Copperheads

Rives Park -- local here -- has a nest of copperheads. Some poor dog got bit and they're worried whether he'll make it or not.

Animal Control collected 3 baby copperheads, (Doesn't that sound endearing? Little baby copperheads.) but warned that there may be others. Animal Control is not for sissies.

Anyway,  I won't be walking Mandy there for the nonce.

Back in Saudi Arabia,
(relatively few  countries are named after people. America, Bolivia, Columbia, Monrovia, but not, y'know, Chad,)
we had a viper under one of the bushes in the housing next door. Very poisonous. It was the compound with all the kids, of course. One of the dogs spotted it and did the hysterical barking thing so nobody got bit.
Though, for all I know it was a peaceful committed pacifist snake minding its own business.

The gardeners had to go kill it, that being in the job description. Being a gardener in West Africa is one of those jobs with a lot of side benefits.

I'll be cowriting with friends in a bit so I will warn the one who lives next to Rives Park to be cautious.

Turn and Live With the Anmals

I'm drinking a cup of coffee before dawn and listening to my recently-booted furnace wheeze into life. 

When I get up in these transition days of spring and crawl out from under the warm covers of my bed and find myself shivering, sometimes I go close the window and turn on the furnace. 

Right now I'm thinking about that one small choice. First choice of the day.

It's not that I mind shivering as a matter of principle. There's no moral imperative to stay at 70° plus or minus 4. Discomfort usefully reminds us we're living beings, not enameled birds sitting on a golden bough.

Speaking as a responsible citizen of the commonwealth of the world, it makes a lot more sense to put on a sweater and warm up the 1.76 cubic feet (on average) of a human body than to heat the 17,000 cubic feet of the main floor and basement of a house. 

I like leaving the windows open because it makes me feel part of the natural world, at least that world as expressed by this well-groomed and almost-painfully-cozy small town neighborhood.
It's not precisely "Nature is red in tooth and claw" here -- unless you count the battle of the political yard signage -- but there's sky and bird song and green stuff growing. I can close my eyes and feel a little connected to the oncoming dawn.

I heat the place for the dog. 

She's getting old. She sleeps most of the time now, sitting on the sofa, tucked up close to me. The fur of her muzzle is white. When I take her to the dog park, she mostly sits and watches the other dogs chasing back and forth. When the house cools down over the night she curls up close and circular on her dog bed. 

I turn on the heat because I want to keep her warm.
Taking care of the dog is also part of the natural world.
Humans have been doing this a long time. 

Shepherdess me, six thousand years ago, would have crunched through the new snow to check out the spring lambs in the early dawn after a chilly night. My dog would be at my heels,or leading me to any particularly vulnerable creature who'd had problems in the dark hours.

When we sat down to share breakfast I'd check her paws and pick cockleburs out of her fur. Scratch her back and fluff her fur and comb her with my fingers. Talk to her as the sun comes up.

So this morning, that was how I communed with the Natural World even in my muffled-up, still and quiet, house.
Me and the dog, man. Me and the dog.

Good Deed for the Day

 Did my good deed for the day.

I saw on my local Next Door loop that somebody had spotted a lost rabbit near me.
White bunny with b ears.

"Ah. Poor Lost Bunny" thinks I to myself.

Then I saw a rabbit in my back yard that afternoon -- white with brown ears -- and I figured I had found the bunny.

It came to my attention as it ran in and out and around and under the storage shed at the bottom of the garden,
dodging  a pack of little kids who were trying to catch it with lettuce and carrots and what turned out upon closer examination to be a parsnip.

There were eight kids,
from age nine downward,
contributed by the neighbors on both sides.

By the time I got my shoes on and collected the cat carrier and went out
there were also two fathers, two mothers, and an abuela.

So I let everybody discuss the matter at length for forty minutes or so
while the rabbit hid in the gopher holes under the storage shed

Then it was time for dinner
and everybody got dragged home
promising to come catch the rabbit tomorrow
and I was left alone with the logomorph.

I  went to sit in the grass near the storage shed and wartched the trees.
After a bit,  the bunny came out.
It was really a tame little rabbit.

