Tag: cats

Legacy Writing 365:3

Is this a leap year? Should I be saying 366:3 instead?

For a time in my twenties, Lynne and I lived together with a house full of dogs and her cat. The guy I was dating lived about two hours away. He didn’t have a car, and sometimes a friend would drive him halfway; I’d meet them and take him back to our little town for the weekend. It was on such a day that I was idly walking through a big discount store that was a forerunner of Walmart. I didn’t intend to buy anything; it was just a way to pass the time until the friend and boyfriend arrived.

I absolutely didn’t intend to buy one of the kittens who was with a group of them in the back of the store. These days, I’d never buy a dog or cat when so many need to be adopted and when irresponsible breeders shouldn’t be encouraged. But as ignorant as I was about such things then, even I knew we didn’t need another animal in the household. Still, there was one kitten I couldn’t ignore. He was talking to me, not begging, but demanding, and I held him for a bit and talked back. Finally I returned him to the enclosure and started to walk away. When I looked back, he was hanging by his paws from the top of the metal, as if trying to follow me out.

So Kess left the store with me.

He packed a ton of hilarious personality and bad behavior into his tiny body. He pooped in the plants, kept me up at night, and tried to nurse my throat, meaning I had to sleep holding the covers firmly over my head. He bossed all the other animals around. He was noisy. But all would be forgiven when he’d be adorable and affectionate. When he’d curl up with the dogs for a nap. When he’d eat without a sign of finicky behavior. When he’d chase a toy or lie on his back working a piece of yarn or a ribbon. When he’d bounce around the house en pointe, back arched, slaying imaginary enemies.

And some not so imaginary. One of the features of the wonderful old house we lived in was what we called “well crickets,” probably actually camel crickets. If you’re not familiar with these, go check out this photo at your own risk. The horror of these things is that they look like spiders and jump like crickets. Seriously? A spider that can JUMP AT YOU? And will, because the little bastards NEVER jump away from you. Nothing could send me shrieking from a room like the appearance of what I dubbed “leapers.”

Wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of prey that would fascinate an inquisitive kitten?

I was sitting on my bed one night, working on a lesson plan, when I spied movement across the room. I sucked in my breath: LEAPER! My body chose fright over flight. I sat rigid, hoping it would hop its way out of the room. Kess saw it, too, and dropped to the floor to fix his gaze on it, his dilated pupils driving the blue from his eyes. It jumped toward the door; he stared and slowly crept after it. It jumped again; same reaction. The third time it jumped, it was outside my room! I leaned over and slammed the door. Kess gave me an exasperated look, reached a paw under the door, and brought it back inside.

Stupid cat. He finally killed it when it stopped amusing him, but by then I was another few years closer to thirty-five.

When I was accepted into graduate school, I knew I could take only one animal with me, and that was going to be my dog. Lynne would have kept Kess, but we had some friends who wanted him. He enjoyed a long, happy reign over two human slaves and two Great Danes who devotedly served King Kess. Not a bad life for a discount cat.

End of an era

My mother was an avid magazine reader. I can remember from the time I was a child what seemed to be a steady flow from the mailbox to her lap, as she curled up in her favorite chair, cigarettes and ashtray at hand, and depending on the time of day, her cup of black coffee, iced tea (sweetened), Diet Rite, Coke, Tab, or Diet Coke on the table next to her. The magazines: Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, Redbook, TV Guide, Southern Living. No matter where we lived, those magazines with their articles and fiction, recipes and photos, were a constant. But since the times were a’changin’ as fast as our addresses, she also read Mad, Rolling Stone, Ms., and Mother Jones. I don’t think there was any magazine she wouldn’t read, and even after she lived on a fixed income, she kept up a few subscriptions.


She’s holding Joe Willie the cat here, but next to the end table, you can see her bucket o’ magazines. If your eyes are really sharp, you can also see her lit cigarette. She’s in her early forties in this photo.

