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.

Remembering Scout

 by Barb Goffman

Thank you for coming to this memorial service in honor of my dog, Scout. You may have only known him online, but whether Scout licked your face in person or virtually, I’m sure you felt his love from the stories I shared of him. All the stories. All the time. I probably drove some of you to boredom at times from all my posts, but whenever I looked at him, I always felt a surge of love to him and from him that I wanted to share. And even now, though he isn’t physically with me any longer, I still feel that surge of love. I’m so happy to be able to share it with you one more time.

Scout was a Labrador/shepherd/malamute mix. He weighed about eighty pounds. His fur was like an Oriental carpet. From one angle he’d look blond. From another, he’d look light brown. He had white fur on his tummy, big brown eyes, blond eyelashes. In his puppy pictures, you could see a black mask on his face. He had a long fluffy tail that he wagged when he was happy; in his last few weeks, he used that tail as a rudder to try to keep his balance. 


He was the sweetest boy you could ever meet—as long as you didn’t ring the doorbell. If you did that, Scout assumed you were an invader here to kill us, and he would charge to the door, barking and jumping so he could bare his teeth through the window. In his final year, he couldn’t climb the stairs to the front door anymore, but he still maintained his job as the head of home security, standing at the foot of the stairs barking away.

 
Scout was a rescue dog. According to the records I received from the SPCA, he was found when he was eight weeks old, trying to climb into a lady’s car in a bank parking lot. (He always loved the car, both riding in it and smelling the wheels of any car around.) That bank was next door to a veterinary office, so the lady assumed he’d escaped from there. He hadn’t. My best guess is someone dumped him there, thinking the vet would find him and get him a good home. They called the SPCA, which took Scout in for a few months, raised him, and trained him, until he went to a family. He lived with that family for five years until they gave him back because he didn’t fit in anymore. Fools. But it was my gain, because my beautiful boy was waiting for me.

In case you didn’t know, Scout was a very smart dog. When I would sit on the floor and pet him, he’d sometimes sense I was about to get up. He’d place one of his front legs over my arm, trying to hold me down, forcing me to keep petting him. He understood a lot of words and commands, but most telling is he understood “Show Mama what you want.” Sometimes he wanted a treat and would walk to the treat closet. Sometimes he wanted to go outside and would walk to the door to the yard. His answer varied depending on what his desire at that moment was. That’s a smart boy.

Scout loved Dad's visits

Scout loved presents. He especially loved them if they came in a plastic bag. Whenever I came home with shopping bags, he’d meet me at the door to smell them, hoping there would be something in one for him. He somehow always knew when there was a bag with a new squeaky toy in it. He’d ram his head in the bag, pull the toy out, and try to make it squeak by pushing on it with his nose. If that didn’t work, he’d squeeze it in his mouth. He was gentle with his toys, so I probably didn’t need to buy him many, but I usually couldn’t resist the joy that overcame him when he realized I’d brought home a new baby for him. Sometimes I’d wash his old toys and give him one from the closet, but he could always tell if it didn’t have that brand-new store-bought smell, and he’d lose interest much faster.

Scout also liked store-bought treats. Processed treats, my friend Kim recently said, and she was right. When we’d visit his old friends with the SPCA, they’d offer him high-end treats, and he’d turn his head away. No highfalutin stuff for Scout. He adored Beggin Strips and T-Bonz and Milk Bones. In his final days, he stopped eating anything but the T-Bonz. They were especially soft. I’m grateful he could get them down.

Scout loved our backyard, which backs up to woods. He would run to the fence over and over, barking at the foxes and deer that live back there, as well as at the neighbor’s cat that sometimes roams the woods. When he was younger, before he got arthritis, Scout often lay on the grass in the fall and spring, keeping an eye on the woods. In the autumn, I’d sweep leaves off the deck, and he’d run around underneath, joyfully trying to catch them in his mouth. Scout especially loved chasing sticks. A stick on the ground was irrelevant to him, but a stick I’d throw was heavenly. (He rarely brought the sticks back, just chased them.) On his last morning, we were in the yard, and I picked up a stick. For a moment his eyes shined, and he looked so excited, like a puppy. I threw the stick, but he didn’t run after it. He wasn’t up to it anymore, but I loved seeing that light in his eyes once again as he contemplated it, even for a second.

Scout wasn’t afraid of much. He loved the car. He loved the vet. He loved going anyplace and meeting anyone new. We once went to the vet for a walk-in nail trimming, and when our turn came, one of the vet techs opened the exam door, saw him, and said, “Scout, I didn’t know it was you.” And, I’m not exaggerating, he strutted into that room as if he were saying, “Yeah, baby, it’s me. I’m here.”

