Ask a Wench for November: Those Wonderful Literary Animals

Joanna here, with Ask a Wench for November.  It’s the Thanksgiving month so celebrating all the wonderful literary animals seems appropriate.

Who’s your favorite literary animal?

 

Starting out with Anne:

I've always loved animals and, as a child, devoured books about them. Finn the Wolfhound, Wild Brother, Black Beauty, The Silver Brumby series, Kiki the parrot in Enid Blyton's "Mystery" series, Timmy the dog in the Famous Five books who went everywhere with them, and many others. 

But stories about dogs always end with the dog dying, so now I like stories with dogs, but not about them.

Probably my favorite animal in a book is the dog, Ulysses in Heyer's Arabella. A scruffy little mutt who is foisted on the very elegant hero by the soft-hearted Arabella, he quickly takes command of the hero, and his household staff. The conversations between Mr Beaumaris and Ulysses are a delight and reveal another side of the hero.

Here's an example: Mr Beaumaris goes away for a few days, leaving the dog in the care of his servants. But Ulysses fretted and refused to eat, no matter what tasty morsels Beaumaris's French chef had prepared for him. When Beaumaris arrives home, Ulysses is pathetically skinny, and his servants all try to explain.

Mr. Beaumaris, who had picked Ulysses up, paid no heed to all these attempts at self-justification, but addressed himself to his adorer. "What a fool you are!" he observed. "No, I have the greatest dislike of having my face licked, and must request you to refrain. Quiet, Ulysses! quiet! I am grateful to you for your solicitude, but you must perceive that I am in the enjoyment of my customary good health. I would I could say the same of you. You have once more reduced yourself to skin and bone, my friend, a process which I shall take leave to inform you I consider as unjust as it is ridiculous. Anyone setting eyes on you would suppose that I grudged you even the scraps from my table!" He added, without the slightest change of voice, and without raising his eyes from the creature in his arms. "You would also appear to have bereft my household of its sense, so that the greater part of it, instead of providing me with the breakfast I stand in need of, is engaged in excusing itself from any suspicion of blame and - I may add - doing itself no good thereby.”  

I'm attaching a photo of my beloved Chloe-dog, who sat at my feet (often on my feet) while I wrote many of my books. I still miss her. My Milly-dog is lovely, but she is too busy discouraging cat visits and refusing birds landing rights in my back yard (or on my trees) to supervise the writing of a book.

 

Pat, it turns out, is pro hedgehog:

I add animals to my books for various story purposes—Will Ives talks to his dogs in No Perfect Magic— but my lamentable memory simply doesn’t recall much of animals I’ve read about since my elementary school days. I had no books at home, no one to read me Pooh, and by the time I was in school, I’d progressed far beyond what I would have considered baby stories. I know I enjoyed the Black Beauty books but hated Lassie. I was all about horses back then and even read Zane Grey just for the horses his heroes rode off on.

Right off, the only “recent” book I recall with a memorable animal was Laura Kinsale’s hedgehog in Midsummer Moon (I need to go back and re-read that book!).

And loyal animals of my own—I had none. I’m not saying I didn’t have pets but that we lived on what was considered a major highway when I was a child. People would drop off animals there, and we’d feed them and after a year or two, they’d disappear. So I never developed any particular bond even after I was an adult and bought a dog for our kids. There’s a character story in there somewhere!

 

 

Andrea next, with the fictional animals of childhood:

Andrea/Cara: I have a real soft spot in my heart for animals in fiction—I think that’s because as a child, the books that captured my imagination featured so many wonderful furry and feathered creatures as brave, loyal and resourceful characters. There are, of course, the classics like Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. Pooh was such a good friend to his raggle-taggle band of buddies. “How do you spell love?” asks Piglet. To which Pooh answers, “You don’t spell it, you feel it!” I also adore his answer to Piglet’s worrying about how to face the challenges of Life: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” Such a wonderfully supportive friend, and beautifully wise words for all of us to take to heart.

But I think one of my real heartthrobs is Gus the seagull from a lesser-known classic called The Fabulous
Flight. Robert Lawson was afairly famous children’s book author/illustrator who lived in my small town down a country dirt road at a house called Rabbit Hill. (Named after one of his award-winning books.) As a child, I loved driving past it and thinking of him writing his books in that old New England colonial house. I read them all, (and most featured animals, including Amos, who helped Benjamin Franklin in his many endeavors.) But my absolute favorite of his works was one with Gus and his pal, Peter Peabody Pepperel. Peter, by some strange scientific accident in his father’s lab, is shrunk down to the size of a mouse. Which, it turns out, makes him the perfect size to set off on an adventure to save the world from an evil scientist. Peter’s father grudgingly allows him to take on the mission and makes a small leather cabin (oh, I loved the description of its interior) to strap to Gus’s back. And off they fly . . . .

