Ace Varkey's Blog: Cat got my tongue, page 5

Why is a Cat like a Book: Take 5

Look at it this way: a book on a shelf is just a book until you open it up and read it. A cat on a shelf is just a cat until you interact with it. It's only after you make a connection that both book and cat can affect you.

I know that Kitty O gives me lots of pleasure, whether he purrs or not. And I can't tell you how many countless times I have looked up from a book I am reading to discover it is dark outside and yet when I started on the first page it was shortly after noon! I keep going back to the same pages that gave me pleasure, provided insights, comforted me, centered me. I go to Kitty O as well because he does the same thing, though in his case, he leaves his furs all over me!

I often wonder how people feel about my first mystery, "The Girl Who Went Missing." Did they find that time flew as they read it? Did they like the Mumbai setting or was it too different for them, the disparity augmented by Indian names? Did they find the topic, human trafficking, off putting? Or did they realize that I wanted to use a mystery in order to highlight the tragedy that is happening all around us, though hidden so that it is not in your face the way my book is?

We would all be lesser, I think, without books and cats. I can't claim to create a cat, and I hope that "The Girl Who Went Missing," along with the one I am working on now, "While The Children Slept," will give someone, somewhere, both pleasure and knowledge. Just like Kitty O gives me pleasure by curling up beside me, though the knowledge I always take from him is that I will never, every, truly get him. Vive la différence between cat and human! But I always say, Vive all books!

That Cat Who Thought He Was A Boy

No, not Kitty O, who is always and most definitely a cat. This would be Felix, a handsome black cat who had been abandoned in an alley. When he came into my friend's home, they assumed they were bringing in a cat. Turns out Felix thought otherwise. He grew very attached to the boy, Erik, so much so that Erik had to close his bedroom door to make sure Felix did not run away with pieces as he worked on a Lego set. Whenever Erik missed a piece, he would find it near Felix's food and water bowls. When Erik grew older and became interested in computer games, he would sometimes find Felix trying to work the controls. This is all true, by the way. And yet, of course, Felix is a cat, not a boy.

I was thinking of Felix because most days I know I am a writer. But there are many, many, many shaky days when I think, really? I can write? People will read me? Then I think of myself as The Writer Who Thought She Was A Fraud. It's difficult enough to write; to put yourself out there in the world for anyone to say anything about a book you spent so much time on; it's worse, though, when you think that all you have done is for naught. I'm in a funk right now, sure that I should have chosen something else to do with my time on this earth.

I wonder how Felix manages being a cat when he wants to be a boy. I need to stop feeling like a fraud so I can get back to writing. I can tell you this: it's the best feeling in the world to put words together on a computer screen. Much, much, better than trying to work the controls in order to play a computer game.

Fifty Shakes of Grey....Fur

Kitty O is still shedding, with furs here, there, everywhere. I find fluffs of grey in the oddest of places, and through it all, Kitty O is a figure of elegance and nonchalance.
I, on the other hand, am anything but. The second mystery! The second mystery! which, mysteriously, is still not finished. Sigh.
I recently met someone who knows EL James, writer of the Fifty Shades trilogy. To hear her tell of James's trajectory from fan fiction to multi multi multi millionaire makes me shake my own greying head of hair. What luck! For surely, success is a combination of talent and luck.
What made that particular series so popular? What exactly was it that drew people, in hordes, to buy the books? What fascination? I guess if I knew, I could try and figure out how to fix the second mystery so it, too, will fly to the ends of the earth.
But of course figuring out what can sell is itself a mystery.
So I slog on.....
Cleaning up the furs that fall from Kitty's large body, and cleaning up the prose of a mystery that I hope will, in the end, be just right: not too long, not too short, not too easy to solve, not so difficult that it will turn people off. In the pages I am reworking, Commissioner Oscar D'Costa is en route to Kolkata, hoping that this new tip will be the real tip he needs in order to find the missing children.

