Kittens on the Tracks

by Sheila Connolly

There is a rule in writing cozy or traditional mysteries:  don't kill animals. If you browse in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore, you will quickly see that most cozies have a kitten or a puppy on the cover, and sometimes more than one.

It's kind of ironic, since cozies are murder mysteries, which means that at least one human person dies in each book, and sometimes more people as the killer attempts to cover his or her trail. Even children are fair game, now and then. The protagonist is often a target of violence, although we know by definition that s/he will survive, since most cozies are issued as series (I can't offhand recall an example where the series was not renewed by the publisher and the author, in a fit of pique, massacred the protagonist).

But I'd always regarded this rule as sort of an urban legend particular to publishing and other media.  Not so, I discovered recently while reading the newspaper.  In New York City, that paradigm of the Big City, power was cut on two subway lines to Brooklyn because…there were two kittens on the tracks.  Yes, part of the New York transit system was brought to its knees by a pair of curious felines.

Yes, of course they're adorable

The Associated Press provided many useful details.  The kittens were black (one) or white with gray stripes (the other).  No age or gender given.  The  woman who owned them reported to transit officials that they had escaped to the subway, and it took seven hours to rescue them (during which they were reported to have been seen "running dangerously close to the high-voltage third rail."

They were lured to safety with cat food provided by the owner, then removed from the subway tunnel in crates.  The transit authority provided passenger shuttles for those inconvenienced. No estimate of the costs of providing the service was given.

As a good cozy writer, I should have remembered that I was a party to a similar event in the Bay Area in California, a couple of decades ago:  there was a dog in the tunnel between two stops on the Richmond line.  It took an hour or two to persuade the dog to make an exit—apparently he thought it was a big game.

But it's comforting to know that there is still a sense of kindness in the world. Transit officials knew there would be a financial cost to them (ultimately passed on to the subway riders, no doubt) to save those two kittens, but isn't that far better than having them say, "forget it, those little buggers aren't worth that much—run 'em over"? 

It would be nice if the AP had added a final note:  was there applause and cheering when it was announced that the trails were once again kitten-free?

Addendum:  in my books, the closest I've come to attacking an animal was a woman who was aiming a two-by-four at a goat, but she stopped before she could make that swing. And all pets in the books, including the goats, are rescue animals.

Coming very, very soon!

Populated by: one cat (Lolly), one dog (Max), and two goats (Dorcas and Isabel).  And a bunch of humans.  Yes, there is a bunny in the story--briefly.

Kittehs on the Interwebs

By Sandra Parshall

Oh hai, cat peeps.

Have you had your LOLcats fix for the day? How many cat pictures and videos have you seen since you sat down at your computer this morning? How many have you shared on Facebook in the well-founded belief that an audience of staggering proportions will be enthralled?

We can’t get enough of kittehs on the interwebs.

I suspect none of us was surprised when Google's network of research computers, programmed to recognize the most important internet content based on 10 million randomly chosen YouTube videos, came up with this picture of a cat.

We always knew they would take over the universe if we slipped up and cleared a path for them. The internet is that path. And we slipped up big time: humans have been reduced to the role of publicity agents. As with meals, cats couldn’t have done it if we weren’t around to open the can, so to speak, but the real power lies with them and they know it.

I just typed “funny cat pictures” into Google and in 0.46 seconds I received a list of 49.2 million sites. “Funny cat videos” generated more responses in less time: 69.5 million in 0.37 seconds. One gets the strong impression that Google’s search engine is used to answering these queries and stands ready at all times to shoot an emergency day-brightener to the computer of anyone in need.

The most famous cat on the interwebs, the one who can be credibly accused of starting it all, is Maru, a stout-bodied Scottish fold tabby (whose tiny ears stand straight up instead of folding) who resides in Japan. Maru’s thing is boxes, or, really, almost anything made of cardboard or plastic that he can use as a container for the aforementioned stout body. With wild abandon or careful calculation, depending on his mercurial feline mood, Maru jumps into boxes, jumps out of boxes, runs and slides into boxes, maneuvers boxes around the floor from within. The recently posted Marulympics featured only one athlete, Maru, doing only one thing, and you can probably guess what it was. He finished with a slew of gold medals.

The world-famous Maru, doing what he does best

Maru (whose name means “circle” or “round” in Japanese and is quite fitting) is so famous that he and his female owner live in an undisclosed location. They occupy a home purchased with Maru’s website advertising and photo book earnings. Maru has an entry in Wikipedia. Maru is one of YouTube’s brightest stars, with his own channel. He and his boxes are regularly featured by the Huffington Post. You could spend a month doing nothing but watching The Best of Maru. Journalists can’t get anywhere near him, as Gideon Lewis-Kraus discovered when researching an article on internet cats for the September issue of Wired magazine. All he wanted was “thirty minutes with the cat” but “months of obsequious email courtship” of Maru’s owner failed to gain him an audience. 