The bunny ate violets
and I sang Ella Fitzgerald songs to it
(Someone to Watch Over Me and Cry Me a River mostly..

Slooowly I inched  my butt closer
song by song.
The sun began to set.

SNAP! I grabbed it
and put it in the cat carrier.

I took it to the SPCA. I was messing about in the dark and trying to figure out how to get the little bunny transferred from the cat carrier to one of the cages they have there to receive lost animals after business hours ...
one last employee saw me and came to help and took the bunny off my hands.

I hope the owners come find it.

If not, it is so beautiful and friendly I just know someone will adopt it as soon as the six day waiting period is up.

It was a good day.

Interviews in which I reveal many secrets

I did three interviews recently. 

One at USA Today Happily Ever After ...

http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/2017/08/15/keira-soleore-beauty-like-the-night-joanna-bourne-interview/

with Keira Soleore

and one at All About Romance

https://allaboutromance.com/aar-interviews-marvelous-joanna-bourne/

with Dabney Grinnan.

And another one with Anne Gracie at Word Wenches. That one's at:

http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2017/08/beauty-like-the-night.html

I talk about the characters in the Spymaster Fictional Universe and what they're up to when they're not appearing in the books.

I say stuff like:

"He (Lazarus) gave up stealing women in 1812 after My Lord and Spymaster. You could say he’s reformed,"

"... as people of the future we know the British won. My characters don’t know that. The possibility of invasion and defeat is very real."

"When my agent went to publishers with Spymaster’s Lady and couldn’t sell it month after month, I’d take the dog for long walks, seeking out lonely, windswept paths around the suburbs, whimpering, “They were right. You can’t sell a story set in France,” and stuff like that there, rather than planning who should be the protagonist of book six."

so, since they are fascinating interviews, do go check them out.

In other news, 

This is not my turtle. This is someone else's rescue turtle.
I keep using wiki images, not having my own

I stopped this morning and picked up a box turtle that was about halfway across the Blue Ridge Parkway. I parked on the grass verge and picked it up. I carried it a mile or so south to a place that seemed better for its longevity.

Smallish box turtle. I don't know if that's the local breed or if it was a young and stupid turtle. No picture because I didn't think of it. I had not yet had my coffee.

My turtle ... shall we name it Helen ... had totally retreated into its shell and was sitting there in the middle of traffic. I dunnoh. Maybe it was trembling in fear. With turtles, it's hard to tell.

If I had cars whizzing past me I would curl up and do the same, but it is not a successful strategy when dealing with cars. This is a nature observation of wide applicability.

A dog story with, I hope, a happy ending

Very much like me except for the hat

Spent the morning with writer friends, being a good writer, working hard on the WIP. Got more than a thousand, nice, solid, first-draft words laid down. Good for me and back pats.

Boogied out of the cafe in early afternoon, bought groceries, picked up Indian carryout, and headed home in a leisurely manner, pleased with myself and the world because I'd done good work.

Take out food somewhat Like my own

Bout halfway home I looked at the scene ahead. Something was going on. Folks were slowing down. Cars were stopped on both sides of the road.

So I slowed down, came to where the source of the trouble was, pulled over. and stopped.

Ah ... There was a dog in the road, running back and forth across four lanes of traffic, not quite getting killed. Couple of folks were being futile but well-intentioned deploring this. And the dog was very unhappy and scared.

Not the dog, just asimilar dog

So I opened the back door to my car and leaned against it in a relaxed and reassuring manner and called him over. It's all about looking harmless.

Maybe he belonged to a woman. In any case, the dog came, and when I patted the seat and said, "Up," he jumped up, looking relieved, and I closed the door.

I had achieved lost, frightened, huge, many-toothed, put bull. "Yipee," thinks I.

So now I had this dog -- no collar -- in the car. An unhappy & scared dog, but one who would be inclined to trust me since I was making all the right moves. Obviously it was time for me to get in there too, behind the wheel, and concentrate on not smelling frightened.

Hoookay.


I have done this before, actually.
A couple few times.
Because I am not quite bright.

