, and a tough alley cat with a heart of Gold. Goembel's illustrations done in acrylic and ink are fantastic and provide wonderful insight into the side stories developing as the book progresses.”
— School Library Journal

“I got the idea for Castaway Cats on a road trip to Florida. I was thinking about the wonderful cats that Ponder created in our book, Sailor Moo. The next thing I knew, a line fell into my head: On an island in the ocean/ near the land of Singapore/ midst a storm of great proportion/fifteen cats were washed ashore. I wrote this down in my notebook immediately. Then, I began to wonder about all those cats. Who were they? How would they survive? What's their story? That was the beginning and all those furry felines didn't let me down.”
— Lisa Wheeler

Ponder this:
“I enjoyed designing each of Lisa’s individual cat characters but soon found I needed a descriptive index to keep track of who was who. The characters needed to be on an island, one that depicted the cat’s crowded little universe. I wanted the point of view to change from page to page so I made a model island that could be moved and lighted according to the time of day. In the end the entire cat island was revealed in the setting sun.”
— Ponder Goembel