Kitty the Lionhearted (She had me at meow)

I’ve always considered myself a “dog” person, and never been one to pay much attention to cats. Not that I don’t like them, but sometime during my thirteenth year, while cuddling a newborn kitten against my cheek, my eyes grew itchy, swelled shut, and I could not breathe through my nose.

This one incident didn’t deter me from loving-up on furry felines, but a second, that included itchy eyes and ears, and a trail of welts from a claw puncture, forced me to accept the fact that I had an allergy. So, from this point forward, I simply ignored all cats, which at times could be a problem in itself.

I’ve read that most cats show affection on their own terms, and I agree. I’ve seen a feline run from a pursuer wishing to shower them with kisses and hugs, and instead, seek out with curiosity a person who want’s nothing to do with them and their dander, namely me. In fact, many a cat has hopped in my unwilling lap, only for me to hide my hands behind my back and call the owners to help remove them, while they stare at me in the eyes, their noses inches from mine.

With solid medical reason, I have spent decades avoiding cats at all costs, that is until I met Kitty the Lionhearted. She came into my life, feral, and somewhere between five and seven weeks old, after popping out of the bushes as I rounded my house, causing me to let out a loud scream. This tiny being stood in my path and did not run away like a typical feral would, or should when confronted by a hysterical giant, but simply stared at me and meowed a hello. I was agasp.

I got an idea to feed her, thinking she would trot off into the wild with a full stomach never to return again, and my problem would be solved. I would not have to call animal control. 

I know, I know, don’t judge. 

So, I went inside, opened a can of albacore tuna and made her a plate. She woofed it down so fast, I added water to it fearing she would choke.

However, Kitty didn’t eat and run, instead she followed me around the yard, charging from behind, running in and out of my legs. She adopted me. I was now her mother.  

 

When I tried to go into my house, she attempted to dart in behind me, despite the fact my two Carin Terriers were yelling loudly at her from inside. Then heartbreakingly, I found out later from viewing my Nest doorbell cam history, she had mewed outside my door till she fell asleep on my porch. 

The next day when I tried to leave in my car, she crawled underneath, to stop me from going without her. Even starting the engine would not end her protest, so I gave up and went back inside. Kitty then, caught again on camera, strolled back to my porch to take another nap. 

Kitty the Lionhearted wanted a home, and she decided that I would be the one to provide her with one, despite the fact I had two rowdy terriers and a horrible allergy. Still, the little nudnick made me love her. 

By day two, I knew she was special, and animal control was no longer an option, so I researched kittens and found out tuna wasn’t good for her. I promptly went to the store and bought her kitten chow. I put towels out for her to sleep on and a bowl of water. I hunkered down for the long haul because this beautiful creature had placed her fate in my hands, and I was not going to let her down.

I made my post public, and wrote about her and her antics. I posted pictures of her asleep, with her tiny head resting against my Carin Terrier statue, and soon a wonderful couple, friends of a friend, and parents of two other rescue cats, found me and agreed to give Kitty the thing I so wanted to give her, but could not, a home. 

With her new mom and dad on the way, I went out to contain her. The look on Kitty’s face when she trustingly entered a dog kennel I set on the porch, and then realized I shut her in, nearly broke my heart. Did you know kitties can express betrayal? She looked me in the eye, climbed up the side of the cage, and howled. 

I escaped inside, unable to watch, but soon realized how selfish I was being and went out again. Sitting beside her on the porch, I spoke to her as if she were human. She gave me unwavering eye contact, which I later researched was a cat’s way of showing affection. I told her about her new home and how she would be safe and cared for, and she calmed down and laid on the blanket I’d put in the cage. 

Immediately after she left, while I knew she was going to a good home, I did not feel the relief I expected. I missed her and missed her bad. It took me two weeks to remove the blanket and clean out the cage where she had been briefly contained, so I could use it for my dogs if necessary. I’m amazed how such a small creature could make my heart grow three-fold in only two days, and then break it, by no fault of her own, even quicker.

Several weeks later, when at a garden center, I found a statue that looked just like Kitty the Lionhearted, and I set it on my porch where she slept so soundly for two nights, right next to my Carin Terrier statue. At last, I’d found a way to come to terms with my longing for that little girl every time I walked out the front door.

