I know I haven’t written about my kitties for a long time, so I thought I would update about them. We have four, all seniors.
Perry, my true love and favorite fur person (only rivaled by dearly departed Pear Blossom). I won’t say much as I don’t like to “jinx” anything. Gray and white, medium-long-haired.
Sloopy Anne, my best little girl who sleeps with the gardener and me. One of our other cats (Lily) hates Sloopy Anne with a passion, so we have a gate dividing our house in half. Sloops lives in the bedroom half. Tortico–tortoisehell from the top and calico from the bottom.
Lily, one of my son’s cats who I took in. She is so mean to Sloopy so Lily is confined to the front half of the house. The reason this is fair is because Lily is a dominant cat in great need of human touch and companionship. Sloopy is more reticent and happy in back. If the gardener sits down, Lily climbs on his chest up to his neck and sticks there like velcro. She can’t get through the gate because she’s fat. Orange and white long-haired who knows she’s beautiful.
Meesker, the other one of my son’s cats. He’s shy and was bullied by Lily for years, so for the last couple of years he’s lived in the back of the house with Sloopy Anne. However, just recently, he decided he likes it out front with Perry. Lily doesn’t dare bully Meesker out here because Perry keeps her in line. Perry is the benevolent king. Meesker is so skinny (GI issues) that he slides between the bars of the gate we put up so he can come and go as he pleases. (Actually so can Perry when he really really wants to do it). All black with black whiskers and toe beans.
The boys, Perry and Meesker:
###
The wonderful journal Gone Lawn has published two of my micros: “Nature’s Ways” and “The New Girl.” The first one is fanciful. The second is kind of heart-breaking. It’s in honor of all the new girls who didn’t come into a school with the best clothes or nurturing.
https://gonelawn.net/journal/issue61/Castle.php
“Nature’s Ways” begins this way:
Ethel hoisted herself off the old, webbed chair with one hand and a sigh, grabbed her muddy gloves, and slipped on wet grass toward the garden at the back wall. Her dear Buttercup had passed in her arms the day before, and her enthusiasm for her garden, even life itself, had seemed to die with the little marmalade cat.
“The New Girl” begins this way:
The school secretary handed you off to Miss Dixon, as if you were a slippery, prickery, stinky fish, and you sat in that front row seat where nobody else wanted to sit and didn’t look around so everybody could stare at you until lunch, and I admit I was no different, noting your limp faded dress,
###
Two of my micros were finalists in a contest by The Ekphrastic Review.
You can find them at:
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/perfect-ten-marathon-flash-fiction-finalists-and-winner
If you go to that link you will find all the finalist stories as well as the winning story.
Here are the two inspiring art pieces that I wrote from with beginnings of the stories.
###
Rogue Agent published two of my collages at https://www.rogueagentjournal.com/lcastle along with a written description of each collage and some comments I make about them.
These collages were inspired by Sylvia Plath poems. The first, “Feverish,” is based on the poem “Fever 103.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29479/fever-103
This is one of my favorite poems ever. I hope you give it a read! Plath wrote it after she had been plagued by with a high fever for quite some time.
The other collage, “What a Thrill,” was inspired by the Plath poem, “Cut.”
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8498445-Cut-by-Sylvia-Plath
