My New Cat Philosopher

I’ve written frequently about my various Himalayan cats, and the life lessons I’ve learned from them. (Just check out the “cats” tag for previous articles, if you’re interested.) While I was on my blogging break, my last Himalayan baby, Wendy, died of cancer.

I was a little afraid she might be my last pet for a long time. My poor hubby isn’t really into pets, but two cats came into our marriage and lived a LONG time, and then we ended up fostering Wendy. But fortunately, I’m married to a wonderful, unselfish man!

So about a week later, I ended up with Minerva Pearl (a.k.a. Mini, or Mini Pearl).

My mom has always had a colony of feral cats on her land, and when Wendy died, there was a litter of wild kittens out behind her house. They were probably ten or eleven weeks old. One evening I went out to my mother’s after work, and Dave was already there. He told me to go look on the back porch, and when I did, I found a cat carrier with a very scared tabby kitten inside. He had caught one of the ferals for me!

Like her predecessors, Mini is constantly providing me with spiritual lessons. For example—how did I end up with her instead of one of the other kittens? Because she was the one Dave managed to catch with a fishing net! None of them wanted to be caught. They all thought we humans were evil, just intent on hurting them or ruining their lives.

But now I compare her life to that of her litter mates—especially when I leave my mom’s house on a frigid winter night and know they’ll be sleeping outside, while Mini will most likely be snuggled in bed with me. She has constant attention, safety from predators, the best food and medicine, people to love her and play with her. Not to mention her own personal doorman who lets her out on the screen porch and into the house, back and forth, about a million times a day.

And yet, she fought it for all she was worth. Which, of course, makes me think about my total misunderstanding, so many times, of what God is trying to do in my life. I wonder how many times I’ve mistrusted Him, or thought my way was better—when I might have missed out on something wonderful because I was too afraid to go through that scary moment when He put his hand on me.

Mini isn’t quite two years old yet, so I’m sure she has a lot more to teach me. I’ll keep you posted!

Cat Imagination

I've come to the conclusion that not only do I have a runaway imagination, but so do my cats.

When I was a little girl, my family always had cats running around in the yard and the woods behind the house, mostly strays my mother took pity on. And of course they had babies. I often heard a mother cat coming back from a hunting trip and calling her kittens, so I know the sound. My cat Tegan lived for twenty years. She never had babies, but almost every night she would pick up one of her toys, carry it around in her mouth and make that mother cat noise. Some of my family said she was pretending the toy was her kitten. I always thought she was pretending it was some fearsome creature she had killed, and that she was calling her pretend babies to come see what she had brought them. Either way, the cat version of playing with dolls.

My current cat, Wendy, is just plain goofy. I've seen her suddenly glance at the ceiling and jump away, as though startled. Then she creeps back, staring upward the whole time. When I go to investigate, I find that all the commotion is about two tiny spots on the ceiling. Is she pretending they're tarantulas?

Wendy frequently gets excited over nothing. She can watch a ceiling fan for an hour, with her little head rotating the whole time. I've tried playing with her with bubbles and laser pointers--things normal cats do with their owners. But she becomes so hysterical that when the bubbles pop or the laser light disappears, she's beside herself. She cries, she searches, she paces. It's too upsetting for both of us.

Lately, she's gotten into shadow puppets. I never put pictures back on my bedroom wall after we painted, and for awhile I tried to figure out why she was sitting on the bed and staring at the blank wall. Then I realized that when I sit in bed and read, the shadows on that big expanse of wall are amazing. I started making shadow puppets for her. She's enthralled. She could watch for hours, although she eventually gets too intense about that, too. Sort of like the laser pointer. Sort of like me with a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

I wonder what's in her little mind while she's watching. But I figure her life is pretty boring, since she's a pampered house cat. Her meals are provided, she has a cushy bed and a warm house. I guess all of us need a little escapism, huh?