Here's the link for those of you who might want to read the first Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

The face that launched a thousand purrs.....

that would be Kitty O, during the many years he has, like Odysseus, found his home, not on Ithaca, but with me. I marvel at those purrs of his. First of all, he purrs seldom enough to make those sounds feel incredibly special. Second of all, if I recall correctly, no one knows how said purrs are produced and why. It's a mystery.
Which word, mystery, brings me to my novel, the one that I am still editing and fixing up so that the general public might like it when I finally self-publish it. Why do I write? It's a simple answer: because I love writing. Why mysteries? Because there is a certain splendor in laying out a problem and then solving it. In the book I am working on, two village children go missing. But it is only when a little English girl disappears that people begin to realize something bad is afoot. The village children could have gotten lost in the forest or died from a snake bite. But the English girl had been playing near her mother. It is she who sets the novel rolling.
I love being led up the wrong path when I read a mystery. I especially love getting to the end because it is so entirely satisfying. Sort of like cleaning a room. Or, if I were Kitty O, finding a sun spot and curling up in it and purring.
Here's the link for those of you who might want to read the first Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Ogden Nash, and a mish-mash from there.....

Ogden Nash aptly rhymed, "The cow is of the bovine ilk, one end is moo, the other milk."
What if the cat, and not a cow, had been his inspurration? Do you suppose he might have penned: "The cat is of the feline genus, both ends stink, the mouth and anus."
Ah, to be bookended by smells...the life of a cat.
To be bookended by books, the life of a writer.
I love the smell of books, the feel of the pages as I turn them, the thump after I have finished reading one.
I recently read a post on Facebook which went, "Ordinary people have TVs, extraordinary people have books."
I'm not sure I agree with the statement. I have shelves of books and yet I am ordinary.
What makes me odd-inary is that I love to see my cat among those books, to read said books with my cat curled up beside me, stinks and all.
It reminds me that nothing is perfect. Not a cat, and not a book. A piece of writing can always be improved upon. Yes, even Shakespeare can be made better. Another famous poet, TS Eliot, turned to Pound to improve his poem "The Wasteland."
I am still in the process of improving my novel. Let me tell you, it does not happen overnight. And let me warn you that the end result will not be perfect.
But I hope that whoever reads it, when it is finally published, will find enjoyment in the space between the faults, in the same way that I revel in the furs between the smells.

Aristophanes, the flea, and me...

Years ago I recall reading "The Clouds" by Aristophanes, a bitingly funny play. These days I remember bits and pieces, Socrates sitting in a basket that hangs above the actors and of course, the attempt to measure the jump of a flea.
As far as I can tell Kitty O would never dream of wanting to measure anything flea-related. Fleas are the bite of his life, especially as the world warms. As soon as I see him fussing here, there, everywhere on his body of furs, I know it is time for the dreaded application of the flea medicine. I'm not sure why he hates it so much because, like I keep reassuring him, it allows him to play the King of Cats up and down our street. But nonetheless, I have to open the flea medicine in another room, approach Kitty O with stealth, and then hope I can hold him till the deed is done.
That just happened this morning. And as he wriggled and protested, I thought how like the flea medicine is an editor. The medicine rids Kitty O of fleas, and the eye and intelligence of an editor rids the book of words and paragraphs that clog and impede the plot. Yes, I am still grooming the second mystery, much to my annoyance. I know that the edits will smooth out the novel, but like Kitty O, I, too, don't like having to go through them.
Did Aristophanes have an editor? Now there's a thought.
Kitty O is already out, ready to walk through a valley of fleas and not fear them. Soon I hope I will have finished my novel to my editor's satisfaction so that I can publish the book and see how it does in the valley of readers.
I did that once before, last year. Here's the link for those of you who might want to read the first Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Gloomy Day, Grooming Day

