I have discovered a piece of clothing that is absolutely transformational. No, it’s not the latest marvel of engineering from Victoria’s Secret. The item that takes me from mild-mannered mom to Superwoman is a pair of black high-heel, pointy-toe boots.

It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing them with $19.99 jeans from the Gap Outlet, a blazer I got at Costco, and a shirt from the clearance rack at Target. When take off the felt clogs with the hole in the toe that I wear around the house, and slip into my sleek zip up boots, I feel like a million bucks…like I could go toe-to-toe with Helen Reddy. I am woman hear me roar! And dare I say it, with these on, I am hot! Oh darn, that was just hormonal whiplash.

I didn’t just walk into a store one day and decide I had to have those boots. It was a long process really set in motion by one of our favorite TV shows, TLC’s “What Not to Wear.” It’s a make-over show, where two “style experts” teach women how to dress appropriately and in a way that flatters their figure, whether they’re built like a fire hydrant or a flag pole.

About the same time we started watching the show, Steve and I started our own business. Even though we work out of our dining room and on most days it wouldn’t matter if we did business in our pj’s, there are occasionally new business meetings with potential clients and we need to look the part of successful marketers.

My problem was that I had been out of the working world for more than two decades. Where I left off, women were buying power suits with shoulder pads the size of Frisbees. But now I was a partner in our company. I needed to expand my wardrobe beyond the mom uniform of jeans, Nikes, and t-shirts.

That’s where “What Not to Wear” came into the picture. Although I’m not like a lot of the women featured on the show – for instance, I’ve never worn tie-dye and leopard-print spandex in public, or ever – I am like the subjects of the show because I didn’t know some basic rules about how to dress to make the most of what God gave me. Stacy and Clinton, the style gurus on the show, teach women that jackets which accentuate an hourglass figure are a good thing, that pants with a lower rise actually hide a tummy, and that shoes with a pointed toe make your legs look longer.

The show raised my consciousness about what women wore. In particular, I started paying attention to what women wore on their feet. After church, when people are socializing in the courtyard area, gave me an opportune time to scan a lot of women at once – who all want to put their best foot forward – to see the “What Not to Wear” principles in action. It didn’t take long to notice that if a woman had on nice shoes, and especially if they had a pointed toe, she looked stylish, contemporary, and taller. And everything else she had on, even if it was just a pair of black pants or jeans, looked better because of the shoes.

That’s when I knew that I’d be stopping at the Nine West store on the way home from church.

In addition to the attitude and altitude boost that I get when I wear the boots, I really appreciate that they have helped me create a uniform for business meetings: blazer, good-fitting jeans, t-shirt, and of course, the boots. I can put that on and feel good whether we’re meeting with bankers or bikers. These boots were made for talkin’…

It’s amazing to me that a six pound ball of fur has become such a force in our household. Some days I wonder… what did we talk about before we got Nigel, our orange tabby cat?

When we adopted him, we already had two cats and a German shepherd, all who have been part of our family for years. We loved them, but unless something happened that demanded my attention, such as a cat barfing up a hairball on our new couch or the dog biting the UPS guy, our interaction with the pets was routine and unremarkable.

When we decided to bring a kitten into our family, I knew that it would monopolize the attention of my daughters, at least for the week that the cat was still a kitten. However, I expected that once the cat became an adult, it would be like the other two cats – loved, fed, and cleaned up after – but really only commented on if one of them discovered a new place to get cozy for its requisite 22 hours of sleep.

What has surprised me is that even though Nigel is an adult cat now, he actually gets more attention – not just from the girls, but from all members of the family – than he did when he was a kitten. When our 18 year old son comes home from school, never mind saying hi to the rest of the family, it’s Nigel that he cheerily greets before he disappears into his room and computer for the next 12 hours. When Steve wants a break from fielding phone calls from clients, he plays fetch with Nigel. When our teenage daughter stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast this morning, her first words were, “Nigel did the cutest thing yesterday.” And throughout the day, our youngest daughter is giving us reports from the front, “Nigel just did the biggest kitty stretch.”

One reason we talk about him so much is because he is ubiquitous. Whenever there’s movement in the house, he’s right there. It’s a little startling to open the refrigerator door and find Nigel sitting vulture-like on top of it. Or when I’m brush my teeth and just as I lean down to spit, I realize that his orange face is about two inches from mine. And when Steve and Ethan use the bathroom, they tell me that avoiding Nigel requires really good aim.

Nigel’s stealthiness, athleticism, and fearlessness are because he is at heart a feral cat, unlike our other cats who are descended from a long line of “slug muffins” as our daughter calls them. But since he is an indoor cat who doesn’t have to face mental challenges just to survive, Nigel finds interesting ways to occupy his kitty brain, such as flipping the door stops. While we’re lying in bed at about 5:00 am, we start hearing “thwaang, thwaang.” And then there’s stealing and chewing iPod earphones and cell phone chargers. But probably his favorite game is “take down the German shepherd.” After Nigel has run the dog around the family room a few dozen times, she comes over to Steve with big puppy eyes, as if to say, “Make the bad kitty stop!”

And speaking of bad kitties, he loves spending time on the counter when I’m preparing dinner. We’ve tried squirting him, clapping our hands, pushing him off – all with very little change in his behavior. We need a “Cat Whisperer,” but I’m afraid we’ve given up on cat discipline. This will ensure that no one ever comes over to our house for dinner again, but I’ve looked over to find Nigel on the table licking his butt while Steve is eating.

Did adding that third cat put us over the edge and we’re now into crazy cat lady territory where all we talk about is our cats? Maybe, but only to each other…and in blogs.