Endings and Beginnings

A few days ago, I mentioned that my feisty little cat Cera had gotten a bad diagnosis from the vet. Last Sunday, she passed away. Since she would have had her twentieth birthday in October, I suppose I couldn't have hoped for much more time with her. Plus, she wasn't herself at the end, and I know she didn't feel good, so I'm glad she didn't linger.

Still, when you lose a little animal friend that you've had that long, it's sort of like losing a part of your life. When I got her as a kitten, I was in my twenties. Now I'm...well, you can do the math. It's sort of like the thread linking me to those younger days just snapped.

I also just lost another animal in my life, a cat named Myman that I rescued a few years ago and asked my mother to keep at her house. He was an old kitty, too.

It's interesting, though, that some animal babies have come into my life just as I'm losing my old friends. Remember I told you about going to fetch the kittens that were dumped at my hairdresser's house? They're thriving and they're such a joy.

And then, there's a new panda cub that was born at ZooAtlanta on August 30. I'm so excited that our pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, have had not one but two babies during their stay in Atlanta. The zoo has a live Panda Cam where you can watch mother and baby. I always find it soothing to take a few minutes and watch that big furry mother cuddling that tiny, wiggly baby. Check it out if you have a moment.

Last, I still have Wendy, who seems to be going out of her way to comfort me. Or keep me occupied, anyway--for example, with games of Hide and Seek. I heard some muffled yowls a couple of days ago and spend awhile looking for her. Here's where I found her.

Never a dull moment!

A Sad Excuse

Wow. It's been a LONG time since I posted anything. I was going to sit down and do another one of those cutesie "Top Ten Excuses" lists for why I haven't blogged. And I do have several reasons, including extra evening shifts at work, the guest blogger who stood me up for the second time (yet swears she needs influencers!), an icky virus, etc., etc.

But I don't feel like making a cute list now. While I was laid up with the icky virus, I didn't give my cats as much attention as usual. Even so, it started to penetrate through my antihistamine-drugged consciousness that Cera wasn't her usual self. For one thing, she hadn't suggested tuna fish even once, and normally she demands tuna at least once a day. In fact, she hadn't poked her nose out of the guest room where she likes to snooze.

Then I started noticing other things. How painfully skinny she's gotten. How wobbly she is when she walks. In other words, she was displaying all the symptoms her sister did when she was 20--right before she died of kidney failure.

So, even though I was home on a sick day for myself, we went to the animal doctor for Cera. And he confirmed that her kidneys are shutting down and there's not much we can do. Fortunately, he didn't suggest I put her to sleep. At least not yet. He said to take her home and let her enjoy her life as long as she can, which could be a day or a couple of months.

So anyway, as Lemony Snicket would say, it's been a series of unfortunate events, and that last one has sort of blown me away.

When you're saying your prayers tonight, put in a word for Cera, if you will. Aside from that stubborn streak about groomers and medicine, she's been a wonderful little friend. On second thought, I probably need you to put in a good word for me even more!

The Great Kitten Caper

Is this a cutie or what?

She better be. I went through enough to get her yesterday.

Last week, my hairdresser told me that someone had dumped two tiny kittens at her house, and she couldn't keep them because her dog considered them squeaky toys, and her indoor cat would see them as rivals--something he absolutely doesn't tolerate.

My wonderful mother said she would take the two babies, a male and female. Dave and I were camping somewhat near my hairdresser's house. Well, nearer than we usually are, anyway. So I thought this would be an excellent time to pick them up. I plugged her address into my GPS to see if it knew where Traci lived. It swore that it did, and I trusted that confident GPS Lady voice of hers. And away we went.

A few minutes later, GPS Lady directed me to turn onto a dirt road. "Are you sure?" I asked her. She seemed pretty positive, so I turned. I drove down miles of red dirt road, seeing nothing on either side but woods and the occasional abandoned, falling-down house. I had no idea that dirt roads registered with satellites and GPS systems, but apparently they do. My GPS Lady seems to love them. She took me down about four of them to reach Traci's house and the kittens.

