A New Thing

It's been a little while since I posted, so thought I'd slap something down for you all.

Been busy with edits on Vampire Caprice (4^th book), and working on something a bit different. My non-fiction work called “The Cat Whisperer”, is coming along, and I hope to publish it this fall.

My dear friend, Carole Gill, happily read through this to catch my mistakes and type-o's. I told her no rush, I knew she was busy. But she went right to work on it, and I got it back today.

She reports, “I LOVED IT!”

I was a little worried about some of it, as I didn't leave much out. This is non-fiction, taken from my journal about the feral mother cat, and the kittens she had, and their growing up and every little emotional blow I had over the things that happened to them.

I worked on it all summer long, on and off, trying to get it to sound natural, and yet not too rag-tag [because it came from my journal, I tend to write w/o worry about tense, punctuation and even spelling].

I've always written in a journal. Since high school (and no, I'm not telling you how long, as it doesn't matter, but it's decades!). Although the majority of my journals are paper, I've now begun writing them into my computer—I've got bins filled with my paper ones. What I'll do with them I have no idea. But there are stories in there, believe me. Some that are embarrassing—for me and maybe other people. This is where you get the memoir, of course. Usually it's about some emotionally-packed incident in a person's life. Well, you know, maybe those people always got on Opra, but I'm not after that. So I went with something safe—no cat will sue me, I don't think. And one would think “how can a story about feral cats be interesting?” You have no idea.

My husband is one of the stars in this book—him being the “cat whisperer”. He's actually always had this attachment toward animals, and a kind heart, and for some reason the animals sense this. However, his starring roll is taken over by one of the off-springs, Half Pint. A tiger-striped cat with (as my husband describes him), Jack Nicolson's eyes. Yeah, they're like half-lidded.

Half Pint was the runt, and yet he was the boldest. Since he grew older, has been the cat in charge, has been able to bring back (to the house), the other two cats after the mother took them out into the wilds. When you meet him, and see how friendly he is, you simply think he's a darling. For being born from a feral cat, this is astonishing enough. It's said you have to make human contact with feral kittens early on, or they won't trust you. They're wild. The first thing I offered Half Pint (the runt) when he was a kitten, was my bare toe, which he proceeded to lick and chew on. Since then he has always liked my bare toes, and I offer them to him on occasion still, careful of his claws.

So, that's what's up next for me, once I get something figured out for the cover. I have no idea how I'll get this done, or what I can do with it. I was thinking of using one of the pictures, but I'm not sure it will work (wish I could share the pictures here, but can't).

I'll let the mss. rest for a few weeks, and read through it for anything else that I might have missed.

In any case, I think cat lovers will adore this story. I'll let you all know when it comes out.

Until then, see you around the usual haunts!