About Another Hamilton

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 Hamilton came to me via the free local advertiser. Scanning it idly one day I saw an ad which said, “Please Help! I have 31 cats, and need to find good homes.” I called the number, got directions and drove south through various moribund towns and up a dirt road to a run-down farmhouse. As soon as I stopped, I saw them: cats everywhere, cohabiting with a flock of bedraggled chickens in a grassy yard.

 The Cat Lady—I’ll call her “Nancy”--came out and we talked. She’d been working at the Humane Society, but she'd quit because she couldn’t bear the euthanasia of hundreds of animals that was, in those days, part of the weekly routine. She was as thin and tired-looking as her animals. I could see runny noses indicative of the highly contagious Calci virus in almost every cat. My heart sank.

 Even more sadly, most of the cats were wild. They depended upon her for food and sheltered in the tumbledown barn, but they were untouchable.  As she could afford it on a waitressing job, she'd neuter them and get them shots. She’d found a charitable vet who cut prices for her, but her burden appeared insurmountable.

 She and I sat down on the ground and waited. Eventually three scrawny half-grown orange boys drew close. You could actually count their ribs.

 “I call them the Orange Brothers,” Nancy said. “They were almost starved to death when I rescued them.” A veritable herd came in their wake as she opened the 10 lb. bag of kitty food I’d brought as an offering and dumped some on the ground.

 The cats backed off as soon as I tried to touch, so I sat and waited.  One of the Orange Brothers took a few bites of kibble, then came to me. As soon as I began to pet him, gently and carefully, he gave a roaring purr and threw himself into my lap. All was well for about two minutes, and then he bit my arm hard, twisting the skin almost to the breaking point. I didn’t resist. He let go and jumped away, clearly expecting a slap or a shout of protest.

 “He didn’t mean it,” Nancy said. “He wants to be loved, but he gets too excited.”

 I nodded and continued watching.

 A moment later, the bony little tom climbed into my lap again, purring his roaring purr. His fur was dry as straw as a result of malnutrition; his eyes were golden. Long story short, I brought him home, to a house that already had several cats. It took time to get him over the habit of reacting to petting with a bite, but with a lot of affection and enough food, he toned these love bites down to a recognizable level.

 As he was lean and bright orange and I was working on a Revolutionary War novel, I named him Hamilton. That heroic founding father had red hair and a poverty-stricken childhood.

 

Rivington’s (Tory) Gazette printed this snide comment in 1775, when Hamilton was a favorite aide de camp to General Washington:

“Mrs. Washington has a mottled orange tomcat of whom she is so particularly fond, she has named him ‘Hamilton.’ By the flaunting of his tail with the 13 rings around it the Rebels have taken the idea for their flag.”

 The name proved to fit this cat to a "T". Kitty Hamilton was a sensitive soul, and did that tomcat peeing thing whenever he felt anxious or threatened. He was also allergic to that kitty drug of choice, catnip. Until he fattened up, a process which took more than a year, he could not hold his 'nip. If he managed to find some, I soon knew, because he lost control of his limbs, fell down and peed all over himself like an old drunk. I’d have to cradle him and soothe him until he came down, because he cried in fear the whole time. 

 I never did manage to get him to stop marking. Any cat or person passing the house--even an argument with my husband--was liable to set him off. I hadn’t wanted to let him outside, but he made that motherly attempt to protect him impossible. He’d been a free kitty boy for far too long. Like his glorious namesake, he came with a severe case of PTSD which never went away—as well as a determination to be seen as a tomcat’s tomcat, even after neutering.

 

My Hamilton did not die in a duel, like our First Secretary of the Treasury, but he did fight with all challengers at every opportunity, even if he was completely out-matched. He was sometimes beaten up, but he usually attacked outsiders with such berserker rage that they avoided our house like the plague.

 He wanted to seem fearless, but his anxieties continually undermined him. He expressed this by peeing on the refrigerator door, in out-of-the-way corners, and on the backs of upholstered furniture, which I swiftly learned to keep covered with washable throws. Climactically, he slew my original CPU by peeing into the A Drive. A friend of mine said, “If that wasn’t such a nice orange cat--and if his name wasn’t Hamilton--he’d be dead.” My husband heartily agreed, but Hamilton's lover-boy self and willingness to lap sit, his smiling affability and charm aided his survival.