The story somehow just captivated me. Looking back, I think because it has all the themes that still resonate with me today—the bonds of friendship—even when your best friend is considered weird by everyone else; loyalty; courage, even when you’re afraid; honor . . . and a spirit of adventure and curiosity!  

 

Nicola with a wonderful view on literary favorites. (She's a Shere Khan and Eeyore fan like me) :

It was fun trying to decide on my favourite literary animal and awfully difficult to choose. A lot of my favourites were encountered in childhood and I still love them today, especially Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin. Nutkin was such fun, irrepressible and cheeky. He had the sort of personality I wished I had as a child. Even when he had been chastised with the loss of his tail and was older and wiser he still had a buoyant spirit that couldn’t quite be squashed! He remains a special character to me to this day, perhaps because red squirrels are now so rare in the UK and they are so cute and funny to watch that seeing them is a real joy!

I guess my other childhood favourites also represented aspects of character that I found fascinating, from Shere Khan, the mesmerizingly wicked tiger in The Jungle Book to Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, who was so gloomy but somehow, funny as well. These days I have my own “literary dog” in Angus as well as a procession of literary guide dog puppies we enjoy taking to book festivals. (The picture shows Ethel visiting an indie bookshop!)

 

 

Mary Jo, advocat:

Mary Jo here.  I certainly have my share of feline muses lounging about my desk and channeling creativity from the astral planes.  (I can see three cats from where I'm sitting at my computer, and the fourth probably isn't far away.)

Since pets strike me as a normal and even necessary part of life, I'm happy to see them in books. Sometimes they are relatively low key, other times they have a vital place in the plot.  Jennifer Crusie has a fine hand with plot pets.  My favorite is Elvis in Bet Me, a splotchy orange and brown cat with one eye closed in a sinister fashion, as if he's a one eyed pirate.  Except he changes eyes, closing sometimes the right, sometimes the left.  He's a con cat. <G>

 He also learns how to turn on Min's stereo so he can listen to Elvis Presley CDs.  When "Love me Tender" comes on, he turns up the volume. Ugly and vaguely scary looking, he is the hero's accidental gift to the heroine, a gift she didn't know she needs.  He brings joy to Min's life, and immediately realizes that her ex-boyfriend is scum.  <G>

 I'm also fond of Crusie's basset hound Fred in Anyone But You.  Just divorced Nina goes to the shelter to get a perky puppy to celebrate her new life, and ends up with the lugubrious Fred because he's due to be chopped the next day.  Luckily, Fred is lovable as well as lugubrious, and he finds his way into her heart and her love life in very canine ways. 

Most of my stories have cats in them, unless it's a road book, where it would be too hard on the cat. My newest rescue, The Spook, is a ship's cat in the book I just finished, Once a Scoundrel.  He's adept at catching vermin and sleeping on people's bunks. <G>  I'm looking forward to reading about everyone's else's favorite literary pets!

 

 

 

Joanna here.

And my own take, rounding it all up with my wonderful dog Mandy. She came to me in the middle of her doubtless adventurous life, an SPCA stray.

Mandy, protecting the house from a possum

She's a tough, unpretty dog with the personality of a Marine sergeant and an eclectic ancestry. She keeps the perimeter of the camp safe from UPS men and knows exactly when I should get up. Picture me pulling the blankets over my head with a “Not now, Mandy” and Mandy having none of this. Runs a tight ship, Mandy does.

She sleeps six or seven feet away from me when I work. Close enough to keep an eye on me. Distant enough so she can charge headlong against any incoming threat.

I plan to use her, slightly fictionalized, in the next story I’m writing. Still called Mandy, still brown, still uncannily smart.

 

What about you? Is there a book animal you remember fondly after many years?

Comments

[Mary M.]

I don't have to go back years for this one, it's from a book club meeting just last night. We all agreed that Cannery Row (Steinbeck) was 5/5 and the hound, Darling, was our favorite female character—among other things, she cleverly potty trained herself while Mac and the Boys were still marveling at the puddles she'd been making on the floor. The whole book is about resilience, and Darling has it in spades. Personally, though, I'm a cat person and my favorite series is Midnight Louis by Carol Nelson Douglas. Guess I like smarts in my fictional animals as much as the human characters (and real people, too).

[Mary T]

I love stories that involve animals. Many HR writers lovingly describe horses in their stories. It's not hard to see why. I have never owned a horse, but they are such beautiful animals.

Emily March, a contemporary romance writer that I like, has dogs in every story I've read by her. And they usually have very strong personalities.

But my all time favorite when it comes to writing stories with animals is Barbara Metzger. Not always just cats and dogs either. One of her Christmas novellas involves a bunch of church mice who are trying to lead their impoverished minister to a treasure that is hidden in the church so that they all can survive.

