In Memory: Me-Me

Me-Me, my seventeen-year-old kitten, died yesterday afternoon. She had been aging for a while, going through what looked like a bout of feline senility, so it wasn’t unexpected.

We adopted her as a kitten from the neighbor’s. One afternoon, there was a knock on the door and my husband and I answered it to two little girls who wanted to know if we wanted a kitten because the local tom had killed all the male kittens in the litter and they wanted to save these kittens. I decided on the grey-and-white kitten, and we named her Me-Me, because she liked to be the center of my attention.

Meemerz was a one-person cat for much of the time, and that one person was me. She would hiss and bite Richard, until one day she warmed up to him and became our cat.

She was always a bit — flaky. Ditzy. Flighty. Spacy. Whatever word you choose to denote a cat who seems a little … vacant up there. She wasn’t cognitively impaired, just an airhead. Like she didn’t have a thought in the world. We imagined her saying things like “Why are clouds?” and “Food?”

This morning seems a little empty without my geriatric cat sitting on the couch.

Animals in Writing

Every now and then, animals find their way into my writing. The current book I’m writing, Kringle Through the Snow, has a highly intelligent Newfoundland named Shadow Lord. The other book I’m writing, Carrying Light, has the preternatural cat Bergeron. The last book I wrote, Kringle on Fire, has a not-so-bright orange cat named Doofus.

At this point I’m supposed to talk about why I put animals in my stories. I think humor is a big part of it. Shadow Lord is so big and so well-behaved, yet he still detains Sierra long enough for Wade to talk to her. Doofus loves everyone like a drunken bro, even the child in the middle of his terrible twos. Bergeron flies — sometimes causing a traffic jam, in front of people who are not to know of her existence.

If I had to find a similarity among these pets, it’s their ability to communicate with humans. In pet-like ways, of course. Except for Bergeron, who speaks with telepathy to other telepaths. How many of you would like a telepathic cat? I’m not really sure myself. How many interruptions a day would I tolerate, especially if the transmission is “I’m starving! I can see the bottom of my food dish!”?

I should mention that another reason to include animals is because it makes protagonists look more soft-hearted. Unless the pet is a wolf, and then it accomplishes exactly the opposite.

Animals as characters can make for fun in writing and in reading. I’m going to have to write them in more often. Kittens, anyone?

Mine to Remember

That which is mine to remember, I cling to on grey days like this…

Venturing into the attic as my father worked to restore it. The entire neighborhood late for school because my cat is having kittens. A gully washer sending rain cascading down the steps across the street. The hospital with its old wood panels and cordovan leather. The evening when I played in the street with my neighbor and my sister. Fishing in the park with my father, the first time I threaded a worm on a hook. When I finally got a boyfriend.

Going off to college unprepared and coming home again. Going back and staying there even through summers and Thanksgiving breaks. Growing microbes in Petri dishes and cooking pound cake in the food lab. Classes I skipped to sit on the Quad and watch people.

Walking to my graduate classes barefoot and scandalizing my professor. Skinny dipping at the St. Joseph’s Sportsman’s Club on a skinny September night. Watching Star Trek with my friends. Losing Thanksgiving Break to a class project. Walking across the stage to get my PhD.

Exploring my new home across the country, walking everywhere. Being betrayed by a husband and breaking up. Spending a week in an inpatient facility that saved my life. Falling in hopeless, chaste love with a rock band. Moments I felt like the sky was falling down, but I persevered. Driving to the Adirondacks to camp by myself and feeling freedom.

Moving back to the Midwest to be with someone I thought was the one — he wasn’t. Buying a house as an act of solidarity with single professional women. Learning how important laughter was to a relationship. Driving for miles and miles before getting to the next town. Watching coffee shops pop in and out of existence. Finding the right man and marrying on St. Patrick’s Day. Watching my mother die nine months after our wedding.

Appearing in a dunk tank for charity. Traveling to visit interns across Missouri and across state lines. Getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spending a few days at the hospital. Recuperating. Being moved into a bigger house. Spending a pleasant day with my father while he was in hospice.