By the time she died in 2008, those magazines were coming to her at my address.


Even though I wasn’t as absorbed by them as I apparently was in infancy, I would flip through them and then find homes for them: waiting rooms in clinics and doctors’ offices, Lynne’s break room at work, online friends who might enjoy them. Finally the subscriptions began to run out, and today I got this with the October issue of the lone remaining subscription:

The slogan for Ladies’ Home Journal is “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” I concur, but I would add, “Never underestimate the power of a woman who reads.” A lifetime of books and magazines kept a woman who had to drop out of school in eighth grade to take care of sick family members–whose only work outside the home was as a hospital, Red Cross, and museum volunteer–smart, savvy, aware, and connected to generations of men and women, many of whom thought she was pretty damn special. When I saw my nephew recently, he recounted a story of how her “boys” (a group of gay men who befriended her in her seventies) were going to throw a Wizard of Oz party, at which she would go in character as Dorothy (which was, after all, her name). They were able to find everything for her costume except the ruby slippers–so essential that without them, the party was canceled.

No matter; she pretty much thought all of life was her party, and everything she read was her guidebook for making it more interesting.

Cats! Murder!

Tuesday night I went to Murder By the Book to join a packed house celebrating the release of Dean James’s new mystery. Writing as Miranda James, Classified as Murder is the second in his “Cat in the Stacks” mystery series. The first, Murder Past Due, was a New York Times bestseller. I am delighted for his success, because I’m not sure anyone I’ve known has done as much to support other writers with good advice or book promotion than Dean. Though he’ll be the first to admit that the cat pictured on the cover is not exactly Diesel, the Maine Coon in the novel who is librarian/amateur sleuth Charlie Harris’s sidekick, I agree with him that the covers are engaging.

Long live cat mysteries! I feel sure the marvelous Mr. and Mrs. North novels by Frances and Richard Lockridge were among the first I ever read, and I’m glad Dean’s cozies have joined that group.

Christmases Past, No. 3: Our cat, the legend

One Christmas both my father and my brother were stationed overseas (different countries), and we were a household of women. Well, except for the dog and my sister’s cat, Joe Willie. Here’s Joe Willie as a TV-obsessed youngster:

He got his name because of his four white feet. Quarterback Joe Namath, who led Alabama’s Crimson Tide to a 29–4 record over three seasons and later had a stellar career with the New York Jets, was known for many things, including his white football shoes when the rest of the Jets wore black. Joe Namath also had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and our Joe Willie was as legendary in our neighborhood.

These were the days before we knew to spay and neuter our pets, and therein lies a cautionary tale.

I’d like to think my sister took this photo because she was feeling the Christmas spirit as Mother and I decorated the tree. But I suspect she was documenting that once again, I’d robbed her closet for something to wear, because that’s her wool shorts-and-sweater set. Thanks, Debby! It’s probably about the last time I could fit into your clothes.

Once our tree was decorated and all the presents tucked beneath it, we decided to go with Mother to a party at some friends’ house. As we were leaving, we encountered a female cat on the porch, crying at Joe Willie in the window and begging him to come outside to…play.

“Nope, he’s staying in tonight,” my mother said. “You’ll have to find another boyfriend.”

What she failed to consider was that Joe Willie wanted to go out and…play. We came home to a tree all askew, ornaments scattered around it. Even worse, we had to get a new tree and my mother had to rebox and rewrap all the gifts. This Christmas is always referred to as “that time the cat peed all over everything.”

May your Christmas be cat urine-free.

Art and AIDS Assistance


Daddy and me in Carlisle, Kentucky, in the 1980s.

In honor of my late father’s birthday today, I posted five new paintings to the One Word Art gallery.

And in honor of Gary’s participation in Nashville AIDS Walk, fifty percent of any One Word Art painting sold between now and September 30 will be donated to his team. You can do good and own art–or gift it to a friend!