Ali Brandon | A Close-Up Look At Black Kitties

When I first started writing the Black Cat Bookshop Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime, our current feline companions happened to be orange tabby brothers. Not that the hubby and I hadn’t been caretakers to black cats before; we just seemed to have settled on tiger cats for the duration. But after spending so much time with my fictional black cat, Hamlet, I couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss in Cat Land.

One thing I love about our orange tabby boys is that they’re mellow guys without
the “bite” of the ornery Hammy. That said, I wondered if maybe I needed a junior
Hamlet of my own to help jumpstart my writing when I hit a tough spot. Sweet
purring cats do not equal compelling plot points! And so, after much
consideration, we adopted a brother and sister pair of sleek black felines whom
we named Brandon Bobtail (he has but half a tail) and Ophelia.

But after barely a month of living with the new kitty duo, I was amused to
remember something I’d forgotten over the years—that having a black cat in the
house is like living with a shadow. Or, in our case, a pair of shadows! Half the
time, especially in the evening, you can’t see the darn kitties until they’re
almost in your lap! And heaven forbid they’re lying on a dark rug in a dark room
as you come walking in. Terrible cat screeches and profound human apologies are
the usual result. But the major problem with the camouflage shadow thing is
that, while Ophelia is content to be a proper indoor kitty, Brandon thinks
outside the house…er, box. He makes a game of trying to cloak himself in shadows
and sneak past the front door whenever we let the dogs out for their evening
potty break.

And when a cat wants something, he usually achieves it. Clever Brandon has
actually escaped the house after dark a few times, resulting in a full-fledged
kitty alert and roundup. For he doesn’t simply stroll about the front walk
breathing in the night air; instead, he plays hide-and-seek in the shadowy
shrubbery while we chase after him with a flashlight. One time, not knowing he’d
gone AWOL, I almost had a heart attack when I found him lurking on the roof over
the front door in the dark like some crazed vampire kitty. The subsequent rescue
mission for that particular breakout required patience, a feathered toy, and a
ladder, but all ended well.

Fortunately, we live on a dead end road in the country, so speeding cars aren’t
an issue. But coyotes and big owls—heck, even alligators!—are very real hazards,
so we couldn’t risk midnight kitty excursions on a regular basis. Vigilance, we
realized, was key…except that some cat parents are more vigilant than others.
(Ahem. Did I mention that all Brandon escapes were on the hubby’s watch?). On
top of being super-alert, we needed a secondary anti-escape strategy.

And so we equipped both cats with breakaway collars complete with little jingle
bells. We reasoned that, even if we couldn’t see one of them trying to slip
between our feet as we opened the door to the night, we could hear them. It
seemed a clever enough plan, until we realized that the little “tinkle, tinkle”
of the jingle bell only sounded when the cats a) were jumping up onto the
furniture or b) were rolling about on the floor, wrestling. The rest of the
time—including when Brandon was in “sneak out” mode—their fur muffled sound of
the bell. That, or the little stinkers had learned to walk without jangling.

At that point, we decided that the only other option was a honking big cowbell
tied around their respective kitty necks. We also conceded that the cowbell
thing probably wasn’t a practical alternative. So, we had to go back to the
super-vigilant strategy.

And, for the time being, vigilance is working. I’m glad to say that Brandon
hasn’t made an escape in recent months. But, as payback for being denied his
little adventures, Brandon has perfected the “leap from the tall dresser and end
with a four-paw landing on the sleeping human’s belly” cat-robatic routine.
Blending as he does with the shadows, he’s long since gone invisible by the time
said sleeping human leaps from the bed, now wide awake. And it’s hard to scold
the little brat when I can’t actually prove he’s the culprit.

Could have been the dog, I can almost hear him saying, snickering behind one paw.

Forget the bells and the vigilance. Maybe I need to look into glow-in-the-dark
paint for one particular shadow cat!