Friday, January 14, 2022
The Past is a Different Place...by Sheila Claydon
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Clawed and Friends, a feline soap opera
I know I’m getting older, as I’ve definitely run out of energy this summer. The present excuse is that it’s too darn hot and humid. The garden I planted is now flush with veggies, raining tomatoes and continuously sprouting a tasty green called “Perpetual Spinach,” #1 on my list recommendations for the home gardener. No, filled with gloom as I am, I think I’ll just talk about the “kids”—not actual children anymore, as ours have long ago flown the nest and have children of their own—but the three cats that we now live with.
My days are a long feline saga. There’s
an old saying to the effect that “If you want to write novels, get a couple of
cats,” and IMHO it’s true. No
longer do I have teenagers, but I have these cats, and the trials and tribulations of our multi-cat household never ends.
Currently, we have three cats domiciled with us. I would never presume to call myself an “owner” of "pets" as the cats I’ve met generally end up calling most of the shots. These three are the first I’ve kept in—the bird/small
mammal neighborhood body count is too high to be acceptable to me any longer.
Plus, eventually, with outdoor cats, predators--animal or human--disappears our
beloved furry family member. Therefore, our
kitties, Kimi, Tony (Anthony) and Willy (Yum) all share the same space. Tony (aka
“Ant-knee”) is a young tough from Long Island. I could blame the daily uproar
on his theoretically removed testosterone-producing parts, but that would be
the easy way out for this Cat Mother.
Kimi is now an elder cat. Long-haired, she requires daily brushing and combing. Nevertheless, she still gets constipated as a result of her own personal grooming regime and needs frequent doses of Laxatone©. She arrived here starving, with open wounds and a PTSD which never subsided. Since then she has mostly lived, by preference, wherever other cats/people are not. She has just had a bout of pneumonia and I’m pushing several pills a day into her. Fortunately, she and I have a relationship of affection based upon my respecting her intricate web of boundaries, so these pills—so far—are no problem.
Willy is also 'Clawed,' because he has a major bad habit of scratching furniture, to the point where we have mostly given up arguing about it. We reason we'll all be dead soon enough and will no longer care. This flaw is worth putting up with, because he is a giant cuddle-bug who kisses and hugs his people.
With others of his kind, Willy-yum is a go-along, get-along kind of guy—until he draws the line and bites which is his method for drawing the line with Tony. Willy and Tony are friends for face-licking, as well as tussle and chase games, even though Willy is older and somewhat lame. No, the problem is not between the boys, or with their newly formed posse, but between the boys and Kimi.
Willy, sensitive soul that he is, understood right away that Kimi did not want to be friends with anyone. He did not take this personally. He and Kimi politely left one another alone, about the best that we can all hope for.
Tony, however, takes Kimi's crippling fear as a personal affront, one that he rediscovers anew every day. Kimi, as he sees it, should play and wrestle with him like Willy-yum does. In his world view, this is the natural order of things, perfectly obvious to his bright yet inflexible mind. When he bounces up to her, she hisses and retreats under a chair, this, 100% of the time. That, he presumes, is an invitation to get under the chair with her. When (unsurprisingly) she screams and scratches, and all hell breaks loose.
So since she's been ill, she is recuperating behind closed doors. I move her between rooms in the heat, transferring cat boxes, food, water and beds each time, with Tony trying to either trip me or jump Kimi all the way. His nose knows that his Cruel Cat Mom has been feeding the Stupid One "better" food. And yes, I am. Sick cats get appetite tempters like baby food and kitty cans.
If I try to share kitty cans out, however, Tony gobbles his and everybody else's too, so all special food has to be dished out behind closed doors. In an attempt to be "fair," I've dirtied many, many kitty dishes. I feel like a Mom dealing with a nearly toxic sibling rivalry.
I soon gave up the sharing of canned chow. This summer's supply chain lapses are making purchasing the "right" flavor/texture kitty food chancy. Things will get easier when Kimi recovers and we can just return to my occasional running interference when the familiar routine of his bullying and her fear gets out of hand. Like people, these two kitties have difficulties with changing their visceral reaction to one another, reactions which lead to "antisocial" behaviour from both parties.
The official Chinese line on pets is that they are "useless bourgeois luxuries."* They may not be "useless" in terms of the emotional support and comfort we two-legs receive from our fur friends, but they are luxuries our 1st World living conditions allow us to enjoy. Spaying, neutering, maintenance and vet care (because "where there's stock, there's trouble"**) are fixed costs.
Moreover, you need time to devote to their proper care as well as a generous share of patience and understanding for their non-human needs and ways. They may have once been thought of as "dumb animals," but we know better today. Between you and these complex, sensitive critters a relationship will grow. Just as relationships between two-legged beings require time, thought and uncomfortable doses of learning about yourself, so too can our dealings with our mammalian kin test and enlighten us.