What makes Maru so special? Darned if I know. Maybe we enjoy getting a concentrated dose of the cute things our own cats do on those rare occasions when they're awake and on their feet. Perhaps Maru only does cute stuff for the camera occasionally too, but any cat will look lively and athletic with proper editing. 

If Maru has been the leader, we have seen no lack of followers. Every cat owner in the world seems to have a digital camera and video recorder and an irresistible urge to share the latest bit of adorableness from Kitty Sweetums with the world. If you’ve ever seen my Facebook page or my Flickr photostream, you know I’m as shameless as the rest about putting pictures of Emma and Gabriel out there. (Emma tends to be the funnier one.)

Emma, being cute in the laundry sink

So what is it about cats? They’re inherently funnier than dogs, and kittens are far wilder and more inventive in their mischief than puppies. Cats can jump and climb and work their magic on many levels. Dogs are pretty much rooted to the floor, doing little beyond the occasional shredding of magazines and sofa pillows, which I assure you is not cute.

But it’s not just feline cuteness that we go for. Well, maybe some shallow people demand all cuteness all the time, but I think most of us are looking for catness. A surly expression on the face of a battle-scarred old tom can captivate us as readily as the big eyes of a two month old kitten.

Are we attracted to their essential wildness, that untamed soul within the cutest of kitties? Dogs can be funny, certainly, but there’s always something forced about it, as if the animal expects to be rewarded with a treat. When we see a video of a dog playing the piano, we think, “Yeah, sure, a dog will do any trick to please its owner.” When a cat plays the piano, we know beyond doubt that it was the cat’s choice, the cat’s idea, and we marvel. Dogs, in short, allow themselves to be trained, so there is nothing natural about their cuteness beyond the puppy stage. 

A popular subcategory of cat videos features cats playing tricks on or stealing food from dogs who are TSTL. (Watch it and weep.) We may love sweet doggies, but we recognize the biological truth embodied in these videos. Dogs are servants by nature, always laser-focused on their people. Cats exist to be served, and the supreme being in any cat’s life will always be...the cat. We may laugh at them, but we do it while bowing to their superiority.
     
Would you like your own cute cat – or dog, if that's all you've got – to appear in the Rachel Goddard novel I’m writing now? Go to my Facebook author page and post a photo of your pet. (“Like” the page first if you haven’t already.) The pet whose picture gets the most “likes” will be given a role in my work-in-progress, and the owner will receive a signed copy of my new book, Bleeding Through.

Cozy Pets

by Sheila Connolly

Recently a friend who writes cozies said that she had received a number of critical comments, both on panels and in blogs, about the pets who appear in cozies.

I recognize that cozies are kind of a middle child, often ignored in the greater mystery community, despite their continuing strong sales and the steady emergence of new writers with multi-book contracts from established publishers. Writers keep writing them, and readers keep buying them. Why the reading public and even some peers think that it is more worthy to write about violence and gore and destruction is beyond me. As far as I'm concerned, all mystery genres offer the reader a chance to escape the humdrum or even unpleasant realities of ordinary life, and give them a satisfying conclusion (which is often missing from ordinary life). It's only the details that vary, and there's room for everyone.

But to attack the pets in our books is hitting below the belt. Maybe a few of them are kind of odd, like the ones that claim to be psychic or solve crimes on their own, but most are ordinary non-verbal friends and companions to our characters.

What's wrong with that? Take a look at some statistics. The ASPCA reports that over 60% of American household have at least one pet. There are about 75 million dogs and 85 million cats in these households. The Humane Society adds that there is at least one dog in 39% of U.S. households (the average is two per owner), and at least one cat in 33% of households (the average is 2.2 per owner). The bottom line is, a majority of households, and presumably most readers, have pets.

In fact, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2010 out of 117,538,000 households, only 60,384,000 or 51% included a married couple, so you could say that more households include a pet than a legal spouse.

Since pet ownership is something that many people share, a fictional pet should provide an immediate kinship for the reader. In addition, the character's relationship with that pet as defined by the writer can be a factor in establishing the character's, well, character. Villains kick dogs; heroes and heroines rescue them and take them home.