Or maybe GPS Lady just hates me. Traci sort of laughed when I told her how I came. It wasn't exactly the normal route. But that wasn't the worst of it. I just happened to see that GPS Lady actually directed me PAST Traci's house number, telling me that the house was another mile down the road. However, I got suspicious when the pavement petered out and a very narrow, muddy road led into the woods. I mean, wide, dirt roads are one thing. I tend to balk at logging trails. I called Traci and sure enough, GPS Lady was lying to me.

Why she wanted to take me into the woods I don't know. I think it was an ambush. Maybe she dislikes cats. Either way, I fetched the kittens back home to my mother, and they're definitely worth it. She was having fun this morning, watching them play.

Interestingly enough, I'm the one who got Traci her tom cat who won't tolerate rivals and started this whole mess. Back when he was younger, he needed a home, too. I guess what goes around comes around.

It's Traci's turn next!

Oh No, Not Again!

My brain is fried tonight. Dave and I just did our tax returns. So I don't think I'll be able to come up with anything particularly profound or inspiring to tell you. Instead, let's just have a little fun at my cats' expense.

Last week it was time to go to the groomer again. I have to have their hair cut once a year because it gets so matted. (Because they won't behave and let me comb them.) You may recall that last year, bad, bad Cera gave the groomers so much trouble that they only managed to shave half of her. Would you believe...

Yes, that's right! She did it again. No toenails clipped, no bath, just half of her hair cut off. Doesn't she look proud of herself?

She would almost look like one of those show dogs that prance around with bizarre, intricate hair-dos if hers were only symmetrical. I can't adequately show you how bad this looks in a flat photo, but on one side she's completely bald. On the other, her hair poofs out about halfway down.

Last year, I drew some profound insights from Cera's shenanigans. This year I don't have the heart. I will say, though, that if anyone illustrates perseverance, it's my Cera. She may only weigh eight pounds. There may be three or four hundred total pounds of groomers trying to hold her down--and those groomers may come from the dominant species on Planet Earth. But they give up before she does every time!

One last photo. This is Wendy--who is nicer and does give up:

If you want to see how she looked before, take a look at this post from December.

Maybe I understand why Cera fights the groomer, after all.

Wendy Picks a Winner!

I didn't intend for this to happen, but Wendy ended up picking the winner of Rotten Reviews & Rejections. I put the basket with the names on the floor and stirred them up with my hand. The sound of the rattling paper drew her like a dinner gong. I turned my back for a minute, looked back, and she was pulling out one slip of paper. I thought, what the heck? At least she's impartial!

And Wendy picked...Elizabeth Musser. Congratulations, Elizabeth! I'll get the book on its way to you.

By the way, you may notice in the above photo that Wendy appears to have lost most of her hair. Yes, it was time for the cats to go to the groomer again. That's a whole other story. Maybe more about that next week.

Have a great weekend, and thanks to everyone who entered the contest.

My Old Baby!

Today is my cat Cera's birthday. She is now 19 years old, which is a very respectable age for a cat.

Nineteen years is a long time in her owner's life, too. When she was born, I was a single girl in my twenties. Now my husband and I frequently discuss retirement plans.

In honor of Cera, I thought I would rerun one of my favorite posts from last spring--the affair of Cera and the terrible haircut (which still hasn't grown out properly, by the way.) Enjoy!

You're looking at a bad, bad girl.

Her name is Cera, and normally she's so sweet and meek that all the other cats bully her mercilessly. But just try to groom her, give her medicine, or basically make her do anything else she doesn't care for, and she turns into the Incredible Hulk.

I want to make it clear that Cera isn't a mean cat. She's just very fearful of, well, everything. So she tends to panic easily and make everything far worse than it should be. I've given up on keeping the mats out of her long fur. Brushing and grooming is a nightmare for both of us. So, once a year she has to go to the groomer to get her hair cut off.

At eighteen years old, Cera has a wide experience of groomers. None of them are particularly fond of her. Some have invited us never to come back. One refused to take her, period, just because she had heard of her from another groomer. At one grooming palace, they kept a database of their dangerous, biting clients. Cera was the only non-dog creature on their list.

