Monthly Archives: January 2025

Missing My Cats

If you’ve been reading this blog for some time you may remember the year of cat rainbow heaven (2021). In July of that year, my daughter’s cat Isabella Rose passed.  We had a close relationship because we used to babysit her at our house a lot. Perry loved to watch over her, so we called him the babysitter. When Izzie suffered a sudden and never diagnosed illness and was failing, my daughter asked me to come to the emergency vet so I could say goodbye. When I got there, the on-call vet pressured us to let him euthanize her before she coded. They never told us what was wrong. We all–but especially my daughter–still miss her a lot.

A month later we lost our sweet sweet boy Felix.

A month after that my heart completely broke with the loss of the amazing love (and nurse to all who are sick–human, cat, dog), Pear Blossom.

Pear Blossom

What a difficult year. But what followed was a worse year. Heart-rending family troubles, and the loss of Tiger Queen Princess Mimi. I wrote a hybrid poem/story/journal that is mostly nonfiction (some time elements were shifted, etc.). You could call it hybrid nonfiction/fiction. Founder and Editor of the new journal Feed the Holy, Barbara Harris Leonhard has published this piece today. I hope you cry a little, but then can smile.

https://feedthehol.blogspot.com/2025/01/journal-from-year-after-several-of-my.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawH19mdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHS2KrLj8JUWfD6FmONxP1g60hnuILFReTWuxPMg9acU9U853ncR4UKxfuQ_aem_m7QeVSF3ab1C2nV4sZbXcw

Tiger on the piano

If you’re still reading you can also find three of my collages at the journal Thimble. Yay!!! You can find them all at this link. Let me know which one you like best if you have time to check them out!

https://www.thimblelitmag.com/author/lcastle/

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Filed under #AmWriting, #poetswithcats, Art and Music, Cats and Other Animals, Flash Nonfiction, Literary Journals, Memoir, Poetry, Writing

Three Fairy Tales, Because That’s Where Things Happen in Threes

You might figure that someone who revised the classic tale of Red Riding Hood in her chapbook Our Wolves might be interested in fairy tales. And I am!!! Today I have three fairy tales I’d like to share with you. The first two are new publications, and the third is personal.

This flash story, “The Floromancy of Identification,” in Panoply is in the folk tale style, but puts a new spin on things. The whole issue is wonderful, and I think you can skip around from this link to mine to other poems and stories.

https://shorturl.at/LKk6M

The second is in the new issue of Last Stanza Poetry Journal and responds to the cover image, an illustration by Swedish artist john Bauer and in the tradition of troll literature. The idea of a changeling has long fascinated me. Definition from Oxford:  “child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents’ real child in infancy.” Trolls are also known for creating changelings by stealing human babies.


You should be able to click on the cover image below to get to Amazon.

Last Stanza Poetry Journal Issue #19: Fable

 

Now to the third fairy tale. The gardener and I are celebrating our FIFTIETH wedding anniversary this month. I know, wild, huh? And just like in fairy tales, we have had some real curveballs thrown at us by trolls, giants, and monsters (which are sometimes us).

But we prevailed, and here we are: fifty years out. It’s so hard to believe since I can remember all those early days so well.

The “kids” and baby grandson all took us out for a wonderful dinner and gave us a poster montage featuring the legendary (to our family) photo of the Holiday Inn where we had a dinner-dance reception (and even found some vintage postcards of the hotel). The marquee out front has our names on it. The kids love that photo, and my brother resends it to me every year!

Full disclosure: above photo is at the 42nd anniversary point . . . . But I kinda like it.

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Filed under #AmWriting, #OurWolves, #poetrycommunity, #writingcommunity, Fairy Tales, Flash Fiction, Literary Journals, Poetry, Writing

I Need a Cat at MasticadoresUSA

 

 

A big thank you to Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard at MasticadoresUSA for publishing my fun cat fantasy based on an assignment from first grade that I found (and Barbara published here–I will post below) and stimulated by a painting used as a prompt (but not enough to credit in the story) from a wonderful workshop by Lorette C. Luzajic and Meg Pokrass. The workshop was about guilty pleasures, and one of mine is cats!!!

 

“I Want a Cat” by Luanne Castle

My parents adopted my brother two years later, but in the meantime, I did get a black kitten from the family across the street whose cat had kittens. My mother named my cat Toby.

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Filed under #AmWriting, #poetswithcats, #writingcommunity, Flash Fiction