Ace Varkey's Blog: Cat got my tongue, page 4

A Library of Cats.....

Many, many, years ago, I recall someone getting over a heartbreak by reading Edna St. Vincent Millay. Then there's this friend who rereads Barbara Cartland anytime something untoward happens. Why? Because Cartland creates a world where everything works out on the final pages and because that world, having been read so often, is completely familiar. The Millay reader just wanted to know that love, too, works out in the end, no matter the pain on the road to said love.
Then I know people who reach for their cats when all feels lost. Yes, cats, not dogs, because these are cat people. Cats, they claim, calm them. Cats curl up beside them and purr. Cats make them feel better. Cats also force them to keep going because they have to feed the cat, clean the litter box, etc etc etc a la "The King and I"....
How I wish I could reach for either a library of books or a library of cats as I struggle with this book I am trying to write. The characters slip away, a la Kitty O when he is not in the mood to be petted. The words won't come, a la Kitty O when I call him and he would rather stay outside.
Am I doomed? I sure hope not. I will keep trying, like the Millay reader who believed that despite the copious tears, true love waited at the end of the road. I hope my words will come so I can shape characters who will then shape the plot.
Meanwhile, Kitty O has, on occasion, stretched out beside me, purring. I think he knows I need the base sound of that purr as I try and make sense of the muddle in my head.
For those of you who are still reading and want to read my first mystery, you will find "The Girl Who Went Missing" on Goodreads and Amazon.

A room of one's own; a mind of one's own

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that a woman writer needs a room of her own. She said that at a time when the inequality between the sexes was far more than it is now. In a fair world, all writers, male or female, need a room to write it. I have such a room, and for that I am most grateful.
It goes without saying that all writers need a mind of their own, for how else can one create novels, and here think of the etymology of the word novel, as in something fresh, new. I like to think I have such a mind, at least, most of the time.
So here I am, writing away, in my own room, when suddenly one character develops a mind of his own! I know Tolstoy said that, but I'm no Tolstoy. I'm just a writer who, at this moment, in my own room, am trying to force my character to be lighthearted, funny, the type of chap who never loses his cool, but he just refuses to form under my typing fingers. And as I'm getting more and more frustrated, I suddenly think, that's just like Kitty O! He certainly has a mind of his own, so much so that it's a miracle any time he actually turns when I call his name!
I'm not sure what to do about this character. I'm trying to get into his skin, I'm trying to get him to be biddable, but so far, no luck.
I might as well take a lesson from Kitty O. When Kitty O refuses to hear me, I let him be. I guess I should do the same with this very intransigent character. I'll let him take his own shape and hope that he will turn out to be as lovable as Kitty O.
If you are still reading this, and want to read other characters I wrote into novels, check out my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing." You will find that missing girl is on Goodreads and Amazon!

Writers and Cats

T.S.Eliot clearly loved cats. He wrote an entire book of whimsical poems about them. Hemingway had cats with six claws, as if five were not enough. The list of writers who have feline connections is long and varied.
I never thought to wonder why, until the other day when something struck me. I was talking to Kitty O, who, as usual, did not deign to answer. He twitched a ear, as if to say that my voice, never mind my words, was offensive. Then he put his head back on the carpet and proceeded to snore.
I felt as if I were talking to myself.
Which is exactly how I feel when I write. I'm sitting at the computer, making up entire dialogues, setting up the scene, all by myself and to myself.
There is always the hope that the book will talk back, though it never does, of course. The fact that certain parts read wrong and need to be fixed is not 'talking,' in the same way that Kitty O occasionally meowing doesn't mean we are having a conversation.
A book, for a writer, is a monologue.
A chat with le chat is also a monologue.
Both frustrate and delight, though one never knows which way it will go.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Rubens "R" Us