So I headed for my go-to ASPCA which is large and no-kill and one that I know how to get to. I had to drive twenty miles back in exactly the way I had come because karma is a bitch.

The dog took this all fairly calmly and scrunched his way around the front seat and back, walking over bags of groceries with which the car was plentifully supplied -- there go the tomatoes -- and obstructing my sight pretty thoroughly but he didn't bite me which I think was generous of him.

The Charlottesville SPCA

At the Shelter I put a collar and lead on the dog -- I don't carry a dog collar around with me -- and got him out of the car. We walked around the building. Slowly. Unthreateningly. The volunteers seemed reluctant to interact with him, but I figured he'd had plenty of chance to maul me if he wanted to.

Four or five of them, milling about in a pack, took him gingerly at the back door, I wasn't allowed to come into that part of the building so I couldn't see him all the way to his cage,

I will assume the volunteers know what they're doing so I did not call helpful advice after them, though perhaps I should have. Really, one calm person on the leash would have been preferable.

I had Indian food for dinner followed by the egg custard I made yesterday. Then I watched Time Team dig in a field.
A good day, especially if the pit bull's owner comes to find him again, or really -- from the pit bull's view of things -- a good day because he didn't get hit by a car.

He looked kinda like this dog above, but this is not him. I was doghandling instead of taking pictures so I don't have his picture.

Anticipating stuff

Me, embracing the chaotic

I don’t like to expect things. If you don’t go about anticipating wonderful things, you don’t get disappointed when they don’t actually happen.  If you accept that the world is inherently chaotic and slipshod, you can just shrug and say something fatalistic in the face of disaster and get on with the work of trying to fix stuff, which is one’s purpose in the world, or at least mine.

But today I am foolishly anticipating and hoping air conditioning will come to my little house in the hills next Tuesday. My fingers are crossed. Inside, I am wriggling like a happy puppy.

If we take "happy puppy" in a metaphoric sense.

Right now, in Real Life  — (the whole Real Life thing is much over-rated,) — it is still early morning, but the temperature in the house is edging up toward 90°. The relative humidity is that of two feet under the surface of the swimming pool at the Y.

Me, being warm

privileged cat

My cat is as unhappy as it is possible for a well-fed, well-brushed, pampered cat to be, which is to say pretty durned sullenly displeased, like Queen Victoria when some battle in the Sudan is not going well.

My dog — (I gotta say my dog  is very similar to me in temperament, except she is unfailingly brave and honest and also regularly tries to disembowel the UPS man, none of which three character traits I share) — endures, looking more and more unhappy as the summer progresses.

My computer simply refuses to work at 90°. Wise computer.

The nice people at the plumbing company have promised me air conditioning — (Why, you will ask is the plumbing company involved in this. I can only reply, “Small town.” This is a comment of wide applicability.) — for the last six weeks or so. 

In roughly 117 hours and six minutes the nice men from plumbing will show up in their white truck; the cat will vanish to some alternate Scandinavian dimension under the IKEA couch; the dog will abase herself adoring before the workmen as is her custom; and I will drink tea and try to make intelligent comments; the workmen save the stupidest of these to delight one another in the truck going home.

At some point, Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? one of these nice men will flip a switch and I will be cool. And dehumidified. My cat, dog, self and computer will be sooo happy.

Anyhow, that’s what I’m anticipating.

Visitors to the cabin

I'd been hearing this kinda fluttery banging for a bit, while I went type type type type and ignored it.

"What's that?" I thinks, not paying much attention to myself which is always a mistake.

And then a bird comes flying across the room which catches my wandering attention.

Being the brilliant person I am and skilled in the ways of the wild, (just call me Hawkeye,) I say "Durn it. A bird's got in," and schlep over to where the bird is battering itself against the window going flap flap flap in a frantic way and doing itself no good.

I stand for a moment mulling over stuff like "How do I get the window open without hurting the bird or scaring it off to go bang itself against other places" and "What kind of bird is that?"

I'm easing the window open when the dog trots up and grabs the bird and makes for the door. Which is open.

Very smooth move. Fast as the dickens that dog.