~~Juliet Waldron
*The Economist, July 2021
**"All Creatures Great and Small", James Herriot
Friday, August 27, 2021
New Release – ANGEL BRAVE – Azura Chronicles Book 3 – by Vijaya Schartz
Order ANGEL BRAVE now, to be delivered September 1, 2021 HERE Visit my page at BWL Publishing HERE |
Keoke Mahoe, Zephyrian spy for the Resistance, slips through Azura’s impenetrable defenses to deliver a perilous message to their leader. But Lady Valoria fiercely protects her planet. Any intruder, especially one who kills animals for food, is promptly terminated.
amazon - B&N - Smashwords - Kobo |
amazon - B&N - Smashwords - Kobo |
Saturday, January 2, 2021
Writing and Working from Home with Cats by Diane Bator
Writing and Working from Home with Cats
Every book I write, I create with a partner. Usually my cat Jazz who has become like a barnacle at my side daily and hates when I have to get up for any reason.
I am one of those people who have been working from home for the past nine months. There are a lot of good and bad that go along with that. For example, I’m thrilled to finally have a home office, but that only happened because my youngest moved out mid-pandemic. I also love that the bathroom is so much closer to my new office—but so is the kitchen. Rewarding myself for doing a good job has meant I wear yoga pants to work daily.
I have also had to juggle work and writing with two cats. While
they weren’t too impressed with me being home every single hour of every single
day, they seem to have adjusted. I can no longer sit in the livingroom during office
hours. I can’t even go outside for a walk or run to the store without a lecture
when I get home. Since my older cat Jazz is part Siamese, he can become very
vocal.
Considering my normal job is selling tickets for a live-stage
theatre, things were pretty quiet at my desk. Things have picked up a little
now that we’ve moved to online performances. Still, there are days where I don’t
have a great deal to do but stuff envelopes or help troubleshoot—and keep my
cats amused.
So here are my top 10 ways I’ve kept busy over the past nine
months:
- Cleaned and set up my new office.
- Rearranged my new office because there is only one set of plugs in the room.
- Added a throw blanket and a rug under my desk because there is no heat vent in my office.
- Weighed the pros and cons of moving the coffeemaker to my office from the kitchen which is ten feet away…then considered the lack of empty surfaces to keep said coffeemaker and the creamer. There may or may not be a hoarding issue in that room.
- Added a second chair to attempt to keep my cat Jazz off my desk.
- Stocked up on wipes since Jazz still feels the need to walk on the four inch path between me and my laptop at least twice during every Zoom meeting and leaves a trail of white hair behind.
- Added another rug for my other cat Ash after stepping on her when she took to sleeping beneath my desk on the first rug.
- Started taking lunch breaks in the livingroom because Jazz feels the need to get away from the computer for several hours a day to have my undivided attention.
- Started wearing slippers because Ash has claws and loves to play with my feet under my desk.
- Occasionally getting actual work done once Jazz and Ash are fed and appeased. Considering moving their food dishes ten feet closer to my desk…
I’m happy to say I have accomplished a little writing in
between meetings and moving the cat off my desk. This year I have two new books
coming out as well as a novella I wrote some time ago. I’m looking forward to
another productive year. It helps to keep things light. A great sense of humour
goes a long way!
By the way, Jazz has now become an honorary member of our staff as well as a couple writing groups I belong to. He loves to see who is on the screen during each meeting and sleeping next to me no matter what I do.
Ash is a lady of leisure. She prefers to keep her distance
and join us at her own discretion.
As for me, I’ve been out of the office for the holidays. I’m
currently organizing my calendars for 2021 and writing in my livingroom soon…
Happy New Year, everyone!
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Seat of the Pants + Writing Fiction
My husband seems to believe that I have a record with put-off-till-tomorrow syndrome. He says he remembers college, and me sitting up half the night, bent over a textbook, performing a last minute stuffing on facts. But---shhhhh--I remember him breaking open his Statistics book the night before the final...
What happens when you yourself, a writer of books and proud, self-declared "Seat of Your Pants Plotter" find that inspiration has failed you? The seat of those pants has worn through, or something.
I'm accustomed to being led (grabbed by the throat) by my characters, who are usually chatty and full of stories about themselves and their friends and relations, but what if they wander off and fall down a rabbit hole?
Far too many have been doing this to me lately. They start off with a conversation which really seems to be going somewhere, but suddenly, as if someone filled their 18th Century teacups with many, many drops of Laudanum, they fall back senseless upon the appliqued cushions of the settee, or, more likely, just vanish down a dark hallway of the rambling manor which belongs to their uncle, the sixteenth Earl of Whatever, and never return.
Afterward, no matter how often I attempt to recontact them--offering them dinner parties, glorious, thundering steeplechases, or handsome sweethearts, late night trysts in the Earl's topiary gardens or witty dialogue in Regency Ballrooms, they refuse to come out and share their stories with me.
This has been happening for the last year or so. It's annoying, really, when all the chatter just stops, because up till now I've been able to rely on my characters supplying entire story lines. Or to put it another way, the thread I've been following in the labyrinth breaks and there I am, left alone in the dark.
I can't lay this at the paws of the two cats who vie for which one can jump the most frequently on my forearms while I am attempting to create.
https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Poop Detail
So here's a little slice of A Master Passion, where Elizabeth Schuyler tends the newest Hamilton baby, James. It's already a busy day when her sister Peggy visits unexpectedly.
~~Juliet Waldron
Sunday, October 27, 2019
The nature of angels and cats - by Vijaya Schartz
Akira's Choice, Book 2 of the Byzantium series, is available now for pre-order HERE and more of my books can be found on BWL Publishing HERE |
Strong heroines, brave heroes, romance with a kick
http://www.vijayaschartz.com
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