In Ms. Metzger's A LOYAL COMPANION, the companion (Fitz the dog) does a bit of narration at the beginning and ending of each chapter that is hilarious as well as insightful. At the ending of one chapter the heroine decides that rather than be married to the highest bidder, she will marry the next "really nice man" she meets. She then goes on to describe her ideal to Fitz. She ends her litany with "He should have a nice smile...and smell good."

So he drags in the butcher's delivery boy. He only wants the best for her. It's a funny book.

[Faith Freewoman]

My favorite is the smart, rascally dog and his smart, rascally adolescent master in Georgette Heyer's The Reluctant Widow.

And for some reason the Beatrix Potter character who first pops into my mind is the very silly Jemima Puddleduck.

Millie-dog sounds a lot like our Mr. Pogo, the Spaniel/Australian Shepherd family dog. I think he aspires to be a Mandy, though. Hey, protecting "his wimmin" from squirrels is a good way to start, right?

[Janga]

One of my early reading memories is of my young uncle, a teenager at the time, reading Lad: A Dog and Further Adventures of Lad to me and both of us sobbing when Lad died. I tried rereading the books later and thought them poorly written, but the pathos was stronger than my critical judgment at five.

I still read Winnie the Pooh. I love Eeyore and Piglet, and, of course, Pooh, and I'm glad that some of the grands are still young enough to share Olivia the Pig books and The Wolf Who Cried Boy with me. I read several romance authors--Barbara Metzger, Laura Kinsale, Jennifer Crusie, Kristan Higgins--with the expectation of falling in love with an animal character with each book. And I have a particular fondness for Lufra, the Baluchistan hound in Heyer's Frederica, Knox, the parrot in Jo Beverley's Forbidden Magic, and Foolish, the dog in Nora Roberts's Quinn Brothers books. My newest favorite is Sweetpea, the skunk in Eloisa James's Wilde in Love. Then there are the animals from some favorite cozy mysteries. I read Miranda James's Cat in the Stacks books as much for Diesel the cat as for Charlie the librarian, and the cat Tabitha Twitchett and Rascal, the Jack Russell terrier, are more important than Miss Potter in Susan Wittig Albert's Cottage Tales.

[Kareni]

Well, drats ~ no favorite literary animal is coming to mind at this moment ... maybe later! I enjoyed reading about all of your favorites, so thanks for the column.

[Binnie Syril Braunstein]

I have so many favorites - but here goes: I love "Fred" in Jennifer Crusie's Anyone but You.I loved the book so much that I've bought 14 copies of it, and given 13 away to friends who needed a good laugh.I thought the hedgehog in one of Mary Jo's novellas was adorable. Grace Burrowes does a great job with critters, even horses. Kristan Higgins has a dog in every book - except for the one that has a cat. And speaking of cats - I've always loved Paul Gallico's The Abandoned, in which a boy gets hit on the noggin and wakes up as a cat. The other cats advise him: When in doubt - wash. And my current favorite is the ugly dog with the satin ribbon for a leash in Anne Gracie's The Spring Bride. Keep those critters coming! Great column!

[Sue McCormick]

I absolutely agree with all the the above mentioned pets that I have read about (I don't know some of them). Repeating the list would be boring.

Elsie Lee has a cat in Curse of Carranca named Sebastian. That cat became a favorite of mine and of both of my daughters (we were living with a real live cat at the time and were equally found of Sebastian).

And that brings me to the household pets. Several of us are allergic to dog dander but are OK with cats (a reversal of the norm). I remember with great fondness every cat we had from the one I brought home from high school to our most recent one and also all of the cats my daughter had ( one of her early ones was named Sabastio in honor of Sebastian).

[Teresa Broderick]

I too loved Timmy the dog in the Famous Five. I grew up with those books. They ARE my childhood. I also read Black Beauty and cried every night for a week afterwards. I never read it again and even now wouldn't attempt it. I love animals. We have a very stubborn Irish Wolfhound who only does what he likes, a fat lovable Labrador Cross and a cat who rules the roost. What's a home without an animal. I've never been without a pet.

[jeanette dilts]

I love animals of all kinds in the books I read, but all time favorites are the empowered dust bunnies in Jayne Castle's (aka Jane Ann Krentz) Ghost Hunter books esp. Elvis. "Elvis has left the building" will be forever in my head. I may relate because the of dust bunnies that frequently live beneath my bed and dining room table. Three Salukis shed a puppy's worth of fine hair in a week's time.

[Kathy K]

I always enjoy reading about animals and how they worm their way into human families and affections. No one has mentioned "The Cat who..." series which is very enjoyable. I also liked "Merle's Door" by Ted Kerasote as an exploration of the adjustments animals and people make to one another.