"Now I'll have to chase the dog down and take the bird away from it and I'll probably kill the bird in the process if the dog hasn't already," thinks I to myself, looking for my shoes.

Then back comes the dog. immediately, looking nonchalant. I mean, it was fifty seconds round trip. So either the dog dropped the bird, dead, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, or the dog dropped it not-yet-but-inevitably-soon-to-be-dead, or the bird got away or the dog let it go.

Mandy-the-dog has a good bit of hound in the general mix. Who knows what atavistic instincts rose up in her.
The dog was being soft-mouthed to the bird, it had seemed to me. I will hope for the best, bird-wise.

"Why do you do this to me?" I says to Mandy.

Then the other bird that had been flying around the house banged against a different window and brought itself to my attention. This was a two-bird incident, I realized. They come not as single scouts today.

This time I was not befuddled by having my mind in 1730s Paris and I reacted more quickly.

"Oh no, you don't," I said to the cat and lifted her bodily from my desk.

Desperate flapping continued against the window over my desk. This was a male goldfinch. Okay.
I went to the kitchen, took one of my kitchen towels from over the sink, softly softly catchee goldfinch went I, and chucked it out the door.

We are mostly winning in the catching birds sweepstakes today. I feel good, taking it all in all, though I am puzzled by two birds simultaneously deciding to try their luck indoors. It is not as if I get birds flapping around in here as an everyday event.

But anyway, do not assume that my life is dull just because I am living in the middle of all these trees. Lots of stuff

goes on here. Lots.

More on the writing life ... and dogs

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I want to let Mandy-the-Dog free to run about the woodland a-chasing of the deer

(hums, “My heart’s in the Highlands. My heart isn’t here.” )
and otherwise amusing herself when I go down into the valley to the coffeeshop where there is air conditioning and, well, coffee.

But if I leave the door open so she can get in and out, Mandy hears me start the car and takes off, even if she has been given a big plate of chopped chicken breast and should be wholly immersed in that. Mandy comes bounding after me with admirable speed and follows me all the way down hill, about a quarter mile and a bit, to the mailbox.

Bound, bound, bound goes Mandy, chasing after me.

I stop at the mailbox and put my head on the steering wheel and am pretty sure Jane Austen never had this problem.

Mandy will not get into the car with me. She has been there and done that and knows I am going

to drive her back and lock her up in the house. No fool, Mandy.

So I turn around at the mailbox and drive back to the cabin.

Bound, bound, bound goes Mandy, but this time uphill.

I lure her inside with tiny bitty dog treats which I hide among the sofa cushions and under the edge of the rug. She will find them, or I will, eventually. Thus I demonstrate the triumph of human cunning that has kept us one jump ahead of the canine community all these years.

I close the door behind me and drive off in the direction of coffee.

I need hardly say that the cat takes no part in this drama, demonstrating the feline cunning that has kept cats one jump ahead of both the human and the canine community all these years.

A Tale of Two Cups

The cup that underwent various adventures

It’s cool enough I’m wearing my sweatshirt when I go out. It’s athletic gray and says, “University of Gallifrey.” One of my geekdoms. I am nothing if not a loyal fan of Time Trvellers.

I was out yesterday taking the dog to the professional dogwash, which is extravagant of me but I do it every six weeks or so because they cut her nails so I don’t have to. Both Mandy and I are happy about this. There’s also something called anal glands of which we will not speak.

Anyway.

When I drove back home and I was turning into my gravel road I hit the breaks because there was a small pottery tea cup on the ground in the middle of the swale that cuts across my path home. It was sitting there ready to be a little bump in my path and get crushed.

I will tell you about the cup.

The cup is one of a pair.

Several years ago I was looking at cups on Etsy since I have a continuing interest in handmade pottery. This cup

This is the sister cup that got broken in transit, long ago

was so beautiful I immediately bought it and another cup and a little bowl all from the same artist. I was filled with
quiet joy at the prospect of holding them in my hands and owning them for a while, as much as one can own art.

When they arrived, one cup was broken. There’s a picture of it below. The broken one. It was even lovely in destruction. The other was fine and the bowl also. I’ve used them and loved them for several years now.
I had been drinking tea out of that cup in the cool morning. I carried it out to the car with me, thinking I’d finish the tea and set the cup on the stone walkway till I got beck -- something I do from time to time when I’m walking in the woods.