It's blisteringly hot here and Kitty O likes to stretch on the cool floor, his capacious belly arching out, pink nipples exposed for all to see. As I sat down beside him, I thought that Peter Paul Rubens would enjoy painting such a blatant display of voluptuousness. Kitty O is grey, but he's also got nuances of yellow, white, and of course, the pale pink underside.
But these are the days of svelte Hollywood, not Rubens time of fleshy curves, and so I doubt that anyone would want to feature Kitty O. He could, in a pinch, be used as a 'before' in a 'before and after' diet advertisement.
You see, Kitty O is not fashionable, he does not fit the times.
Writers, too, are either fashionable or out of their times. Vampires are in, and have been for a while. Cozy mysteries are hot. The list goes on. I don't know if other writers think about such things when they decide on a book. I certainly did not. I never thought, "Is India a hot destination to write about?" "Will people accept an Indian detective?"
I suppose the trick, in the end, is to be oneself. I can't write a mystery set in Sweden because I've never been there. I call the chap taking my blood during a routine physical a vampire. I certainly can't write about vampires.
So Kitty O and I will blunder on, he, eating and lolling about, I, typing and thinking of the next mystery in my Commissioner Oscar D'Costa series.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Persuasion, Purr-suasion

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a young cat asleep on your chair must not be moved. Have you ever tried getting a cat to do something in a timely fashion? I used to think the trick was to gently persuade, but alas, that never worked. Kitty O would snore on, occasionally twitching his tail to let me know 'Yes, I hear you, but no, you are not persuading me off your chair.'

Just yesterday, he was stretched out right in the middle of a doorway. I had to step around him, of course. No persuading him to take his grey furs elsewhere.

Ah, the doorways of my life as a writer. It seems to me I am always trying to get to the next room. It's either the next book (which I am hoping to put out in August, entitled "While the children slept") or the next blogger/reviewer to contact for the book I published last year, "The girl who went missing." And so often, there is something preventing me from stepping easily across the threshold. Either I have writer's block, or the blogger won't accept a self-published novel, or the reviewer has a very long TBR list, or I have no idea at all how to use social media.

Then I wish I could turn into Kitty O, who uses purr-suasion to get his way. He will rub against my legs, purring madly, until I bend down and pet him just so, or put more food in his bowl....the list is endless.

We writers are meant to persuade readers with our words. I so wish I knew how to make my PR attempts work, the way Kitty O's purrs work immediately. But, just like a book takes a long time to write, persuading others to read it by getting the word out, in this new age of net working, takes time as well.

Or so I persuade myself.

Pride and Prejudice

Kitty O, being a cat, belongs to a pride. And since he lives with us, he is the pride of the house. Some might think us prejudiced, but he truly is the pride of this pride of humans. Kitty O's sense of belonging, his pride at being part of a pride, if you will, shows up in other ways as well. Two days ago he got into a fight because he was protecting his, our, turf.
As a writer, I have an entirely different type of pride. It's not that I'm 'proud' of being a writer; it's that my pride in what I have written gets tested when it comes time to editing my novel. Which just happened. An outside voice will poke and prod, suggest changes, challenge sentiments, and I have to put aside whatever pride of writership I have in order to better the manuscript. I go through paroxysms of "Is this section really not good enough as is?" and "It truly isn't obvious?" I'm not quite like Kitty O, whose fur stands on end when another cat enters the back yard. After all, I have invited someone to comment on my novel, and yet...and yet. It's sure ain't easy.
So right now, poor Kitty O has a gash on his side, and a small patch of fur is continually ruffled. I, on the other paw, have wrestled with pages of recommendations and, putting aside both pride and prejudice, have taken those that spoke to me, and ignored the ones that don't sound right.
Purrtection, protection, purrfection, perfection....where the right word rules.

It's a jungle out there

That's what I often tell Kitty O when he wants to go out late at night. On the one hand, I love the whimsical thought that he clearly has a date because he has taken great care to clean his grey coat. On the other hand, I worry that he won't be able to protect himself, despite having fabulous claws. A good friend of mine recently lost her cat to a coyote. And years ago, while I was driving to meet someone for an early morning walk, I saw a coyote with a kitten dangling from its mouth. So you see, I do worry about Kitty O, who is catered to by everyone in the house. Will he be able to take care of himself in the outside world? Just to make it even on the nights I don't let him out, I assure him that I, too, face a jungle.
I am a writer who releases a novel to the world that I can't see, but I can clearly hear. Will the critics savage my book? Will the readers loathe it? And these days, with everyone on a computer, and Facebook, Goodreads, and other venues available at one click, the jungle is even more frightening. I know writers who track their sales first thing in the morning. I know others who do something to promote their novel every single day. They all ll hope that the bits they do will get them good bites, not savage ones.
Kitty O is oblivious to such things; he could not care less about his jungle or mine. He scratches at the door some, then curls up next to the computer, softly snoring, while I keep plugging away, making that path through the jungle that I hope will be kind to me.