So last week, it was time to make her yearly trek to the groomer for a haircut. When it came time for me to pick her up, I called to make sure she was ready. They hemmed and hawed a bit, then managed to tell me the awful truth. She was half done. Yes, that's right. They had shaved half of my poor cat and then given up in complete defeat. They say they're willing to try again on another day, but first she needs time to calm down. (So do they, I imagine.) So in the meantime, I have a half-shaved cat. I don't know if a picture can truly do this justice, but I'll try to give you an idea.

What's the point of my telling you all this--other than the sheer entertainment value? Well, I've often thought what a wonderful life Cera has--and yet, she makes her life miserable out of fear. If she'd let me brush her, she wouldn't have to go to the groomer at all. If she didn't fight the groomer, she wouldn't be faced with two trips instead of one. I often wish I could tell her all this so she would calm down. It's not that I'm trying to withhold information from her and make her suffer. She just can't understand my language. It's too complicated for her.

I often wonder if God doesn't think the same thoughts about me. Why do you make yourself so miserable, Robin? Haven't I always taken good care of you? You're making things so much harder on yourself by fighting my plan. And I'm sorry I can't explain all these strange happenings to you. But I just can't put it into a language you can understand. It's just too complicated for you.


Wow. I'm going to try to trust more. I don't want to end up like Cera.

Oh, What a Night!

Wendy checks the Perimeter...

And gives the "All Clear."

Last night was pretty wild at the Queen's household.

It all started as I sat in the chair next to my bed, looking at a catalog. My husband was already asleep, so I was using a small light on the nightstand, and the rest of the room was pretty dim. My cat Wendy started to stalk a small object on the floor near the doorway. I thought it was her catnip mouse, but I changed my mind when the object suddenly leaped away from her. I did some leaping about that time, myself.

Whatever it was had gone in the general direction of my quilt rack, so Wendy and I both crept in that direction. We pulled apart the layers of quilts and looked all over the place for that little critter, but we didn't find anything. Finally I told myself that it must have been a harmless cricket, even though that would have been the biggest dadgum cricket I had ever seen. Still, I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep.

I did just that, but sometime later a noise made me leap again. Something had squealed, or squeaked, or squawked. I have a hard time describing this noise, partly because I was trying to wake up as it happened. But I knew one thing right away. This was no cricket. I also knew it sounded like it was under the bed.

I asked my husband if he had heard the noise, and he said yes.

"So what was it?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"Oh, great. There's probably a mouse under the bed."

"Well if there is, Wendy will get it."

I don't want to cast any aspersions here, but Wendy is a house cat. She's never, to my knowledge, been outside. Stalking her catnip mouse is about as far as that goes. Still, I looked over at her, and she was giving it the old college try. She seemed to have zeroed in on something between the footstool and my purse--right next to my bed. I went for the light on the nightstand and discovered two tiny little eyes staring up at me. Since this was the same dim light I was using earlier, I was pretty freaked out for another second or two. Then I managed to see what I was looking at--one of those tiny, cute little green frogs.

Cute or no, Wendy was worried about her reputation and was about to go for him. I secretly suspect she wouldn't have accomplished much other than causing him to hop around the room, or back under the bed so we couldn't get to him. The process had already started when Dave deposited her in the hallway and shut the door while he caught the poor little frog and took him outside.

So anyway, I'm pretty tired today. Tonight I work until 10 p.m., and I need to leave my house at the crack of dawn tomorrow to start that long day of travel toward Dallas. So if you see me at the conference and I look pretty haggard, now you know why!

Cera slept through the whole thing, so I had to tell her about it.

Excuses and Promises

I think I have the Martian Death Flu. Okay, it's a cold, but yesterday at least, it felt like Martian Death Flu. That's why I didn't post anything since Friday. So much for Excuse #1.