Hamilton always came when his name was called. He greeted my husband when he returned from work, with a raised head for a kiss, a motoring purr, waving that proud, banner-like tail. He slept in our bed, curled around my head in winter, a living, purring hat. He helped me write any number of books, lying beside--and, when he was fed up with "that damned typing" by standing in front of--my monitor.  He lived to be fourteen, and is buried with other cats of blessed memory in the feline necropolis beneath our Chinkopin tree.   

                           

                         

~~Juliet Waldron

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Comfrey, Cat Warfare, and Green Tomato Sauce

The Commoner and her King

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(Crawling out from under the bed to write this.) 

I grew Comfrey in my garden this year and the resulting plants are enormous tall spiky things with leaves that are reminiscent of tobacco. Comfrey was once used in teas, but no more. This is because we've learned that it is toxic when taken orally. Herbalists no longer recommend  it either as tea, or to be used as a wash on an open wound. 

                                                                          Feral Garden

However, the leaves and roots do contain allantonin, a protein that encourages cell division and thus healing. Traditionally, it was used as a wrap for broken limbs and injured joints. The leaves contain a storehouse of other good things --calcium, potassium, phosphorus & vitamins A, C and B12. It sends down a long taproot--sometimes as much as ten feet--to fetch nutrients up to the surface from deep in the soil. 

Why did I plant it? Well, I'd heard that it serves as an activating ingredient for compost piles or simply as a beneficial mulch dug into the garden at the end of the season. Starting it from seed on a windowsill was an early COVID project for me. The seeds must be stratified (chilled) for several weeks before planting in order for them to grow.

Comfrey has pretty purple flowers which I'm enjoying here at the end of the season. The late season pollinators are big fans too and for that reason alone I'm glad I planted it. I will chop it and dig it into both compost and garden after the first frost and and then hope for a flourishing garden next year. 

Right now, I’m typing around a gray love-sucker of a cat, our two year old gray neutered tom, Tony. He was named after Anthony Bourdain, so I should not be surprised at his over the top behavior. He's  charismatic and cuddly, but, sometimes, he's a wicked jealous cat bully.

The villain of the piece

After a few minutes of my typing away, Tony jumps down and slinks away, heading to the other side of the living room in order to mess with Kimi who was enjoying a sunbeam and minding her own business. Inspiring a PTSD attack in one of your emotionally vulnerable housemates and initiating a running battle is a sure-fire way to get my attention away from the keyboard and back to him—the place where it clearly ought to be. 

This is negative attention-getting, according to a long ago child psych course. A decade ago after this kind of inter-pussy cat escalation, I would have put Tony outside so he could test himself against the semi-urban jungle for a few hours daily. That can tone down the rambunctions of a boy cat, but I don’t want to risk losing him. 

                                                     Let's stare at Kimi until she freaks 

Moreover, I no longer want to be an accomplice to a cat's (quite normal) serial killer proclivities. If outdoor cats stuck to mice and voles--and, dare I suggest, maybe even a few of those bulb nabbing chipmunks--I wouldn’t mind so much, but my last outdoor cat--the legendary B0B--bagged way over the limit of native songbirds. My toleration of this will (no doubt) negatively affect my Karma.  

So, these days, my cats stay inside.

With three cats, I could write buckets on the hausfrau trials with multiple cat boxes, but I will spare you the gory details. 

What we house-bound humans are learning is that we must continuously work on integrating this three cat family. These particular cat-onalities continue to evolve and change, just as do the behaviors of the COVID-bound humans who reside here with them.   

And, last but not least: Green tomato pasta sauce!  Yes, this is delicious. I'd never seen a recipe before, but decided I'd try when it stopped raining here about five weeks ago. I was sick of lugging water to the large tomato pots at the end of tour lot and decided to quit. (A week after I took the plants down, it rained--naturally.) 

But as I stripped the vines I knew that some of these fine large green tomatoes would ripen but others would never get there. I used the smaller fruits in the following eyeball-it-as-you go sauce recipe. 

Green tomatoes chopped--the recipe I based this upon used 4 lbs. 

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

garlic cloves--I used 5, but we like garlic

one medium finely chopped onion

red pepper flakes or red pepper to give it a bit of heat

basil--I would say 20 leaves because it's another seasoning we like

You may bake it at 400 degrees in the oven until it reduces--about an hour--or d0 as I did, and throw it all in the crock pot and let it cook down together. 

Serve with pasta (linguini is a nice base) topped with 

pecorino romano cheese

More basil leaves 

and, if you are independently wealthy--a handful of pine nuts.  

We ate ours without the pine nuts and it was still delicious. This was one of those "plan-over" concoctions, where there was plenty left over for the next day.