Scents and Sensibility; Cents and Sensibility

Kitty O has a great sense for scents. If there are dark grey clouds in the sky he will pause at the door and put his nose in the air to test for rain.If he stays indoors, I know better than to go out without an umbrella. When I return from hiking in the hills, he immediately checks out the new aromas my shoes have brought in, pausing at any errant leaf that is stuck to the sole. And of course, never forget that he, with great delicacy, sniffs his feces and then covers it until there is no offending smell to be found. He has great sensibility that way.
As his human, entrusted with his well-being, I am sensible that I need to take care of him. It requires cents, for sure, given that he requires special food that is, naturally, far more expensive than ordinary fare, given that he is no ordinary cat.
But I am not just talking about taking care of Kitty O. In order to make sure he is Kitty O-kay, I also have to take care of myself; and there is where the real cents come in. Making a living as a writer? Does that make any sense? Does it make any cents? More cents than dollars, that's for sure. But it is my sensibility, my calling, as it were, to write, in the same way that smelling things, to a degree, is Kitty O's thing to do.
And so we both carry on, scents for cents, each living out our sensibility. Kitty O marches around and makes order of his world, one sniff at a time. I do the same with mine, one word at a time.
Here's the link for those of you who might want to read the first Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery (The second one is words away from being finished.)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Cat in the Heat; Author not Beat

It's been a blistering few days, with the mint leaves frying in the hot sun, the plant dead in the pot. Yes, that is how hot it has been. Poor Kitty O. He wants to roam the great outdoors, he wants to lie under the shade of the pomegranate tree, he wants to nestle next to the tomato plants. And so he meows to be let out. He does not let the elements dictate his moves. He must have some inner mechanism that allows him to deal with the heat. I know that dogs hang their tongues out; Kitty O is too private to share such information with me.
But I do marvel at him. I can hide out from the heat by turning on the AC. It is more difficult to hide out from the heat of the agent, the editor, the readers. It's when I hear not so nice things about my novel that I find myself almost catatonic. One reviewer of "The Girl Who Went Missing" wrote that he could not put down the book but that it wasn't very good. I usually can't put down a good book. I pondered his comment for days and days, in a daze.
But -- back to the heat of the moment and the heat of the comments that swirl around me. I need, yet again, to learn from Kitty O to go with the flow, to step into whatever is out there and keep walking.
So today, while Kitty O skulks under the lemon tree, I will hunch over my computer, putting the finishing touches to my second mystery, "While the Children Slept."

Oh, but cats do inspire!

I have never seen the musical "Cats," but I have read "The Old Possum Book of Practical Cats." Eliot sure enjoyed playing with cats on the page; even their names are amusing. Did he conjure up Macavity while at the dentist, I wonder?
Another favorite is "The Owl and the Pussycat." It's so whimsical. I, for one, would never have thought to pair a cat with an owl. We don't have owls in our backyard. We do, however, have a big old possum and it always amuses me to think of Kitty O off on a date with said possum, during which they discuss Eliot's rhymes.
And of course, there is the Cheshire Cat. I used to be quite frightened of Tenniel's drawing when I was young. A cat with a smile? A smile without a cat? It perplexed my brain, though when I grew up, I adored the fantasy.
Given my great love for cats, I should have put a cat in my first book, "The Girl Who Went Missing." But I thought of that AFTER I published it. Cats are characters, so of course a cat could be a character. I suppose I should rectify that with my second work-in-progress mystery, "While the Children Slept."
Kitty O will be pleased to know that a fellow brethren will grace the pages that keep me from his beck and call. But I will have to be careful how I portray the cat. I can't, for example, have a cat that wishes to be petted while eating. Kitty O being Kitty O, puts the test on Aristotle's famous dictum, "Drama is more probable than history." In Kitty O's case, history renders the fiction improbable!
And cat or no cat, I should go back to Aristotle and keep writing my mystery that has a beginning, a middle and an end, and somewhere in those pages, a cat for the ages.