As I write this, I am not a happy camper. Why? Because I am editing the second mystery in my Commissioner Oscar D'Costa series and, well, it's not easy. I am now trying to create more tension, more false leads, for readers who are very smart, which is why I have to work extra hard. Sigh. Let me say it again, it's not easy. I have to rearrange sections, add new ones....sigh again.
So I took a break and tried to get happy. Which means I decided to hang out with Kitty O. Kitty O didn't move a whisker when I sat down beside him. He was busy grooming himself. There he sat, back legs splayed apart, head bent down, making sure that every fur on his stomach was arranged just so. He kept at it for minutes, then rearranged himself so he could do the same to another section of fur. This went on for half an hour.
Suddenly I thought of King Bruce, stuck in a cave (I tried getting to that cave once, but was told no-one went there these days), defeated, wondering what next to do. And then he saw a spider spinning a web. Every time the tide came in, the web fell apart. But the spider never gave up. And so King Bruce decided he would take a lesson from the spider and never give him. History was changed by the staying power of a spider.
Could Kitty O be my spider? After all, he was grooming his furs again and again and again without pause, without giving up, without being unhappy, or so it seemed to me.
I decided to do the same with my mystery. Go back to it, page by page, change, rearrange, add that missing tension, come up with false leads....my only hope is that the novel will turn out better for the changes. After all, Kitty O looks exactly the same after he has groomed himself. But perhaps that is because he is always...perfect.

Sometimes it takes four....not necessarily a village

One of my favorite cartoons shows a dog sitting at a table between a human and another dog. The caption reads: I always wanted my adopted mother to meet my birth mother. Those of us who count animals as part of our family know the feeling of being a parent to a four legged creature. I certainly feel that way about Kitty O. Kitty has two birth parents and two parents who do the job of raising him. In other words, it takes four, not necessarily a village.....
And so too a book. A writer writes the book, and sends it to an agent. Said agent reads it, and, in the best of worlds, sells it to a house where an editor will, in the very best of worlds, not make too many changes. Once it is published, the pr people and reviewers take over and in the bestest of all worlds, the reviews will be positive.
Thus when I see a book on a shelf, I think about the writer/birth parent and the agenteditor/adopted parent. It certainly took more than one to get that book on that shelf!
It reminds me of TS Eliot and "The Wasteland." Eliot sent his ms to Ezra Pound who edited it to the form we now read. But if you get the original version, you will see that Pound took out lots of wonderful bits. So much so that I once wondered who should get the real credit: Eliot or Pound?
As for Kitty, I get all the credit....unless he's been naughty.

Why is a cat like a book? Take 4

I was going out for a walk the other day and noticed Kitty O sitting right in front of my neighbor's house. He had found the one spot of sun and was etched, very gracefully, against the yellow wall, which showed off his grey furs to perfection. My neighbor's house had never looked this good, or so I thought.
And that is when it occurred to me that a cat is just like a book, for both dress up a house. Whenever I go to someone's house, I find myself seeking out a bookcase. It isn't so much what type of books they have; the fact that they have books at all tells me we are kindred spirits.
So too a cat. Whoever has a cat lets me know that we share a love of furry creatures, a good starting point for both a conversation and a relationship.
I'm not sure Kitty O will like being compared to a book. I can't ask him, and neither can I ask a book....(would this make it another way they are alike?)
I always try and sneak a cat into a book that I am writing. My next novel in the Commissioner Oscar D'Costa series, "While the Children Slept," has missing children, confusion as to why they are missing, a setting of beach and forest in the east of India, intrepid D'Costa ...and a cat, of course.

The Old Purr-tender

Clearly I am not speaking of James Francis Edwards, Prince of Wales, nicknamed the Old Pretender. I am speaking of my very own Prince of Cats, Kitty O, who pretends not to hear me when I call him home from the neighbor's garden, where he likes to stretch out on the hot cement a la Brigitte Bardot on the Riviera. And it's Bardot because wasn't she the original sex kitten?
Well, Kitty O has been 'fixed,' so there goes the sex allure, but he sure pretends to be the cat about town. He goes thither and yon, and only returns when he feels like it. I imagine him with some other creature, hearing my voice, and pretending that it's just some noise carried by the wind.
But as much as it annoys me, I have to confess that his pretending makes me realize we are very alike, for after all, I pretend like crazy when I write. I pretend I am this character, in that situation, I am sad, I am happy, all the time trying to give it a feeling of authenticity, just like Kitty O, who is in his moment at every moment, purring, purr-tending, or, very seldom actually listening, though he might very well be pretending to do that!
These days I am pretending that I am in a forest, living in a hut, looking up at a tree laden with mangoes. The make believe forest is where one of my characters lives, in this pretend world I am creating that I hope, very much, will feel real.
Here's to all pretenders, purr-tenders, old and young!