~~Juliet Waldron

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I'm excited about new covers!

Red Magic recently got a re-brand--a new cover and a re-title. It is now Zauberkraft~Red, just in time for Halloween.  It was initially hard to chose a title for this story, back when I was grappling with that. In my long ago 'tweens, I'd been a fan of Baroness Orczy and so it was tempting to try to write that niche-within-a-niche version of "historical romance." Alpine Austria isn't exactly a popular venue and the books are cross-genre.  I'm the first to admit the Zauberkraft series crosses the abyss from Zauberkraft-Red's witchy romance into the fantasy (with a nice red dollop of horror) that is Zauberkraft-Black.

Zauberkraft-Red began because I had a character who wouldn't stop talking. This was Constanze Mozart's lover from Mozart's Wife (now titled The Intimate Mozart.) This guy was already a tall, dark, handsome and rather dangerous leading man type, who, however, turned out to be have unexpectedly decent, warm-hearted center. By the end of the Mozart story, he is indeed The Rake Reformed. 

When this fellow's property-minded family insist upon his marriage to a pretty, horsey, immature cousin who is just sixteen, he, now on the rebound, decides his roving days are over. She, however, doesn't believe a word he says--as well she might. As you can imagine, there is a book's worth of relationship work ahead for both of them.

At his alpine estate, the young woman finds her surroundings decidedly creepy and lonely. The jagged, snow-capped mountain behind the manor is a palpable presence. The freeman peasants who work the estate celebrate the older, weirder holidays as well as the newer Christian ones. Sighting these, she begins to anxiously ruminate upon a frightening experience from her childhood.

On the day of her arrival, the heroine is given a house tour which ends with her husband's bed chamber, separate from her own. After getting over the shock of his Height-of-Fashion 18th Century French pornographic bed curtains, she finds someone she did not expect lounging on the pillows--a cat, who is large, black and fluffy.

As a proper 18th Century lady she is now surprised to discover that her hunky new husband has such a "feminine" pet. The cat's name is "Furst," which is German for "First," which was often the short-cut title for a leader. I'm not sure where the inspiration for Furst came from, except that I wanted to slightly blow up the image of a romance's leading man with a "wussy" fondness for cats.

Furst is not completely based upon an actual animal companion, as many of the other cats in my books are. He's most like my own over-the-rainbow Katter Murr, who was named for E.T.A. Hoffman's (of The Nutcracker fame) illustrious pet. Hoffman's cat was a gray tiger, but our Murr was a barn-found Maine-Coonish sort of feline.

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Zauberkraft~Black  is is a no-holds-barred All Hallows' Eve story. Here, twenty+ years on from the first book, the now grown soldier son of the original couple returns to his childhood home, just after the last violent gasp of the Napoleonic Wars.

Goran has just left Vienna after discovering that his fiance has run off with an older and far wealthier nobleman. Not only that, but he's wounded from a decade's experience of the brutality of war. He's only twenty-seven, but he's grown utterly cynical about politics. His leader, the Austrian Emperor, switched sides when Vienna was threatened by Napoleon's forces. As a result, he, like other  Austrian military men, had been forced to fight first against Napoleon and then for him, a political decision which is firmly stuck in his craw.

As Goran arrives at at this rural estate where he grew up, he sees that things are in a bad way. Men left for the wars and many did not return, so barns and houses, left empty, are falling into ruin. Not only that, but here, in the mountainous back of beyond, there have been attacks by bandits and roaming gangs-- rogue soldiers for whom looting and killing has become a way of life.

Within hours of Goran's arrival, while he is taking a self-pitying ramble around the land, bottle in hand, he finds a May Day party being celebrated. He decides to party for a time with his tenants, and then, numbed with drink, begin the dreary task of listening to the old men complain about the state of things. Later that night, however, the celebrants let their young master into an ancient secret, one which brings all manner of bizarre changes into his life. Goran discovers that he has even more responsibilities and ties to this land--and to the people who live here than he--or even his parents before him--have hitherto imagined. 

Happy Halloween or Samhain or All Hallows' 

--your preference!

~~Juliet Waldron

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Time to Lighten Up (And Tell a Cat story)

Transport to Fort Providence residential school is only the beginning of their ordeal, for the teachers believe it is their sworn duty to “kill the Indian inside.” All attempts at escape are severely punished, but Yaotl and Sascho, along with two others, will try, undertaking a journey of 900 kilometers across the Northwest Territory. Like wild geese, brave hearts together, they are homeward bound.

