The rest of my crew

The cats have been demanding equal time on the blog. That's how cats are, I suppose. A dog will ask nicely, hat in hand (so to speak), eyes averted. A cat will make a demand and stare, exasperated, as you apologize for not being able to fulfill her whim more quickly. At least, that's how it is around here.

Eight years ago I brought home a stunted black female cat who'd had her tail chopped off by someone or something evil. For the first year, she'd let me stroke her head and shoulders, but I couldn't reach my hand near her tail or she would (gently) bite me. The rescue had named her "Sugar Plum"—stupidest name ever for a cat, I said. And then I never changed it. She slept curled by my feet but otherwise remained somewhat aloof, which was fine.

We moved to Mt. Baldy with Boo Radley, my black panther of a male cat, but two years later Boo died after a lengthy illness. Sugie and I, bereft, were left to bond with each other through snowy winters and warm summers as we watched bears, bobcats and raccoons scramble onto our deck. I couldn't have a dog up on the mountain, so Sug was my only companion for five years. By the end of that journey, she had learned to crawl under the covers when it was cold, burrowing in against my side like a kitten. This remains her habit now, even when it's warm at night in the summer, and she usually stays long enough to purr me to sleep. One night, after I'd been gone for a week to Missouri and she'd had a housesitter feeding and caring for her, she crawled in beside me, then reached up and licked my face. This has become her habit as well, licking my hands when I come home from work or my face when she purrs me to sleep at night.

Now I can pet her anywhere on her body, stroke the brush all the way down her back and up her stub of a tail, pick her up if I need to and she is never, ever aloof. When I read in the morning, she jumps into my lap, purring loudly and kissing my hands over and over. She is one of the most loving cats I've ever had. And yes, for those of you who are familiar with her story as it appeared in Chicken Soup forthe Soul: I Can't Believe My Cat Did That, she still rolls over happily when I sing "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" by the inimitable Four Tops to her.

A year and a half ago, a friend posted a photo on Facebook of a tiny gray kitten her sister had found abandoned in a Target parking lot. I had been looking for a black kitten as a companion for Sug, but this gray kitten with her adorable face and urgent plight (in a household where the patriarch was demanding there be "no more cats") kept calling to me. I had named her Purrl before I'd even met her. I brought her home, screaming and crying in the cat carrier, and my life and Sug's have never been the same since. For the first five months, she was quite an impressive eating and pooping machine. I had her claws trimmed when she was spayed, but they grew back with a vengeance, and she has managed to pretty much destroy two very lovely loveseats.

But Sug and I adore her. Purrl (aka Purrlie Girl, Purrl Jam, Jameez, Jamerz and PURRL-STOP-IT) is a bit... quirky. Sug still tries to offer her nose touches and head kisses, but Purrl invariably jumps away, her eyes growing round and stupefied, as if she can't imagine why another cat would ever approach her in such a way—despite the fact that she allows me to regularly pick her up, hug her, kiss her head and otherwise lavish her with affection. She is a bit of a lunatic, and when she's really happy, she celebrates by simply galloping through the house at top speed, her tail crooked and her ears flattened like a kitten.

So when she stopped eating on Valentine's Day, I was more than a bit concerned. I'd been out of town overnight, and when I returned, I noticed she hadn't eaten much. I watched her closely that Sunday and saw that she wasn't very interested in her food. By Monday she was lethargic. As the week progressed, she slowly stopped eating altogether and wanted only to curl in a ball and sleep. I took her to see my vet on Friday and held her while he shaved her neck, drew blood and gave her an IV to hydrate her. When the blood work came back the next day, there was nothing definitive, no infection, no common cat disease. (She is vaccinated against everything). I spent that weekend sitting close to her, stroking her head, asking the Universe to heal her and telling her every hour or so that she had to try to get better because Sug and I couldn't possibly continue our journey without her. For the most part, she remained curled in a ball, getting up to vomit once every four or five hours.

On Sunday, just after I'd been on the phone with the vet discussing methods of hydrating her, she got up, ambled slowly to the water bowl, and drank a few sips. Forty-eight hours passed with no change, but Tuesday when I came home for lunch to check on her, she seemed ever-so-slightly better, just enough to weakly trudge to the backyard and lay in the sun for the time it took me to wolf down a sandwich. I picked her up gently to carry her back in to the couch, and she purred. That night, she ate one single tiny kitty treat, the first sustenance she'd had in nearly a week. She slept beside me all night without getting up to throw up, and the next morning she ate two tiny bites of food. I cried.