I'll concede that restless soldiers of fortune or wandering knights would have trouble caring for a pet. After all, if they don't have a fixed address, how can they take care of a companion animal? And we also need to recognize that animals possess varying temperaments as much as humans do, so the writer must be careful in pairing character to pet. I can't see Jack Reacher with a miniature Chihuahua, nor can I see Miss Marple with a Doberman or a pit bull. A cozy does not require a resident pet, but a pet does require a cozy: a small, settled town or neighborhood; a place where if the pet strays, someone will recognize it and return it to its proper owner.

I think a part of the puzzle is what readers want from a book. I see two broad categories: on one hand, you have the crash-bam-boom suspense/thrillers, where readers can be swept up in the breathless pace and at the end, heave a sigh of relief that it didn't happen to them; on the other hand, there are the cozies, with safe and recognizable settings, disturbed by a crime that sets the story in motion, until at the end order is restored. Two very different kinds of book, and different kinds of readers.

So, you grumpy mystery writers, don't sneer to us when we include "warm-and-fuzzy" friends in our books. We've got plenty of pet-loving readers.

An Author's "Mews"

by Lorna Barrett (who also masquerades as L.L. Bartlett)

And the winner of a copy of Lorna's latest release, Bookmarked for Death, is Chris Redding. Chris, please contact me at darlene at darleneryan.com. Thanks to Lorna and cats for joining us this weekend.

Just about every author I know has at least one pet. Most have more than one. Some have more than one species, too. But the majority of us seem to have cats. Or rather, they have us.

I’m currently owned by four cats. Most of the day they lie around the house, snoozing their lives away. This time of year you can find them under incandescent light bulbs or lying with their snoots pointed into the heat run. I swear, sometimes I think they’re going to cook themselves, but cats love heat.

These days, Chester, our dominant cat, seems to be able to find the best source of heat and stick with it. If the sun happens to be out, he’ll follow it to every room in the house. More often than not, it’s just plain gloomy. (We live in Western New York. I think only Seattle has more gloomy days than us. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.) Chester’s not much of a lap cat during the summer, but come winter, he might deign to sit with me, but mostly he prefers hanging around with my husband. (It’s a guy kind of thing, I guess.)

Bonnie, terrified over just about everything (except at breakfast time, then she’ll challenge the boys to a fight--and then screams bloody murder if they take her up on it), lives on the heat run behind the couch. She comes out for meals, and likes to watch DVDs with me. (Last week we watched episodes of Star Trek Enterprise and the movie Iron Man. She prefers more quiet shows. And let’s face it, photon torpedoes are a lot more quiet than everything blowing up in a guy flick. After all, I don’t think sound travels through the vacuum of space. Am I right?)

Now Betsy, our little Princess, was very ill with cancer in 2007. She had an amazing recovery (sure shocked the heck out of our vet when we brought her in for her yearly shots this past September), although she’s a bit … crabbier … than she was before her illness. Still, she still likes to do her Betsy things -- hanging out under light bulbs (especially if you’re trying to read -- blocking light is No. 1 on her list of things to do) and moving around the house to check out all the heat runs. (Are you seeing a pattern here?)

Throwing a monkey wrench into the works is my tiny son, Fred. (Also known as my Little Prince.) Fred isn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he’s super handsome and he knows it. He also knows that if he’s in trouble, all he has to do is lie down, roll over and look cute. (And darned if it doesn’t work every time.) Fred will sleep under a light bulb, but has never learned that heat runs got super warm. (See dim-bulb comment above.)

I’d like to say that the cats keep me company as I work on my books, but that would be a big fat lie. No, they’re in the next room with my husband (and that 200 watt incandescent bulb). Hubby also works from home, and did years before I did, so the cats have their routine and they’re not changing it just for me. It’s just as well. Sometimes they come in for a visit and like to sit on my arms as I type. This, of course, makes it very difficult to type accurately--which I have a hard enough time doing without their “help.”

I also have a comfy chair in my office, with a nice light. I like to sit there to edit. Unfortunately, the minute my butt hits the chair, some cat will wander in and demand to sit on my lap. Since I keep my drafts in a big three-ring notebook, there’s nowhere to put it if there’s a cat on my lap. So I have to sit, twisted like a cheese straw, and put the notebook on the chair’s arm. Then a cat will get annoyed, stand up, turn around at least three times, nudge the notebook until I move it to the other arm, and then sit down again. I’ll turn the page, make a note, and the process starts all over again.

Of course, cats have other habits. They’re very clean. With all that washing, they ingest a lot of hair. How often have I been working when I heard hubby’s voice call out, “Someone’s puking, someone’s puking.” Since I write mysteries, it’s up to me to play detective to find the culprit and remove the evidence. (Not one of the perks of working at home.)