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Okay, this is a cat and cat "owner" story. I'm in  need of some relief from increasingly Dystopian reality. Maybe you are too.

We recently acquired a new cat. "Willeford" (who came up with that?!) is a used cat, so, as they say about cars, he's only new to us.  He arrived from a kill shelter in a nearby county, a nondescript gray tiger, eight years old and all busted up and weak on the back end.

Yes, not only is he an elder cat, but he's also a "busted" cat. When we first got him, he couldn't even uncurl his tail. He could take zero pressure from a hand gently stroking his hips without sinking to the ground. He's gaining strength after these months of happy release from the rescue cage in which we found him. Someone may have stepped on him, as he's one of those cats who imagines his people can see in the dark. I've narrowly avoided falling over or stepping on him quite a few times in the last months.

At our house, he's been able to run up and down stairs for therapy, to leap onto beds and chairs and cat furniture for cuddling and combing. His injuries no longer preclude his jumping onto the kitchen counter to demand a faucet water drink, or, his personal favorite, a glass filled to the brim with water set beside us on a desk or table for our convenience--at least that was the original plan.

Willeford has turned mostly into William, or Willy. When he's a real sweetie, it's WILL-YUM-YUM, or just YUM, for short. Cat names often start out grandly, but, I've found, quickly morph. We once had an elegant feisty black female named "Bast-Ra" but that eventually became what our youngest child could pronounce at the time, which was "Bap."  "Bap" it remained, even after he could say Mom's fancy original.

Willy came with more than a few unusual feline behaviors we've never coped with before. For one thing, at first he was super needy. I spent the first few hours he was home, lying in bed with him where he hugged and kissed and rolled all over me, all while purring and drooling like a mad kitty. He non-stop kneaded any body part he could reach. I stayed because I didn't want to leave him in such a state, so I was just a quiet cat mom for him until his anxiety wound down.

He spent the night with me and for most nights following, though I can't say either of us got much sleep, as he spent the time crawling all over me and purring. His favorite resting place, because I am a back sleeper, was on top of my face, chest down and with his cat "elbows" digging into my neck, so that eventually my throat would close. Then I'd  choke and have to push him away. I've tried all sorts of strategies to get him to accept other more acceptable (to me) sleeping positions, but it's literally taken months to get him sufficiently relaxed in order to do so. Now, we share a pillow, though I have to be firm in order to keep enough to accommodate my skull. Even now, sometimes, he'll wrap his kitty arms around my head and then drag the rest of his body close into a wrap-around. It's like a fur "face-hugger" and the mental image is not pleasant.

Big Feet

 Almost a year in and his behavior is slowly changing. Some time in the summer, he made a decision to decamp to some spot more distant, perhaps onto the foot of the bed, or into bed with my husband whose larger frame accommodates his weight and sharp elbows better. It gives us both a breather, although I have to admit to liking the creature comfort of a cat pressed against the torso on cold nights.

We have no idea what went on with his last human, but, as Willy'd arrived at the shelter starved and "from the streets,"we came to believe that his person had died and that he'd been summarily cast out to fend for himself. No wonder all the anxiety, poor guy!

Willy remains an early to bed type of cat. That is, initially, at 7:30, he started calling and then leading us toward the stairs, clear as anything saying "Time for bed."  My husband jokingly remarked that was the time when Jeopardy(c) ended, a classic bedtime for the senior senior. (Yes, I meant to say "senior" twice.)

He likes to play, but he's rough and isn't always careful with his claws or his teeth. At first my legs and arms were covered with scratches and puncture marks too from Sorry! OOPS! I-lost-my-head-for-a-minute bites. Our other (also crazy) cat really doesn't get him at all, and she gets scared and won't play chase as he would like, so now and then he bullies her because it's the single fun feline interaction he can get.

Sometimes I wonder if we should get another younger cat which could possibly break up their negative game by the addition of a third player. Another cat might provide  a playmate for the energetic Yum. Should we do it? But as every cat mom knows, #1 there's a husband problem to be solved even before the inter-cat relationships can be solved. 

Our family has managed as many as five kitties at a time and done a decent job, but we're not getting any younger or any richer, and taking proper care of animal companions requires funds as well as love/time. We're approaching the end of the trail here, and the last thing any elder pet "owner" wants to imagine is that their beloved friends will be cast onto the street as Willeford was.




 ~~Juliet Waldron

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The Esteemed Right Worshipful Prioress S.R.D. meets Willeford.

