Along with the Livingston family writers, this book also contains the work of the Alden family and several friends. Each one told the story of an illustration of a girl and her cat, as they saw it. Each story was published in The Pansy (the children’s magazine edited by Isabella Macdonald Alden) one at a time over the year and the group of writers promised not to read each others’ version until it was published. Eventually the collection of stories was put into book form by the publisher.