But would I ever live without cats? Never.

By the way, my new book, Bookmarked for Death, features a cat. Her name is Miss Marple and she steals every scene she’s in. She’s based on my cat Cori, who lived to the ripe old age of 20.

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Lorna Barrett writes the Booktown Mystery series, featuring Tricia Miles and her Haven’t Got A Clue bookstore. It’s available now. Hop in the car and rush right to your local bookstore. Go on! Do it now!

The Naming of Characters

Sandra Parshall

T.S. Eliot wrote, “The naming of cats is a difficult matter,” and as a lifelong cat-owner, I agree -- but choosing a name for a fictional character takes difficulty to a whole new level. It’s a lot like naming a child. The recipient will live with your decision forever, and if you make a mistake the consequences won’t be pretty.

A baby, of course, is named before the parents have any idea how the kid will turn out. Will little Angelina develop into a tattooed hellion? Will Grace be a hopeless klutz? Or will their names in some way help to shape the people they become? I’m sure that somebody, somewhere, has spent a breathtaking amount of money studying such questions, but fortunately writers don’t have to wonder. We can form the characters, then give them names that suit. We can try out as many names as we like before deciding.

A character’s name has to do a lot of heavy lifting:

It should evoke personality. If a guy is always called Robert, never Bobby or even Bob, what does that say about him?

If ethnicity is important to the story, the name should convey that too. But you don’t have to call every Hispanic character Jose Gonzales. A little effort will turn up less common names that still tell the reader how to see the person.

A name can be a quick way to signal social status. I am not brave or foolish enough to reel off a list of low-class names and risk the fallout, but you know what I mean.

A name can tell us a character’s approximate age. How many toddlers do you know who are named Hortense or Archibald? How many 80-year-old women have you met who are named Britney or Morgan? The internet allows writers to search databases such as www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ (compiled from Social Security records) and www.babycenter.com/general/ to find out what a character born in a certain year might have been named. Because I prefer classic names rather than the trendy concoctions that are going to seem laughable when their owners hit middle age and beyond, I’m happy to note that Emma has been the most popular name for baby girls in the U.S. for several years. We may have Ross and Rachel on Friends to thank for this. (I have a five-year-old named Emma, but although she believes herself to be an unusually hirsute little girl, she’s actually of the feline persuasion.) All those tiny Emmas, though, are growing up with a nearly equal number of girls named Madison. Aiden was the top male name in 2006, followed by Jacob, Ethan, Ryan, and Matthew. What will Madison and Aiden call their children twenty-five years from now?

The classics fit people of any age, but if the first name is a common one, the last might have to do double duty to give the character distinction. Kate is one of the most common names for female protagonists in mysteries, followed closely by all the variations of Katherine/Catherine/Kathleen -- Kat/Cat/Kathy/Katie/Kay. But Kate Shugak is singular, and so is Kay Scarpetta. In my new book, Disturbing the Dead, I named a lead character Tom Bridger, pairing a first name that conveys a solid, down-to-earth personality with a last name that is common among Melungeons in the Appalachians. The name Bridger is also a metaphor for the position that Tom, a half-Melungeon deputy sheriff, occupies between two segments of his mountain community. The reader may never think about this, but I have.

Sometimes a perfect name comes to a writer through sheer serendipity. When Tess Gerritsen was writing a book titled The Surgeon, she contributed to a charity auction by allowing a reader to purchase naming rights for a minor character, a female medical examiner. The reader named Dr. Maura Isles after a real person. The character grew in importance in subsequent books, and she grew into her name, which perfectly conveys the image of an elegant woman who is isolated within herself.

While searching for the perfect monikers for our characters, writers have to keep some no-no’s in mind: nothing that is impossible for the reader to pronounce; no two names starting with the same letter, lest the poor reader become confused; as few nicknames as possible, again to avoid confusion. Short, one-word names always have the edge, at least in English-language crime fiction. Look at a few U.S., Canadian, and British mystery novels. How many names of more than two or three syllables do you see? How many truly unusual names do you see? You could say this is laziness on the part of writers who don’t want to type long or difficult names again and again, and you might be half-right, but it’s also true that a mystery seems to move faster if everyone has a short, easy name.

A name is the most personal thing about a character, and the choice is not one the writer makes lightly. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could exercise the same discretion over our own names? As innocent babies, we have to take whatever label is slapped on us, whether it fits or not. But most names, amazingly enough, turn out to be good fits. How about yours? Do you love it, hate it, wish you could change it? What name would you have given yourself, and why?