[Karin]

Hi Janga, I am very familiar with Lad, A Dog, and most of Albert Payson Terhune's other books. He lived very near to where I grew up, is buried in a local churchyard, and when I was young our telephone exchange was named after him (Terhune-5)!
I've never tried to reread the books as an adult. But I think it was Lad and the Lassie show on TV that really made collies so popular as pets for so long.

[Karin]

I do like the cat that Eve and Roark have in Nora Robb's "In Death" series, but his name escapes me!

[lor]

His name is Galahad and I do like him.

I also like Harry, the hairless Chinese Crested dog, who dances disco. For the life of me I can't remember the name of the book or the author and I've only read it about half a dozen times!:(

I'm looking forward to Sweetpea the skunk in 'Wilde in Love', which is in my TBR. I usually like any cat, dog or horse that appears in a book. I like any of animals that appear in Georgette Heyer books, love the dust bunnies, and I like both Midas and Tricks from two different Linda Howard books.

I read Black Beauty once but never again and Disney traumatized me with the movie, Old Yeller.

The 'My Friend Flicka' trilogy (horses) provided me with my daughter's name (in the third book 'Green Grass of Wyoming').

[Joanne Bourne]

I'm going to have to admit I haven't yet read Cannery Row. I will move it to the top of the list if it has such a splendid dog in it.

[Joanne Bourne]

That is so funny. The butcher's boy ...

[Joanne Bourne]

I had a cat when I was in Germany.

We'd moved there from desert country. The cat went out into the garden the first day and spotted a squirrel, Never seen one, of course.

She took off after it.

The squirrel stood her ground. Raised her head. And ... chittered.

The cat skidded to a stop and slooowly backed away.

[Anne Gracie]

Oh, Faith yes -- Bouncer, isn't it, who keeps the heroine stuck in her chair for hours? And then there's Lufra, in Frederica — the Baluchistan Hound. Heyer did some lovely dogs.

Millie-dog also protects me from possums -- Australian possums are smaller and sweeter than the ones you have in the US. Millie doesn't care though.

[Anne Gracie]

Thanks for loving my ugly dog, Binnie. I think ugly dogs often have the sweetest natures. And I'd forgotten all about that Paul Gallico story -- but "When in doubt - wash." reminded me.

Mary Jo's comment also reminded me of the cats in Kerry Greenwood's Corinna books — they were scattered between apartments and each one had a very distinct personality.

[Anne Gracie]

Me too, Teresa — I devoured every Enid Blyton I could find, but the Famous Five, and the "Adventure" books and the Five Find-outers and dog -- were they the Mystery of series? — were my faves. I was also envious of children who could take their dogs wherever they went. I took our dog Prince everywhere, too, but people wouldn't let him inside!

[Anne Gracie]

I wish those Jayne Castle books would become available in kindle, Jeanette. I'd really like to read them, but my house is drowning in books, and kindle is my only option at the moment.

And I hear you on shedding. I have a black dog and a beige carpet -- yes, madness, I know.

[Joanne Bourne]

There is something about dog books. They keep being "Oh dear, the dog has died" books.

I suppose this is supposed to teach kids about Real Life, since kids live in an enclosed bubble of Happy Times and know nothing about Bad Stuff and they must be told.

I prefer the Velveteen Rabbit meself.

[Joanne Bourne]

I am wowed by how many there are ...

(Interestingly, we never learn the name of the Velveteen Rabbit. The Fictional Character Protection League should get after them for erasing its rabbithood._

[Joanne Bourne]

Animals do all sorts of useful things in fiction. I feel like most books should have a few.

[Joanne Bourne]

My sister always had cats. Her husband was a long-haul trucker and he'd be approached by strays at truck stops and delivery depots.

Somehow, no matter how dilapidated they were, they always trusted him and my sister always took 'em in and managed to heal their hurt bodies and searching souls.

[Joanne Bourne]

For some reason I'm reminded now of Dresden (Jim Butcher's consulting wizard) and his huge, fierce Tibetan Temple dog ... Mouse.

[Joanne Bourne]

Galahad ... he is so snarky. VERY catlike

[Joanne Bourne]

I liked Black Beauty when I read it, which was ... I dunnoh 10 or 12. I don't think I could manage to read it now.

[Mary M.]

Anne, I looked on Amazon for the first Ghost Hunter book, After Dark, and didn't find it. But my local digital library has it--in Kindle format! Of course, I put it on hold, how could I resist a book with dust bunny characters (being, as I am, on intimate terms with so many of the cat-fur variety).

[Linda S.]

Let's not forget the "Baluchistan" hound in Heyer's Fredericka. He moves the plot along nicely besides providing comic relief.

[Anne Gracie]

Thanks, Mary -- I'm trying to track it down, too.