I've been trying to figure out the rest of my excuses for why I haven't gotten much of anything done lately. Actually, I've been trying to figure out just what the heck I have been doing the past couple of weeks. The house and my laundry are dirty, so I obviously haven't been cleaning. Since Gilmore Girls and the Amazing Race ended, I don't watch TV. I have a stack of books I'm supposed to be reading, but that stack hasn't diminished. I'm more interested in the manuscript I'm working on lately, but somehow interest hasn't translated to producing many actual pages.

I think I've mostly been sitting in the vet's office. You remember Cera, the terror of groomers within a hundred-mile radius?

She developed an infection a couple of weeks ago, so off we went to the vet for our first visit. I mentioned to them, however, that she seemed to have a problem with antibiotics. Her problem is that she has no intention of taking them. If I do manage to get anything down her, she shows me! To put it delicately, within about 30 seconds she delivers it back to me--in a very unpleasant way. The vet told me we'd have to come back EVERY DAY for shots if I couldn't give her medicine at home. This vet's office, by the way, doesn't take appointments. And it's very popular, so you can count on a long wait every time.

Next day, however, we saw a different vet. He suggested I try some brand new pills they have, which are tasty and easy on the tummy. Cats love them. They gobble them up. I tried giving Cera one. I mixed it with tuna. I poured gravy on it. I stuck it inside a treat. She stared at me in disbelief and walked away. So much for tasty. Back we went for a shot.

Next time, the vet had his tech come in to demonstrate the use of something called a "pill pusher." He assured me if I learned to use this, I would be able to give Cera pills and stay home. Home! Finally I'd be able to sit at my laptop and create my Gothic ranch house (where the eyes of all portraits are covered with black tape). This happy dream lasted about 15 seconds. That's how long it took Cera to defeat the vet tech. She clenched her teeth, she snarled, she fought. But he was a professional. He actually got the pill to touch her tongue. At that point she began to foam at the mouth and writhe, like some Hollywood B-movie actor doing the poison scene from Romeo and Juliet. The vet just shook his head and told me to come back tomorrow for a shot. We've been seven times so far, and I have to go again this evening.

So Cera is excuse #2. There are lots more, like friends who needed a good cry on the phone, or developed scary medical problems and needed to talk. And then there's me just being lazy and inefficient. And did I mention the Martian Death Flu?

When I have posted, my messages haven't exactly been...deep. But I'm finished with excuses now. Here are the promises of the wonderful things coming up in the next couple of weeks.

• An interview with a writer I just discovered named Marlo Schalesky. On someone else's blog, she mentioned the ordeals of waiting and doubt she had been through while trying to have children and trying to publish her first book. I figured she would have plenty to say to this audience! So I contacted her and asked her to talk to us specifically about what God taught her during those times of waiting. Her experiences and her advice are so encouraging, and real faith boosters. We'll be reading Marlo's interview this Friday.


• Marlo also sent a devotional that I'll be posting. Guess what--it's about fires! Another big theme on this blog.


• I will share some thoughts I've had on why my own writing journey has been so long, and maybe a few pitfalls you can avoid.


• My teenage cousin will be reviewing Jenny Jones's new teen book called In Between, and we'll also have an interview with Jenny.
  
• I will share some insights about writing and faith that I got from reading a fabulous C.S. Lewis book called Surprised by Joy.

I will bring all of this to you and more. Just as soon as I get out of the vet's office.

An Update on My Poor Baby

Faithful visitors to the Queen will remember my former post about my poor, nervous cat Cera. The above picture shows what she's supposed to look like. Even at 18 years old, she's gorgeous--although in this photo you can tell she's getting matted and scruffy. Hence the story of her infamous trip to the groomer, which left her looking like this:



The groomers returned her to me half-shaved because they couldn't handle her. I promised an update, and I'm proud to say that on her second trip, the mission was accomplished. She doesn't exactly look good, but at least her hair is now even and smooth. Here's her new look:


You realize, of course, that she learned nothing from all this. She still won't let me brush her. As soon as her hair is an inch long, she'll be matted again. Back to the groomer we'll go--although possibly to a different one. This one did not specifically say we should never set foot in the place again, but she did not appear happy to see us this morning.



