Cynthia Baxter | Confessions of a Mystery Writer . . . Er, Travel Writer

We’re all entitled to an obsession or two, aren’t we?

One of mine is travel. I suppose it’s because I spent my childhood in the backseat of a car with my sister and grandmother – often a Volkswagen bug – with my parents in the front seat, acting as pilot and co-pilot. School vacation was synonymous with road trip. Since my father was an English teacher in a neighboring school district, he usually had the same days off that we kids did – and so off we’d go.

Our home was on Long Island, in the suburbs of New York, which was a great starting point for traveling all over the eastern half of the United States. The five of us explored New England, Florida, and just about every state in between. (Eastern Canada, too.) We saw the big cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Montreal; historic towns like Williamsburg, Virginia, and Salem, Massachusetts; and places that were just plain fun like Hershey, Pennsylvania, and St. Petersburg, Florida.

In fact, Florida was a favorite destination for spring vacations. The drive took about three days, including stops at every Stuckey’s and Horne’s we passed along the way (a blast from the past for those of you who had the pleasure of putting those on your itinerary before their demise). Once we were there, we also stopped at every attraction. This was still the 1950’s and 1960’s, so Disney had yet put in an appearance. But we found plenty to do: alligator farms, orange groves, Cypress Gardens, stores selling everything that could possibly be made with seashells, and the glitzy hotels of Miami Beach, where we strolled through the lobbies and pretended we were wealthy enough to stay at them.

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Blaize Clement | Why Pets Are In the Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series

The first time somebody asked why my Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series includes pets, I was a little taken aback. I mean, Dixie Hemingway is a pet sitter, for gosh sake, so there had to be pets. But when I thought about it, I realized it had been my choice to make the pets equal in importance to the human characters. Not with human characteristics or psychic abilities or super strength, but just regular pets like regular people have. So I gave it some thought, and finally came up with an answer.

Every culture has mythic tales of a golden age when humans and animals lived as friends. In The Illiad, when a warrior was killed, his horse hung his head and wept. In The Ramayana, an army of brave monkeys rescued Princess Sita from an evil kidnapper. When the Buddha left his father's palace to seek enlightenment, his horse wept too, when he had to return to the palace alone. And then there's that serpent in the Garden of Eden who told Eve the truth about eating of the tree of knowledge.

In all those old stories, animals represented wisdom and courage and loyalty, and the friendship between humans and animals was one of unconditional love and sacrifice. As humans distanced from that connection with animals, I think we lost a connection to the best part of ourselves. So that's the real reason for putting pets in my stories. It's my way of trying to reconnect with the best part of humanity's story.

The third book in the Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series was published last week. It's titled Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues. Like Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter and Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, it has several animal characters that are important to the story. You can read more
about all the books at www.blaizeclement.com/ and at my blog, Kitty Litter (http://www.dixiehemingway.wordpress.com/)

Blaize Clement

Clea Simon | Kitty Cornered

What is scarier than losing your pet?

Okay, I guess I should have put that question in context. There are many things scarier than losing your pet. Losing your child or your spouse. Losing your own life. Colonoscopies. Spiders. But for me, for a period of about two months last year, I had to face one of my own particular fears. What’s worse, I had to make that fear come to life for my heroine, Theda Krakow, her pampered and beloved housecat, Musetta, and for any reader out there.

You see, I was working on what became my third Theda Krakow mystery, “Cries and Whiskers,” and I wanted to ratchet up the tension and suspense. But it had to be on my terms – for my readers. And my readers love their pets. So although I have long promised my readers that I would never hurt or kill any animals in my books (humans don’t count), I needed to put Musetta at risk. I needed to have her disappear into a blinding winter storm. And I needed on suspicious phone call to hint that maybe that disappearance wasn’t entirely voluntary.

So what’s the problem? Well, Musetta is based on my own pet. And so I had to put myself in the mind of my heroine. I had to imagine the panic I’d feel if I came home on a freezing sleet-spitting winter night and found my pampered house pet missing. I had to imagine searching in a frenzy. Checking and re-checking all her hiding places, and then, finally, dashing out in the storm to start the hunt in earnest. I had to re-learn everything I know about searching for a lost pet, everything I know about trapping and signs and microchipping. And I had to imagine how I’d cope with all of this in the middle of a wild winter storm, in my panic, with loss creeping up on me like the icy wind.

To be honest, it was harrowing. My real Musetta sleeps on the chair behind my desk most days, but maybe she picked up my tension because several times while I was working on this part of “Cries and Whiskers,” she “went missing.” Not far in her case – I could usually find her in one of her regular spots, her “cave” at the back of the closet or her shelf by the window. But for many long minutes I’d find myself holding my breath, holding back my panic – all until I was holding my own cat, once again.

I’ve been lucky. Readers have responded to the real emotion I put into “Cries and Whiskers,” much as they have to my first two mysteries, the series opener “Mew is for Murder” and last year’s “Cattery Row.” And a recent skim through some new numbers has shown me why.

As silly as I sometimes feel – after all, not only do I write mysteries with cats in them, I’ve got kitty paraphernalia all over my office – it seems I am not at all alone. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (yes, there is such an organization), nearly half of those of us who cohabit with cats – 49.2 percent – consider our cats to be members of our families. (Dogs are even luckier: 53.5 percent of dog owners consider their pooches to be family.)
The more I think about it, the more I suspect the real numbers are even higher. After all, it’s only recently that we’ve been finally ready to admit that we do love these little creatures. But now that we’ve brought them into our homes, we’ve also welcomed them into our hearts – and according to that same APPMA survey, we’re willing to spend on their health, comfort, and safety, too, to the tune of more than $40 billion that we spent this year on our 88.3 million cats, 74.8 million dogs, 13.4 million reptiles, or that odd 24.3. million category simply called “other small animal.” We want them to have as long and as healthy a life as possible, a life that they’ll share we us, and we’re finally ’fessing up to that fact – and trying to make it happen. Which is why housecats are now living into their 20s and even the larger dogs are now enjoying longer play-filled lives.

And why not? I mean, with all the uncertainties in life, especially in the middle of winter when the weather outside is truly frightful, isn’t it wonderful to come home to that one sweet face, with its purrs or wagging tail? Cause no matter how much we spend on our pets, we’re really taking care of ourselves.What more could we want, on a long, cold winter night, than the warm, soft bulk of our best animal friend, curling up beside us?

purrs!
Clea

Cries and Whiskers
Now Available

Homepage: www.cleasimon.com/

my blog: cleasimon.blogspot.com

Clea Simon is the author of several nonfiction books, including “The Feline Mystique: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats” (St. Martin’s) and the Theda Krakow cat mystery series, “Mew is for Murder,” “Cattery Row,” and the brand new “Cries and Whiskers,” all published by Poisoned Pen Press.