I set it on the hood of the car while I bundled the dog into the backseat and put my knapsack into the front seat and walked around the car.

Then I drove off.

I didn’t notice the cup on the hood of the car all the long way down the gravel road. When I turned to go down the hill it evidently gave up clinging to the car hood and tipped down onto the ground.

Thump.
And landed unhurt.
And waited for me to return.
I do not deserve the good luck that befalls me, but I’m grateful for it.

The dooryard in the Mountains

Not my cat, Not my butterfly, alas

I look out over the dooryard, which is an exercise in ragged untidiness.

The more or less trimmed off area runs downhill steeply away from the cabin maybe fifty or sixty feet. It’s full of rocks sticking up out of the ground because that’s how we roll here on top of my little mountain. It’s a mix of ground mint and mosses and herbs. Some grass. There are usually flowers in there if you look close enough. Today it's violets and horehound and some blue stuff. The daisies are opening.

We have butterflies, beautiful in colors and in the lightness of flight. Some of them don’t seem to care where they’re going. Some are making straight progress to one special tree or clump of borage. Who knows what motivates a butterfly?

Butterflies are an example of things best not examined too closely.

Here is a generic butterfly and cat. All my own pictures of butterflies have people in them.

The Bear and I

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Friday, about midday, I was sitting in my big comfy chair, writing. Pretty much immersed in Paris in 1730. I looked up and saw a big black bear leaned up against the sliding glass door.

I thought “ACCCK”

In case you were wondering what people think when something unexpected and not noticeably benign happens to them, that is what comes to their mind. You have my permission to quote this in your own writing as it is a useful thing to know.

After I thought “ACCK!” I thought “I should take a picture of this.”

Really. That’s what I thought.

While I thought all this the bear continued to peer into the house and rattle the sliding door in a semithreatening sorta way.

I will mention that the sliding glass door is usually pushed back to just the screen at this time of year.  This screen does not form much of a barrier. In fact, there’s a huge hole in it where Mandy-the-dog charged through to get at a possum. If it had not been a little chilly and the glass door closed I would have been confronting a bear more intimately at that moment so let us all take a moment to thank  the weather.

Anyhow, the sequence of events so far was a mental “ACCCK!” and a mental “I should take a picture of this.” Then I thought, “The camera is on the other side of the room and I will have to walk directly past the bear to get to the camera.”

I dismissed the thought of taking a picture which is why I am not a photojournalist. I have never before asked myself why I am not a photojournalist but now I know.

I have spent many a night sleeping soundly, secure in the knowledge that my trusty hound Mandy will let me know if anyone invades the house.  After all, she barks at every squirrel jumping from tree to tree and announced the arrival of the UPS man with hysterical abandon. 

About a half minute into what I will call ‘The Bear Incident’, my faithful dog was still sleeping,

curled up on the rug, three feet from where a moderately large, (OK, pretty damn big) bear that was thumping on the glass.

Snore, snore goes Mandy.

Obviously I have been living in a fool’s paradise when it comes to dog-protected sleep.

So I now worried that the dog would get eaten when the bear breaks into the cabin. I might, you will argue,  have been better worried about getting mauled by the bear myself and there is much to be said for this point of view. Nonetheless, I am reporting events and I will admit I did not think about that. I just worried about the dog.

Basically I am low-hanging fruit for bears.

“Urlp,” I said, not being eloquent.

Mandy woke up, took one look at the bear, and ran for the front door,  

which I had left open

to let the breeze in.

I had forgotten about that.

In my defense, I couldn’t have made it to the door before the dog got there anyway. She’s fast.

The bear took off.

Mandy took off.

I ran for the back porch to see what was going on which I could see anyhow, only the thrashing of undergrowth as they passed.

Round about a quarter of a mile downhill where the edge drops off sharply

 the dog started baking.

So I leaned over the railing, yelling, “Mandy! Come!” over and over again.   

Which she, naturally did not.

Bark bark bark etc.