Cera has arthritis, and when I brought her home today, she seemed a little stiff and sore. Squirming to escape and taking swipes at people who were trying to help her no doubt took its toll. I watched her hobble around upstairs, first to the food dish, then her scratching pad, then her favorite sleeping spot. She was so happy to be home, she had to assure herself it was all real. And I was filled with compassion for her, and kept hugging her and petting her. This in spite of the fact that she caused me a great deal of aggravation, stress, and expense by being such an ornery little cuss to begin with.


So on the positive side, I thought--if I'm capable of loving her like that in spite of herself, if I can understand her lack of trust and forgive her for it, just think how great God's compassion must be toward me! And thank God for it. I'm afraid I'm pretty dense about repeating the same mistakes over and over myself, sometimes.

On a mundane side note, I wanted to mention that I probably won't post again for a few days. I'm going camping with my family from Thursday through Sunday. In fact, we're headed to a bluegrass festival near Waycross, Georgia. Have you heard about the horrible wildfires near the Okefenokee in south Georgia? Yep, that's where we're headed. What did I tell you about me and mistakes? Oh boy.

Contentment or Wimping Out?

I haven’t posted for a few days, mostly because my husband and I made a long trek to Mississippi to visit his relatives for Easter. It was a fun trip but exhausting (almost ten hours in the car yesterday). I started knitting an afghan on the way and got really caught up in that, so the time passed quickly.

I just started knitting in the past few months. I also am learning to make beaded jewelry and I took up quilting again, which I used to do years ago. Lately, much of my time and money is spent on one or the other of those pursuits.

I can’t figure out whether to be happy or disturbed about all this. When I was a kid, I wanted to dabble in everything. I wanted to play piano and guitar. Act in plays. Speak fluent Spanish. Sew gorgeous clothes. Knit, crochet, etc., etc. I eventually learned that if I really wanted to write—and that was my passion—I had to let most of those other pursuits go. Otherwise, I’d never get beyond the “dabbling” stage in writing, too.

So for many years, whenever I had a few leisure minutes, I was either writing or reading. I dreamed of a day when I could spend more time on my novels, and tried to find ways to squeeze a few more writing hours into my schedule.

My writing routine was interrupted when I went back to school for my master’s degree. For a couple of years, I accepted the fact that work, school, and family were all I could handle. I also developed a new habit of flipping through country decorating magazines because I could do that for five or ten minutes when my brain was otherwise exhausted. Maybe that’s what got me lusting after quilts and afghans and handmade goods. All I know is that, when I finally finished school about a year and a half ago, I wanted to write again. But I also wanted to create with my hands.

This weekend, as I watched that gorgeous afghan growing under my fingers (the yarn is beautiful even if my stitches aren’t), I realized something. For the first time in my life, I could be content without writing. I love my job, my husband and my home. I could very easily work and look forward to a long, relaxing evening with a quilting frame or a box of shiny glass beads. Maybe that creative urge could actually be fulfilled without—gasp!—building a world with words.

I don’t know whether to be happy or sad at this realization. On the one hand, I’ve sometimes worried that my writing is too much of an obsession. God doesn’t want us to hold onto anything too tightly—to want it more than we want him. So maybe it’s a good thing to know I could live quite well without ever becoming a great novelist, and that God would still fill my life with wonderful things.

On the other hand, what if my writing truly is a calling from God? I’ve gotten a lot of indications from him that seem to confirm that call. Do I possibly want to stop writing because it’s gotten too serious, too hard? After all, I used to play with writing the way I play now with knitting. Since I’ve gotten serious about writing as a profession, it frankly isn’t so much fun anymore. Sometimes it’s downright painful. Am I just wimping out, thinking about quitting right before I reap a harvest?

Hmm…I’ll keep you all informed. In the meantime, let me know what you think. By the way, the pictures are of my buddy, Wendy. She loves knitting, too.