One thing Scout didn’t enjoy was having his picture taken. It might be hard to believe, given the number of photos I’ve posted, but those pictures were hard earned. He didn’t like the Halloween costumes I made him wear or the elf hat I put on him each Christmas. He especially didn’t like his birthday crown. Most years, he wore the costumes just long enough for me to get a picture and off they came. But when it came time for his bark mitzvah last fall, he wore his yarmulke and tallit (prayer shawl) happily all night long.

I’ve probably gone on way too long, but I have so many memories to share. Scout was the best part of my life, and I pray that the people who say we’ll be together again one day are right. 

In the meanwhile, every autumn I will continue to have six weeks of celebration. That’s what Scout and I used to do every year, beginning on September 30th. That was the date in 2006 that I met him in person (I’d already fallen in love with him from his photo online) and filled out my adoption application. Two weeks later, on October 14th, he came home to live with me. Two weeks after that, on October 28th, when our required trial period had ended, I finalized things with the SPCA. And then two weeks after that, Veterans Day, November 11th, was his birthday (at least, that was the original vet’s best guess, so it’s the date I’ve always used). That’s six weeks, from September 30th until November 11th, with a milestone exactly every two weeks during that period. Every year, we celebrated each milestone and our joy of being with one another during those six weeks, and I will continue that tradition.

Scout may not be with me in person anymore, I may not be able to rub the fur behind his ears (so soft), I may not be able to tell him that he’s the best boy ever, but he knows that he’ll always be in my heart. Somewhere, somehow, he knows. I wish we could have been together forever. For the time we had, I’ll be forever grateful.

 Rest in peace, my dear sweet boy. Mama loves you.

Tribute to a Beloved Dog

Scout at his "bark mitzvah"

by Sandra Parshall

At 8 p.m. eastern time tonight, Poe’s Deadly Daughters will host Barb Goffman’s online memorial service for her beloved dog, Scout, who died recently. 

Why a memorial service for a dog? Barb, a mystery writer and program chair for Malice Domestic, has a multitude of friends in the mystery community, and through her we all got to know the often funny and always endearing Scout. Abandoned by his first owners, Scout spent time in foster care before Barb found him and gave him a life that made up for those early bumps in the road. When he died, many of us felt the loss keenly, not only because he was a wonderful boy but because we knew how much Barb loved him and what a huge part of her life he was.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of pets in our lives, or to overstate the joy and comfort and love they give us. Anyone who has lost a companion animal — and most of us have — knows the grief can be every bit as intense as that for a human friend. Please join us tonight to help Barb say goodbye to Scout.

In the meantime, I’d like to reprise something I posted a couple of years ago about the unique relationship between humans and dogs.

*********************
We give a lot of attention to the similarities between humans and chimpanzees – look-alike brains and all that DNA in common, plus a human-like family structure – but the animal that understands us best may be lying at your feet right now. Pure brain power is one thing, but when it comes to succeeding in a human-dominated world, no species can match the domesticated canine.

About 15,000 years ago, humans began to see the benefits of settling down in one place and growing their food instead of roaming endlessly in hunt-and-gather mode. Agriculture was born. And, inevitably, garbage resulted. Enter the dog. Human settlements provided a reliable supply of food. Making nice with the humans allowed easy access, and even some bonus tidbits. Dogs were undoubtedly happy to act as guards – after all, protecting the humans that supplied the food was in the dogs’ own best interests. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has evolved and deepened into something unique.

Now it’s difficult to imagine a world without dogs. Those few human societies in which dogs are not kept as companions seem odd to the rest of us. We have learned that affection and rewards will buy us anything where dogs are  concerned. They lead the blind and assist people with other handicaps, sniff out contraband in luggage and shipping crates, chase down criminals and go into battle alongside soldiers, rescue us from burning buildings, locate both living and dead people buried under rubble after natural disasters, guard our houses and businesses and stand between us and anyone who tries to hurt us.

I can’t imagine a chimpanzee doing any of those things. In addition to intelligence, chimps share a prominent trait with us: they are self-centered. (And as much I adore my cats, our relationship is mostly give on my part and take on theirs.) Dogs, however, build their lives around humans. As long as we treat them right, they will do anything for us. And the amount of money spent annually on veterinary care, dog food, treats, toys, doggie apparel, beds, etc., indicates that we will just as readily do anything for them.

Research indicates that brain size and innate intelligence are less important to a dog’s success with people than an ability to focus on human behavior. In a testing situation, pet dogs demonstrate that what matters most to them is what the humans around them do and what they appear to expect from the dog. Dogs that can’t pick up cues from humans or refuse to do what people expect of them tend to be “selected out” – and that can mean anything from being removed from a breeding program to being dumped at a shelter. Paying attention to people reaps big rewards for a dog.