But no screams of mortally injured dog.

I did not go down and try to chase the bear off  because they were moving really fast and it is all overgrown and difficult terrain and I am not a total idiot.

Ten minutes of barking.

Silence.

Eventually Mandy returned, unhurt, prancing, looking very proud of herself.

I gave her the leftover from my Mexican takeout as a reward.

If I were writing this, Mandy would be the pro-active female protagonist and I would be ineffectual sidekick.

Checking in

We're coming to the end of summer here. Lots of birdcall in the woods and the cicadas are making a racket all night long.

Not so much in my garden. A few baby lettuces. The rest is flowers. I took very poor care of my growing things so they look scraggly and neglected.

I'm drinking coffee and watching my hummingbirds. There are three of them at least. Maybe more. I have no idea why they live up here in the woods.

Soon I'll get to work.

What the Animals Got for Christmas

I don't forget the animals at Christmas. They may not know what's going on, but they know it involves food.

If I left them out of the festivities, the dog would gaze at me sadly, wondering how she'd failed me. What she'd done wrong.
The cat would stomp over and bite my ankles.

So they both got finely chopped chicken served to them in a lordly dish with much crooning and praise.

Up there's the cat in her accustomed cat-coma, sleeping off Christmas dinner, cat version.
I didn't buy her any toys. She turns her nose up at toys.

And to the right here is the dog, slightly more alert than the feline. Note the new squeaky toy. It's blue. It has eyes. And spots. And three (count 'em three!!) air bladders inside, each squeaking at a different note. The dog has a high old time playing tunes on it.

Outside is the accustomed tribute for the birds. Sunflower seeds. Only the best for my feathered friends.

The dog is grateful.
The cat, as usual, accepts my tribute.
Who knows what birds feel?

The Animals in Our Lives

Joanna here, talking about some of the animals who share my world.

I moved up to the mountains not so very long ago and, in the fullness of time, spring came tripping over the threshold.  Along about April I generally fill the hummingbird feeder and mount it on a pole.

Less appealing than Australian possums

This year I figgered it was kinda useless trying to attract hummingbirds.  I'm fairly high up.


But I'm a dreamer so I set out the nectar.

I called them and they came.  Beautiful humming birds were weaving back and forth in the air a half hour after I offered them a place to feed.
Lovely colors.  So magical.  So amazing.

Then there's my possum. 
He doesn't show up as much since I stopped waking up in the morning, shivering, stoking the woodstove, and opening the door to scatter two handfuls of seed out across the top of the snow for the birds up here.
All this before I got a cup of coffee.

There are those who advocate arising with the dawn and sitting down at the computer while the trailing mists of dreams still linger in the mind.  Somehow I never seem to manage this.


Other Word Wenches talk about the animals in their lives here.

Doing the Writerly Thing

Nothing too exciting to write about, but the mood struck me anyhow. 

Worked a little in the morning at the cafe.

Creative barista is creative

Yeah! Booksigning!!

The posters for the March booksigning have been handed over to the out-of-town folks by my most excellent friend Mary Ann.




I sorted the animals. 
What, doesn't everyone have huge pet beds in the living room?

Sorted animals

They promised us snow, but it never materialized.  We do however have ferocious winds and cold.  22 degrees (minus 5 for you folks who think in Celsius.)  I have stacked up the firewood for a long evening.

I am not writing on the Pax manuscript just at the moment.  I'm trying to understand the next contract.  Eventually I will give up and just sign the thing.

I'm going to go back and move the first Pax/Camille dialog into her viewpoint and out of Pax's.  This is not just a 'When all else fails, try changing the viewpoint' kinda thing.  There's probably some reasoning behind it. 

This whole first third of the manuscript is just a plotting mess.  

My Earthquake

And the earthquake . . .

We are 30 miles from the epicenter, so we got the full surround-sound experience.

The house shook quite a bit.  You could hear this thing.  A deep rumbling noise.  The feeling was rather like being on a train going over rough track and swaying some.  Stuff jittered and moved.

I took a second or two trying to decide whether this was an earthquake, (get outside) or a nuclear strike on Washington,(duck and cover,)  decided on earthquake and yelled for the kids (my own and five friends)  to get out.

