What is the use of being an author if you cannot control characters and events? I have long felt the literary game was a sham and a delusion and now that I am in danger of becoming homeless again, I am certain of it.
I just did not expect my very own partner in crime to sell me out to raging hormones.
(Of course, I cannot really say how I feel about all this for publication. I have an image to project . . . I mean protect, and I may also harbor some secret, soul-stirring issues that I cannot share with anyone, not even my Miss Temple, not even my Miss Carole.)
You, Dear Readers, however, are an exception. Yet we can only communicate through the cryptic means of literature. Litterature in my case. The moving finger, or claw, writes. On the wall or in the sand. And moves on. And on.
Surely things cannot be as dire as they look! Not if I have anything to write about it.
Midnight Louie, Esq.
If you’d like information about Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter and/or T-shirt and other cool things, contact him at P.O. Box 33155, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555 or www.carolenelsondouglas.com or at cdouglas@catwriter.com.
Carole Nelson Douglas
Professes Innocence, or
Maybe Just Ignorance
I didn’t know they were going to do it, Louie. Honest.
Oh, I knew they were capable of almost anything, including laughing at my attempts to produce some logical behavior on their parts. The problem is, this is fiction. And even in Real Life, people are lamentably unpredictable. Not cats. Never cats. That’s why I surround myself with them.
That’s why you and I have had a monogamous relationship for thirty-three years, Louie. Thirty-three years. Not bad for my species, and downright metaphysical for yours.
Well, what can we do? We have invested a lot of time, love, and hope in these people. We will just have to have faith.
We will have to have faith that they have learned something from us (and particularly you) and will come around to surprising us with their good sense, good intentions, and ultimately ideal solutions to all the messy druthers that lives of crime and punishment create.
You want to run them in on a moving violation, Louie?
Be my guest.
You are the driving force here and I don’t expect you to take this level of turmoil lying down. You’ve got your paw on what’s going to happen next and will get all these humans herded back into their proper places. Right, Big Boy?
Speak to me!
P.S. Charity auctions at mystery conventions often allow bidders to win the prize of having their or a loved one’s name in a particular author’s book. Midnight Louie (of course) draws hot and high bidding wars. The pair of Yorkshire terriers in Cat in a Leopard Spot resulted from a United Way drawing in Minnesota. The real-life Beth Marble’s husband won her a role in Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit. And in this book, Squeaker’s owner won her participation. Squeaker is the shy, gorgeous shelter cat, as portrayed, and her shelter “name,” was—yes indeed—Fontana. Truth is always stranger than fiction.