And now I sit in the greying afternoon, having reviewed almost sixty years of life. All these memories are mine. I cling onto them as the things that define me.

Kittens and kittens and kittens and kittens …

My writing has been heavy lately, as I brood about the state of the world — bigotry and prejudice, hatred, banal acts of evil, etc.
It’s time to talk about kittens again.
My husband needs to publish his first book. In this book, Augustus T. Cat helps his friend Mr. Snail realize his goal to run a marathon.

To the left is Augustus T. Cat, who I found under a truck chassis and gave to the Humane Society. Augustus is very practical and concrete in his thinking, as befitting a cat in a tuxedo.

To the right is is Mr. Snail. He’s an imaginary critter. He talks very slowly, and has many daring adventures. He has ADHD, and when he drinks coffee, he falls asleep and falls off the side of the cup.

Kittens aren’t just for kid’s books anymore, nor are they just fluffy and cute anymore. Sure, they’re fluffy and cute, but they can also add to the theme and even the plot.

Exhibit 1. It is suggested you enlarge this, so you can see the utter adorableness that is the kitten Keanu.

Exhibit 2: This cat got her own award-winning documentary: Review: Lil Bub and Friendz (Full disclosure: this is not my cat. However, I have met her and I can attest to the fact that she has an unworldly aura about her that might prove that she’s an alien space cat come to Earth to save the world one cat fan at a time.)

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In one of my novels, a kitten with Cerebellar Hypoplasia teaches a life lesson to the protagonist* :

Meeting Jeanne and her father at the top of the stairs, the ginger and white kitten walked with a peculiar stiff-legged and wobbly gait, weaving and occasionally tipping over.

“Isn’t he cute?” Dad asked Jeanne, following her into the oppressively floral nieces’ room. The wobbly kitten followed them.

“He’s drunk, Dad,” Jeanne commented as the kitten attacked her hand and then unceremoniously fell over. Undaunted, the kitten shifted itself under her hand and gnawed on her fingers. Jeanne pulled her hand back. “Ow! Not too hard, kitten!” The little creature stopped in mid-chomp and began to lick her finger while grabbing it with two little paws.

“He’s not drunk. Poor little guy has something called cerebellar hypoplasia. It means his motor skills aren’t very good, but he’s otherwise very healthy and happy. I named him Weebles.”“Because he wobbles and doesn’t fall down, right?”

Jeanne recalled a television commercial from her childhood. “But he does fall down.”

Weebles demonstrated by running three steps forward and tipping over, then cleaning himself as if he meant to fall over. “He gets right back up, though, and that’s the important thing.”

“Dad, he’s not getting up. He’s now fighting with an invisible feather. Is this kitten not very bright or something?” Jeanne looked at her father with consternation. “Dad, you’re what? Seventy-eight?”

“Yes. Why?” Jeanne should have been warned off by the questioning tone of her father’s voice.

“This kitten is – it’s a kitten. And you and mom could go into assisted living or even a nursing home at any time. What’s going to happen to Weebles here if you go into a nursing home?”

“Daughter.” Jeanne heard the steel in her father’s voice, as effective as another man’s shouting. “If I had not adopted this kitten, it would be dead by now. You can’t expect your mother and I to live our lives as if we might check out tomorrow. If we go into a home and they don’t allow us our pet, we will find someone to care for this kitten. It might even be you for all I know; you need something in your life to give you a sense of perspective. You can’t expect us to sit around and wait to die; life goes on and none of us know how much time we have left so we might as well love little kittens.”

Dad stood up slowly from the twin bed where he had been sitting and walked out of the room. Weebles stumbled up to her hand, stood still, and tipped over, purring.

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If you want to know what Weebles looks like, here is my new kitten Charlie, who does not have Cerebellar Hypoplasia, but otherwise bears an uncanny resemblance (the cat, not my husband):

*In a way, I cringe at including my writing in the same essay as Lil
Bub and Keanu. I feel like I’ve just said, “And look! My example is just as magificent as this Tribeca Film Festival winner!’ Oh, well.

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