We are two weeks past her illness now, and she is back to tearing up the furniture, running around the house for the sheer joy of it and chasing kitty treats across the hardwood floors. I have no idea what made her sick, but I am thrilled that she is still with us. Before Purrlie, Sug and I had become like two old dowagers, set in our ways and clinging to our daily routine. Purrl shook up our lives, made us play with toys and laugh out loud again. And in her fearlessness, she showed Sug how a cat can actually be friends with a dog because when Sgt. Thomas Tibbs came along, Purrl thought he was just one more slightly large plush toy to rub up against and play with. Even Thomas, I think, is glad that Purrlie Girl has survived.

As I have said before, at the close of every day, I spend the last moments before climbing into bed on the floor with Thomas, petting his head and telling him what a great dog he is, and now Purrl joins us, lying quietly beside me, purring and smiling at her big red friend. I feel blessed every day that each of these slightly flawed, slightly quirky characters has come into my life.

News Flash

Sugar Plum... and Boo

I don’t want to disappoint anyone, but….

The world is not going to end in 2012.

Tell ya how I know:

First off, I just got news from the nice Chicken Soup folks that my piece on Sugar Plum will be included in the upcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul: I Can’t Believe My Cat Did That! The book doesn’t come out until late in the year, and I know Sug would be particularly disappointed if her book doesn’t get as much attention as Boo's book did.

Next off, I will be finishing the long-awaited dog book in the next couple of months, to be released some time this coming summer. I’ve promised the spirits of Sandy, Rufus, Sapo, Niki, Alex, Ellie, Ian, and Osa that this book will honor them as the good dogs they were (and still are, always, alive in my memory).

In addition, I will (finally) publish Ghost Grandma, the YA novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo six years ago. Yay! I love that book!

Then there’s that presidential election thing going on. We gotta see how it turns out, right? Enough said; I don’t want to alienate any readers with my intense political rantings. Mouth closed. Tongue quiet….

Best of all, some strange and wonderful things have been happening with Tainted Legacy. From what I can tell from TL's Facebook page and my Amazon stats, the book seems to have taken off in other parts of the country besides Missouri. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I am grateful to the Universe that the story of Bertha Gifford continues to be told (even though she doesn’t like it when people talk about her—yes, Great-Grandma, I knooooow).

And my grandson will graduate high school… and start college. Wow….

And anyway, we’re not getting out of this as easy as all that. We’ve created a lot of problems for Mother Earth with our greed and consumerism and self-centeredness. Just like when we were kids and made a mess and Mom came along to tell us, “You’re not going anywhere until this mess is cleaned up!” so the Universe will hold us accountable. We have many lessons yet to be learned. I’m still trying to remember to stand up straight and not slouch. (OK, Mom, OK!)

Osa, my dog, my soulmate, will be featured in the upcoming Lessons I Learned from the Dogs that Saved Me.



Giddiness Prevails!

Bear with me for a moment while I take deep breaths…. I’ve spent the weekend celebrating my daughter’s acceptance into a Master of Fine Arts program… and also celebrating 70-degree temps for the first time since October… and bringing the bench swing back up to the porch from the garage…. Oh—and Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Cat’s Life released this week, with my story, “The Legacy of Boo Radley.” And my Author’s Page went up on Amazon (which is indescribably encouraging, because I can see that Tainted Legacy is still selling all around the country). What else? Oh! The Grandson is here for the weekend (which is how I got the swing back up the stairs to the porch—and several other chores accomplished).

I’m excited about the weather warming for many reasons. A few are:

I’m out of firewood. (Could buy another half cord for $150, but I’d rather spend that money on something that doesn’t go up in smoke.)

“Scruffy,” the cat abandoned in the forest by some idiots, has a better chance of survival. He/she is responding to food and affection, looking healthier every day.

The wildflowers are beginning to bloom. 

I can spend more hours working on the dog book. Some of you know that my cabin in winter gets so cold that I can’t stay at the keyboard for long before my fingers are so stiff from the cold I have to stop typing. As the weather has warmed (except for last Saturday, at 20 degrees), I’ve been able to work on that memoir. I want to be close to finishing by summer.

I’m grateful this week to several people who have been especially supportive of my work, particularly Laura Hoopes, who helped me get the Amazon Author’s Page going. Her memoir will release on May 2, and I’ll be talking about it here.

I’m also grateful for the readers who have checked out my blog from afar. This week, I had two pageviews from Germany, two from France, two from Russia, two from Slovenia and one from Iran. Who are you, my exotic readers? Thanks for stopping by!

One more note that I’ve been meaning to tell you about: Some weeks ago, Gary Sutton sent me a copy of his new novel, Oskaloosa Moon. Gary is a savvy businessman who usually writes about that field. However, to pay dubious respects to his roots, he wrote Moon. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first; can a businessman write an engrossing novel? But I have to tell you, I fell in love with this book from the preface. If you are a reader of novels, I promise you will love this book. I have provided a link to Amazon here—if you buy it and don’t love it, let me know; I’ll buy it back from you!  (Just click on the book.  I know; it's way too easy....)