Far too often, humans abuse that devotion and force dogs to do things that go against their nature and best interests. The post-rescue stories of Michael Vick’s fighting dogs prove that viciousness is not an inborn trait of all pit bulls but a response to brutal training, an effort by the dogs to do what humans expect of them. The dogs rescued from Vick’s operation showed the same psychological trauma evidenced by abused children. In the hands of rehabbers at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary (see http://www.bestfriends.org/vickdogs/ and http://tinyurl.com/5webyha), these scarred and terrified animals have learned to trust people and to show their true personalities. Some are now living as contented pets in homes with small children, other dogs, and/or cats.

The modern domesticated dog was, in a very real sense, created by people to serve our purposes. We have a powerful influence on the behavior of individual dogs. Humans can ruin a dog. But we can also save it.

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.

Man's Best Friend

by Sandra Parshall

One challenge of writing a veterinarian protagonist like Rachel Goddard is that she knows a lot more about animals than I do, and I have to be careful not to let my ignorance cause her to make an embarrassing mistake on the page. With Under the Dog Star, I knew Rachel’s determination to rehabilitate both feral and fighting dogs might collide with many people’s beliefs that these dogs can’t be saved, but all my research told me that Rachel was right and should stand firm against anyone who tried to stop her.

Domesticated dogs have enriched our lives in so many ways that the least we can do is try to help them when they have become the victims of human cruelty and stupidity. 

We give a lot of attention to the similarities between humans and chimpanzees – look-alike brains and all that DNA in common, plus a human-like family structure – but the animal that understands us best may be lying at your feet right now. Pure brain power is one thing, but when it comes to succeeding in a human-dominated world, no species can match the domesticated canine.

About 15,000 years ago, humans began to see the benefits of settling down in one place and growing their food instead of roaming endlessly in hunt-and-gather mode. Agriculture was born. And, inevitably, garbage resulted. Enter the dog. Human settlements provided a reliable supply of food. Making nice with the humans allowed easy access, and even some bonus tidbits. Dogs were undoubtedly happy to act as guards – after all, protecting the humans that supplied the food was in the dogs’ own best interests. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Now it’s difficult to imagine a world without dogs. Those few human societies in which dogs are not kept as companions seem odd to the rest of us. We have learned that affection and rewards will buy us anything where dogs are  concerned. They lead the blind and assist people with other handicaps, they work alongside police officers, use their amazing noses to sniff out contraband in luggage and shipping crates,they rescue us from burning buildings, locate both living and dead people buried under rubble after natural disasters, guard our houses and businesses and stand between us and anyone who tries to hurt us. They give us endless affection and patiently put up with all kinds of silliness from us, such as being posed for photos like the one above.
 
I can’t see the average chimpanzee willingly doing any of those things. (And although I'm sure my cats are fond of me, our relationship is mostly give on my part and take on theirs.) Dogs, however, build their lives around humans. As long as we treat them right, they will do anything for us. And the amount of money spent annually on veterinary care, dog food, treats, toys, doggie apparel, beds, etc., indicates that we will just as readily do anything for them.

Ongoing research indicates that brain size and innate intelligence are less important to a dog’s success with people than an ability to focus on human behavior. In a testing situation, pet dogs demonstrate that what matters most to them is what the humans around them do and what they appear to expect from the dog. Dogs that can’t pick up cues from humans and do what people expect of them tend to be “selected out” – and that can mean anything from being removed from a pedigreed breeding program to being dumped at a shelter. Paying attention to people reaps big rewards for a dog.

If we wanted to invest the effort, we could probably replicate the process of domestication with other canids. Scientists in Siberia have already done it with wild foxes. By favoring the animals that showed the least fear of humans and the most willingness to accept affection and favors from people, they have created a colony of tame foxes. 

Over the 50 years devoted to this project, the tame foxes have become smaller, gentler, and more skilled at interpreting human gestures and behavior. They are now being sold as pets for several thousand dollars each. (See http://www.sibfox.com/foxes/experement/) Maybe wolves could be turned into pets too. But I cringe at the thought of subverting a wild animal’s nature so I can have it sleeping in a pet bed in my house. We have myriad dog breeds to choose from if we want a canine companion. 

Ray, a rescued Vick dog

In Under the Dog Star, Rachel’s desire to rehab the rescued fighting dogs is perfectly realistic. The post-rescue stories of Michael Vick’s fighting dogs prove that viciousness is not an inborn trait of pit bulls; it is a response to brutal training, an effort by the dogs to do what humans expect of them. The 22 pit bulls rescued from Vick’s operation showed the same psychological trauma evidenced by abused children. In the hands of trainers at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary (see http://www.bestfriends.org/vickdogs/ and http://tinyurl.com/5webyha), these scarred and terrified animals have learned to trust people and to show their true natures. Some are now living as contented pets in homes with small children, other dogs, and/or cats. This is what Rachel wants for the dogs she rescues.

The modern domesticated dog was, in a very real sense, created by people to serve our purposes. We have a powerful influence on the behavior of individual dogs. Humans can ruin a dog. But we can also save it.