THE TRIBULATIONS OF PRINCESS JASMINE by Vijaya Schartz

There is a cat in this story. Find all my BWL stories HERE

My kitty cat Jasmine, a princess in my mind, has a dramatic story worth sharing, and who better than me to tell it?

This is how I imagine Jasmine as a kitten

As a kitten, like all kittens, Jasmine was cute and cuddly. A nice family found her abandoned by a feral mother and adopted her. They called her Jasmine because of the yellow in her calico coat. They had a house with children, and a big guard dog. Jasmine was allowed outside and had a very independent life.

Curiously, without a mother, or another cat in the house to teach her how cats behaved, Jasmine never learned to play like a cat. Instead, she learned manners from the big guard dog. So, when a stranger approached the house, she growled warnings and thought it was her job to protect the house and its occupants.

At six months, before learning to be a cat, Jasmine became pregnant. Like all expecting mothers, she was very protective of her future litter. So, when the big guard dog challenged her, she faced him, hissing and growling, like a dog ready to fight. The big dog did not understand that she was protecting the little ones in her belly, so he stood his ground.

Jasmine attacked. Unfortunately, the six-months-old kitten was no match for the big guard dog. The dog caught her small head in his powerful jaw, clamped down, and shook the kitten like a rag doll.

The family ran to her help, but by the time they calmed the dog and convinced him to release his prey, poor little Jasmine lay there, inert, bleeding, unconscious. They rushed the kitten to the vet and left it there, saying, even if Jasmine survived her ghastly wounds, they could not take her back, because their guard dog had tasted her blood. It would be too dangerous for the kitten to return.

Upon examination, the vet discovered that the dog's fangs had pierced through the kitten's head, perforating sinus and bones. Jasmine needed extensive surgery, and there was no guarantee at all that she would survive. But the vet loved animals and suspected Jasmine had a strong will to live. So he took it upon himself to perform the first surgery... then the second... then the third. The unborn kittens did not survive, and the vet neutered Jasmine.

Geisha. Rest in Peace

That spring of 2007, I had lost my little companion of seventeen years, a mixed Siamese cat named Geisha. It took me months to finally decide to adopt a new kitty who needed a good home.

In September of 2007, After months in recovery, Jasmine was back among the living and up for adoption through HALO, a no-kill shelter. Among the kittens in the cages at PetSmart adoption center, she was the largest cat. Now nine months old, she was much older than the cute little fur balls playing with each other. She did not play, and despite her regal posturing, she had the serious look of those who have suffered.

Jasmine at nine months, when I adopted her

When I read the paper stuck to her cage, detailing her health history, my heart broke. She'd been up for adoption for a while without luck, and as a result, she was on sale. I took it as a sign that we were meant to be. So, I adopted Jasmine, and brought her home.

Jasmine quickly grew up to be a big cat

 Because of her pierced sinuses, she doesn't purr loudly like a regular cat. Her purr is imperceptible, but I know when she purrs. And she is susceptible to sniffles. Imagine my surprise when a writer friend came to the front door to attend my critique group, and the young cat started to growl low in her throat, like a dog.

 

Since Jasmine had lost her unborn babies, I thought maybe a kitten would keep her company, and she might enjoy playing with it and caring for it. When another writer friend of mine had a litter, I adopted a cute little tuxedo cat. Unfortunately, Jasmine did not like other cats, not even kittens. She wanted me all to herself. So she spent more and more time outside, where she watched the other cats in the neighborhood. When the new kitten played with the toys, she always watched from the upstairs landing, but never participated in the game.

She enjoys hiding in the patio jungle

As always, life interfered. Eventually, I left my house (and my husband), and I took Jasmine with me to live in a small apartment. She is now ten years old, and has become a plump cat. Some would call her fat, but my friends call her well-fed. She loooves her tuna. I taught her to play, but she still prefers watching me play with her toys. She also enjoys watching the outside world from her ivory tower on the patio of my third floor apartment.

This is a test. Can you see the cat?

 Jasmine learned the art of camouflage, and hiding in plain sight, like any good hunter. She particularly likes this blanket. Sometimes I look for her in my apartment and can't find her.

 She needs lots of cuddles and she is getting them. She has what she always wanted, me, all to herself. She is the most loving companion I could ever wish for. I hope we enjoy many more years together.


My love of cats transpires in my books. Except for my medieval series, there is a cat in most of my stories. Check them out.

 
Vijaya Schartz
  Romance with a Kick
  http://www.vijayaschartz.com
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