They were all -- 'Get in a doorway' -- which was good enough practice as that went, but this seemed to be a long rumbly one rather than a 'house coming down around us right now' one, so I got them outdoors.
I was so proud of them for being knowledgeable and wise.

It lasted a while.  I think I could have recited the whole Gettysburg Address if I had kept up a fast clip.

This is my -- I had to think about this a while -- third good shaker of a quake and my fifth quake if you count a couple little bitty tremors.  And it's in Virginia.  I didn't feel any quakes when I lived in California.
 Go figger.

I didn't even have stuff shake off the shelves.  This is in part because I do not have shelves full of breakable stuff.  I have books. The TV slid across the old wood chest I keep it on but did not fall over and break, which is a pity since it is the TV-that-will-not-die and dates from the Seventies and has tubes in it.

My friend who owns an antique shop just about ground zero says a lot of little brickabrack suicided.

The DH  was outside working on the motorcycle.  The shaking made it hard for him to keep his footing.  He said the walls of the house moved and flexed in an interesting manner.

 I have not been down to look at the foundation or checked the chimney.  These will no doubt tell us if they are no longer tight in their own good time by (a) flooding or (b) setting the house on fire.  

The epicenter is 8 miles from the North Anna nuclear power plant.  I am assured there is no important structural damage.
This removes all nervousness.  The government would not lie to me.


I did not feel a sense of foreboding and would have been of no use whatsoever to my primitive tribe in warning them of impending danger.
I did feel rather odd afterwards.
But then, one would.  I wasn't scared, but my chest felt tight and my stomach was unsettled.
You cannot possibly be interested in the details.  Really. 

The animals did not act oddly beforehand.
They are obviously less sensitive than Chinese chickens.
I have long suspected this.

The cat was deeply distressed, however, when it struck and went streaking out of the house to jump around in the leaves out back, scared of the way the ground was acting.

The dog slept through it.

We've had a few little aftershocks.

My cat

Having spent all yesterday looking into Regency cats, I will now post pictures of me and my cat. 

My inspiration is a link the Most Excellent Annie contributed.

http://writersandkitties.tumblr.com/

The Regency Cat

Talking about the cats of Regency England.  

What kind of cats can our characters expect to encounter as they go about their adventures?
Lots of cats, for one thing.
While Englishmen may love their dogs, the English householder hated his mice and depended on cats to get rid of them.  Defoe talks of forty thousand cats in London in the mid-1600s.  "Few Houses being without a Cat, and some having several, and sometimes five or six in a House."

 These London cats were working cats --
rangy, businesslike mousers and ratters.  I see them dozing the day away in the kitchen, then rising in the night, roaming the house to do battle with vermin, meeting the enemy behind the plush curtains of the drawing room and down behind the sofas in the parlor.  All the while, the gentlefolk snored in their beds. 

But there were pampered, plump cats as well.  We find them in paintings, batting at a soap bubble, peering into a fishbowl. 

For the rest of the article -- including the breeds of cats you'd see in Regency London, see here

Writers and Cats

My cat, (and me,) making a guest appearance in today's blog post at 'Isn't it Romanctic?'

I'm about halfway down the page, my cat appearing with the cats of such greats as Mary Jo Putney, Anne Stuart and Theresa Meideros.

We meet Hemingway's cat.  There's also a beautiful screen shot from Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

I do not know what it is about writers and cats. They just seem to go together.
Is it because cats are graceful and restful? Because they are quiet and do not disturb the writer while she is working? Or is it that they seem to expect so much from us? I don't dare stop working early when I'm under my cat's eye.
. . . 





For the rest . . . see here.  I'm way down the page . . . and . . . ok . . . it's in Italian mostly.  But the cats are fascinating.

Boxsitting

Boxsitting

Joanna here, pondering that puzzling phenomenon of the holiday season -- boxsitting.
The affinity of cats for boxes remains one of the great evolutionary mysteries.  What possible competitive advantage does a small predator gain from fitting into a box? 

Science is baffled.

and we continue  here . . .