 

Kitty the Lionhearted has gone off to live the life she deserves, but I will never forget her. 

Editing Tips for New Writers

I suggest starting by finding a traditionally published story you really love and deconstructing it. How many main characters does the author use in the scene? Too many main characters in a scene can be confusing if not written properly. Only use characters important to the scene. If it is a crowd, address all others as “the rest” or as a group. 

From who's POV (point of view) is the story told? Is it one character first person, past or present, dual POV, or omniscient? I don't advise using the last mentioned POV, as it is extremely difficult to write well. Most omniscient POV characters—unless written by a very skilled writer—come across as a bunch of talking heads, or the reader loses track of who's POV they are reading and become confused. 

 Check out your favorite published story chapter by chapter. Look for an intro, body, and open-end conclusion in every chapter as well as pacing. How quickly do the characters move from point A to B. Pacing is extremely important to keep readers engaged in the story. Discover how the author shows his or her character's actions and reactions. Note the difference when the author shows versus tells. Telling can be used when summarizing/paraphrasing an incident from another chapter, where a reminder is necessary, or replace insignificant, mundane dialogue. But keep it brief (a paragraph at most) as to not bog the reader down with facts they already know or insignificant details. 

What about back story? Does the author weave it into the story by using a sentence or two when the opportunity arises? One will rarely find paragraphs of backstory clumped on the pages of successful novels. 

 Use action tags rather than speech tags whenever possible. Action tag example: Keri scratched her head. “What did you say?” Use “said” whenever possible when speech tags are necessary as “said” is an invisible word. Speech tags like “he ordered,” “he announced,” “he proclaimed," pull the reader out of the story. 

Make sure every word or scene moves the story forward. Cut small talk and scenes if the story can remain intact if they disappear. If a paragraph, sentence, or conversation of dialogue was cut from your story, would it cause confusion? No? Then cut it. Would the story still make sense? If so, cut it. Add description into the action. (Example from a chapter I am writing: She moans and buries her face in my chest. I stroke the back of her head, and my finger gets caught in a tangle in her frizzled tresses, but I free it without pulling too hard.) Note how I used an action to weave a description of the heroine's appearance into the scene and also injected a tad of humor without being obvious. This is also an example of “showing.” 

Check out the dialogue. Is it every day mundane speech or does each word move the story forward? One word “Okays,” “Byes,” “Hi,”ect. are usually not necessary. Your character's voices will not come from small talk, and back and forth arguments or debates from characters over insignificant happenstance bore the reader. Does the dialogue sound natural or is it contrived to "feed" the reader information? Contrived dialogue is painfully obvious, and I personally find it annoying. If anyone points out in a critique thattt my dialogue sounds contrived, I'm quick to change it. Good luck with your current and future writing endeavors!

The Rebel Trait.

The Rebel Trait

 (A family story)

 

Me and my firstborn

                                                                  
     My adventurous, offbeat, and sometime stupid behavior in regards to marriage isn’t my fault!  I inherited a rebel trait. And the mutant gene my family slipped me is a doozy. It decodes something like this: If there isn’t some big ass controversy surrounding the guy, the guy ain’t worth marrying.  For me, the something big and exciting has got to be almost out of this world to make me want to get married, and I’m not talking a gargantuan diamond ring. (Evidently, I'm not that smart.) 
     I ran off with my first husband and eloped when I was just seventeen. I strong-armed my parents into signing the consent form by getting pregnant. Boy, did I teach them a lesson. The things I could tell Bella about controlling men.

     Rebound number two was just a blip in my life who turned out to have a multiple personality disorder. Yikes! Shudder. Restraining order. That’s all I have to say about that. 

     My next hubby was the prize I won after duking it out with the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a year and a half. (I'd had enough of American men.) I won the battle, but they got the last laugh. 

      So where does this mutant gene come from? 

After many happy years.

     Let me start with my paternal grandparents. Now, I’d heard the family lore, as told from my dad's perspective, but, over the years, it had become so sugar-coated, it was way too sweet to swallow. So, at my therapists advise, I interviewed older family members one by one, pieced all the different stories together, and came to a feasible conclusion by myself.  

