by Mary Jo
Cats of 2019
Anyone who has read many of my stories is probably not surprised when a cat wanders through the pages, much as they wander through real life. It's worth noting that while my characters are fictional (apart from cameos of real historical figures), my cats are just about always real cats, often but not always mine. (That's my Panda on the left.)
Since I finished the Book That Ate My Life just before Christmas, I've been in a light-minded mode, which is why I got the idea of talking about the cats that have appeared in my 2019 books.
First was the re-release of my very first historical romance, Dearly Beloved. The heroine's young son has a thumbed tabby cat called Tiger, who was really my sweet Pandora. I grew up on a farm where we usually had about five indoor/outdoor cats, so they've always been part of my life.
In my young adult years when I lived in an apartment, I couldn't have a pet, but one of the first things I did when I bought my first townhouse was start looking for a cat.
I found Pandora through a 'free to good home' ad in the local newspaper. A nice woman had taken her in. She was a stray who was clearly domesticated. She was a fine cat, and I had her for 18 1/2 years. This scene is when my hero, Gervase, first meets Diana's young son:
His remark was undercut by a wide yawn. As if it were a signal, a young tabby cat jumped on the bed. Geoffrey lifted the little animal in his hands. “When I had the seizure, Tiger was frightened and jumped off. I’ve only had her a few weeks, and she’s already learned to sleep on my bed.”
“Clever cat,” the viscount said, suppressing a smile.
My major new book of the year was Once a Spy, Rogues Redeemed #4. The story cat was a young gray tabby who found my heroine, Suzanne, when she and her husband Simon were sleeping in a barn on their way out of France. He came in the middle of the night looking for food, lucked out, and literally attached himself to Suzanne. <G>
The three of them ate in companionable silence. Then it was time to pack up, saddle the horses, and resume their journey.
Suzanne thought the cat had gone about his feline business, but after Simon helped her into the gray's saddle, the tabby appeared from nowhere and leaped onto her stirruped left foot. Then he began earnestly hauling himself up her trousered leg, his nails tiny little needles that stabbed through fabric and into skin. He made it up to her knee and jumped on the saddle between her legs, looking vastly pleased with himself.
"I think our scouting party has acquired a new recruit," she said, unable to resist scratching his scrawny little neck. "Can I keep him?"
"As long as you're both willing, I don't see why not," Simon replied. "He wouldn't have shown up here if he had a real home."
Suzanne named him Leo, and he traveled with them all the way back to their home in England. In the very last scene, he lands neatly in the middle of a tray of sandwiches. A true cat all the way!
Leo is really my Smokey Cat, who I found in the adoption cage of my local cat hospital under the horrible kennel name of Toonces. (Four of our cats came from that cage, proving that I'm a sucker for adult cats who need homes! <G> The cage is stocked by Cat Rescue of Maryland, which mostly feeds feral colonies and does trap, neuter, and release, but if a cat shows up at a colony who is clearly domesticated, they take him to a vet for a medical check up and shots, then put him up for adoption. We changed his name to Smokey before we even took him home.)
The cat then known as Toonces looked very sad but well behaved. He'd been left in a carrier on the cat hospital's back porch. It was during the fallout from the last recession and my guess is that his owners couldn't keep him longer, but they wanted to make sure he'd be all right.
He didn't seem to have a lot of personality, but he needed a home, so I decided to take him on approval and see if he got along with the other cats. He did, and he developed a lot more personality! Not for nothing is he now known as "Smokey the Destroyer!" <G> He like testing the laws of physics: if he pushes if off the table, will it fall? So far, gravity is proving itself every time!
Rounding out the year, I had a novella in the Seduction on a Snowy Night anthology. My story, One Wicked Night, had several cats, chief of which was the heroine's cat Panda. He was a very large black and white tuxedo cat whom she found in India. (At that time the word 'panda' probably wasn't known in England, so I had Diana meet some Chinese pandas in a maharajah's private menagerie.)
Panda is a vital catalyst in bringing the characters together. (Sorry, I can never resist a bad pun. <G>) He's named for my very real and very large PandaMax (because he's a maximum Panda!) Here's a bit from when Diana returns to England and has arrived at the home of her niece Rory, who was the heroine of Once a Scoundrel:
Rory entered the drawing room followed by a footman pushing a well-stocked tea cart. Seeing the cat, she bent over and rubbed her fingers together enticingly. “Panda, do you remember me? You were only half-grown when I met you in India, but look at you now! What a fine, substantial cat you’ve become. In fact, you might have a touch of elephant in your ancestry.”
He loftily turned his back on her, so she took a cheese puff from a platter on the tea cart and offered it. He immediately came to her and took the morsel daintily from her fingers. It disappeared instantly, after which the Panda politely indicated that another cheese puff would be welcomed by a cat who had just traveled halfway around the world. Rory obliged and rubbed his head affectionately as she set a third puff on the floor. “That’s my Panda! Always willing to be bribed.”
Panda also came from the cat hospital. He was a stray who hung around a housing for the elderly complex and a number or residents would give him food. When someone reported him to Animal Control, a cat rescuer whose mother lived in the complex swooped in and captured. He was very well mannered and surely he'd had a home once. He looked like a nice cat; he sat on the cat hospital reception desk and played with the pens.
So I took him home, opened the carrier in the middle of the living room--and he vanished for a week. <G> We came to terms eventually and he is now a very friendly cat, the Patriarch of the Pack. He's on the desk next to me as a I type this, close enough for regular petting.
Also appearing in One Wicked Winter Night was the Spook, who had made his debut in my previous book, Once a Scoundrel. He was Gabriel's ship's cat and a mighty slayer of vermin. Here is Rory's first meeting with him:
It was a relief to feel something rub against her ankles. She looked down to see a strange cat, mostly white with splotches of gray. "Who is this come to visit?"
"The ship's cat," Gabriel said, accepting a topic less personal. "He's rather odd looking. His eyes are crossed and he has long legs like a deer and there's something about the angle of his ears, but he's very good at his job. We hired him as soon as he applied for the position."
"What are his duties?" She bent and made small feline noises in attempt to coax him closer, but he skittered back, watching her warily.
"He's the official ship's mouser. Cats have gone to sea on sailing ships as long as men have sailed, I think."
She smiled. "So useful for keeping the ship's supplies from being ruined by vermin. How did he apply for his position?"
"He presented himself to me with a still struggling rat in his mouth. Then he looked me in the eye and snapped its neck. I hired him on the spot."
The Spook is another of my Cat Rescue of Maryland cats from the adoption cage at the cat hospital. He was living under a construction trailer with the head of CROM took him in. She called him Pretty Boy, and her first thought when she saw him was "crossbred apple-head lavender-point Siamese." Crossed blue eyes are a common trait with part Siamese cats, and I assume lavender point refers to the softer of the two grays on him.
He's pretty shy and I'm not sure if he'd make a good ship's cat, but he's sweet natured and loooooooves having his head scratched. When I brought him home, he fit in just fine. He and Panda are pals. And Spook is even larger than Panda!
So those are the cats who have graced my pages during 2019. Do you enjoy pets in books? Cats and dogs are most common, but macaws and hedgehogs and others sometimes make appearances. Tell me your favorite book critters!
Mary Jo, sadly adding that her accountant never let declare her cats as office assistants so she could deduct their expenses.