I was picking up a cheque from Hidden Gems Bookstore yesterday and a used book in the animal section caught my eye. "My Cat Spit McGee" by Willie Morris. The photo on the front cover is so endearing and I'm at that point in promoting and distributing my book where I need to take a mental break from so much work. Besides that Mom is very ill and I've been nursing her. I may have to take her back to the doctor today.
I learned recently that in Ireland they don't make sick people get up from bed and sit in emergency rooms and doctor's waiting rooms, spreading germs and catching new ones! Doctors in that country make house calls! Can you believe it! That the sanest thing I've heard in awhile. But I'll be taking my seriously sick eighty-eight year old mother who can hardly walk she's so frail in to sit in a waiting room once again.
The photo on the right is Mom at my book launch, June 13th. My brother Jim is to her right. She got up out of her sick bed then, too. She knew she had to be there. Had to! She enjoyed the evening, well who wouldn't, with everyone waiting on her and fussing over her, and with her eldest child the star attraction for the evening.
I'm afraid that one of these days, I'll be saying goodbye to my mother and I really don't think there's anyway of preparing for that.
So, back to cats and dogs. The author Willie Morris was a "dog man" and in fact he was afraid of, as it turns out, and hated cats! Holy cow. How could anyone hate cats I ask myself but then I have a couple of male friends who aren't as enamored of felines as I am. I think their reluctance to engage with these beautiful creatures must be based on fear, too.
I'm looking forward to the story about how the author, the imaginative and creative editor of Harper's magazine, a man who was a major influence in changing postwar literary and journalistic history, makes the leap from dog lover to cat lover!
I love dogs, too. All animals, really, but at this time in my life my three cats are my little darlings, my friends - my muses, probably. Top of the page is Angie up a tree.
