Have a Pet
The stereotype of writers having cats is a venerable one. This article talks about Dickens, Poe, Walpole, Sir Walter Scott and Harriet Beecher Stowe; here is the cat colony at the Hemingway Museum; Colette, Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain and Robertson Davies were all Cat People, and so am I, but for some reason any work I get done is in spite of Jamie and not because of him. His persistent inability to understand that my lap, though capacious, will not hold both a ten-pound laptop and a fifteen-pound cat is one reason.
Today, I took him in for an abdominal ultrasound, in an attempt to pinpoint the cause of the puking hobby he started up this summer. He's diabetic, so they've been pretty much assuming pancreatitis, but a cat with pancreatitis who barfs between two and five times a week for three months would be in much worse shape than Jamie, who is fat and lustrous and actually managed to gain a quarter-pound since the last time we were at the vet a month ago.
My personal opinion is that Jamie has grown to understand conversations about money, and is using this secret skill to torture me. "My, my," he thinks. "A wide-screen TV? Graduate study abroad? A down payment on an apartment?! I'd better get to work on that extra money they seem to have lying around." So he throws a $500 veterinary emergency, and home electronics are forgotten for another fiscal quarter.
Through rigorous monitoring of his diet, we've come close to eradicating this summer's problem. I will have to have a serious talk with him though; the victims of Hurricane Katrina will need my extra money a lot more than he will for the foreseeable future. The Red Cross for the human animals, Noah's Wish for the rest -- get out your checkbooks if you haven't already.
I must say this blog has already proved its worth in the matter of keeping tabs on myself. It would have been really easy not to work on my novel last night -- who am I kidding; it's always really easy not to work on my novel -- but the thought that my mom and the other two people reading this will think I'm a complete loser if I don't get up that word count carried the day.
Word Count: 24,765 (+1,191)
Today, I took him in for an abdominal ultrasound, in an attempt to pinpoint the cause of the puking hobby he started up this summer. He's diabetic, so they've been pretty much assuming pancreatitis, but a cat with pancreatitis who barfs between two and five times a week for three months would be in much worse shape than Jamie, who is fat and lustrous and actually managed to gain a quarter-pound since the last time we were at the vet a month ago.
My personal opinion is that Jamie has grown to understand conversations about money, and is using this secret skill to torture me. "My, my," he thinks. "A wide-screen TV? Graduate study abroad? A down payment on an apartment?! I'd better get to work on that extra money they seem to have lying around." So he throws a $500 veterinary emergency, and home electronics are forgotten for another fiscal quarter.
Through rigorous monitoring of his diet, we've come close to eradicating this summer's problem. I will have to have a serious talk with him though; the victims of Hurricane Katrina will need my extra money a lot more than he will for the foreseeable future. The Red Cross for the human animals, Noah's Wish for the rest -- get out your checkbooks if you haven't already.
I must say this blog has already proved its worth in the matter of keeping tabs on myself. It would have been really easy not to work on my novel last night -- who am I kidding; it's always really easy not to work on my novel -- but the thought that my mom and the other two people reading this will think I'm a complete loser if I don't get up that word count carried the day.
Word Count: 24,765 (+1,191)
posted by kathy monahan at 10:59 AM
1 Comments:
You're right on about pet distractions and creativity. Then again, pets teach us things that we'd never think-of on our own. Enjoyed your post!
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