    My grandmother—from whom I inherited the blue eyes and blond hair—was the child of Catholic Czechoslovakian immigrants who lived in Baltimore. Both her parents died when she was twelve or thirteen. Another Czech family who lived nearby took her in and raised her to adulthood. Her life was riddled with sadness, and she was educated sporadically, but she was a beauty—which was certainly an indispensable asset in the days before the Woman’s Suffrage victory.

      My grandfather was the boy next door, and the son of German immigrants. He was studying voraciously to be a Methodist minister. But the stars crossed, and Grandma and Grandpa fell in love. When they expressed their desire to get wed, both were directly excommunicated from their churches due to their relationship outside their respective religions. To make matters worse, both their families disowned them for a time, as well.

     This did not stop their love, a true love that was so strong, they fled to Kingston, New York to “escape religious persecution.” They said. Several months later their first child was born. She was named Juanita May after a woman who had helped them out while they were in Kingston. (Does anyone see the synchronicity here?)
        My grandmother must have discarded any information related to the exact date of her wedding day, with the same fervor she cut the size tags out of her clothing. I couldn’t find any supporting documentation, but I strongly suspect that it was after Juanita’s conception—just as I strongly suspected she was no longer a size 14 as she had claimed in her later years. This theory would explain the families’ temporary rejection and the sudden flight to New York.

     My grandparents eventually resumed residence in Baltimore where my educated and verbose grandfather became a milkman to support his new family. They raised five children,  my father being the youngest born after his mother thirty-ninth birthday, eighteen years after the birth of Juanita May.    

      My grandparents never went back to church, but they didn’t give up on religion all together. Even though, they had both been excommunicated, they were Christians and didn’t want their children to go without, so they sent the kids to the Lutheran church down the street because it was closest to the house.

     Now, the rebel gene is a strong one and recurs quite often in my family—it has yet to skip a generation. The next in line was my Grandma’s youngest daughter Maynard.

Before Uncle Joe

     Always a feisty, adventurous child, Maynard grew up tall and beautiful. She became a fashion model and was the pride of the family until she brought home Uncle Joe Shapiro. Don’t get me wrong, Uncle Joe was a well-to-do business owner and devilishly debonair. There was just one little problem in Grandma’s eyes. He was Jewish. 

       I need to back up a moment because this is the clincher.  I don’t  see where Grandma's head was at, because she had first-hand experience with religious persecution in her early life, and one might have thought she would have understood. But history repeated itself, and Grandma threatened to disown her own daughter if she defied her and married a Jew. 

      Maynard’s rebel gene kicked in and instead, she disowned her mother, converted to Judaism, and ran off and married Uncle Joe anyway. Grandma stomped her foot and temporarily disowned her back, but the feud didn’t last long.  Uncle Joe, the peacemaker, sent Grandma a round-trip ticket for a visit to their humble home in Beverly Hills.  
     While she was there, Grandma met her idol Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Uncle Joe and Aunt Maynard’s next door neighbor Frank Sinatra—they all shared a maid.  I guess that must have evened the score, because Grandma accepted Maynard and her husband back into the family with open arms. Aunt Maynard got the guy and the ring. (Don’t believe me? Google Bomber Shapiro, Tina Sinatra writes about him in her memoir. Bomber was Uncle Joe and Aunt Maynard’s first child. His real name was Douglas after the WWII bomber. )

    Anyway, the rebel gene that resided in my grandparents and then my aunt in generations wound far more tightly than mine, was the family jewel that was genetically passed on to me to carry to our future clan. I think that it is essential to mention that though I was not the first child to make my grandmother grand, my father always told me that I was innately always her favorite. 

     I have one more thing to say before I sign off. There was a slight mutation in the gene before it was passed on to me. The part about happily ever after was lopped off. However, that may have come from my mother’s side, but I am not sure. I don’t know Mom’s history since my biological maternal Grandmother, Maude Berry, gave Mom up for adoption. 

I heard she never married. Ever.

     

My mom and her bio-mom

    Hmm…

 

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Author interview.

hhttps://aliciadean.com/2021/04/08/author-interview-with-susan-antony-new-release-it-happened-on-thunder-road/

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