My Work in Progress--WHY CATS?

Cats are special. Having had dogs I didn't realize how unique and special they were until I had one. My dogs had to be rehomed after my husband's death as I could no longer walk them. It hurt. Any pet owner knows just how much it can hurt.

I have a very special cat. Her name is Sasha and this is her at 8 weeks.

She is three now and in the time I have had her, she has been there for me through my worst grieving. Always supportive and loyal she taught me just how special a special feline can be. 

A more recent photo. She has this intense way of looking at me sometimes. Like she knows all about me. It's like she wants to speak! Okay, I'm a writer and I am imagining that, but perhaps she does, in her own cat-like way. 

Any time I get upset or fall into the depths of sadness over my loss, I perk up just looking at cats. I watch videos of them, I share photos and I find I am feeling better. 

The book I'm writing is about a cat that is special, special in supernatural ways. And it saves people because of this talent! I will dedicate the book to Sasha because she saved me from the depths of sadness. If I look at her, I can see in her eyes that she knows every secret written in my soul. She knows the names of the people that helped me and those that didn't. 

She knows and understands and that, in itself, is comforting. 

Using history and The Burning Times in my novel!

 Ah, yes! Nothing like an action which was all too prevelant in Mediavel Europe. Burning witches! That went on for hundreds of years all over Europe. Salem, Mass. got into the act with their own brand of lunacy which at least didn't involve burning. Rocks were laid upon something like a door which was pressing upon the chest of some hapless local inhabitant. There are very interesting documents which show, particularly in Salem, how an accuser's land increased when the accused neighbor was no more. Human nature can be so fascinating.

Okay, so why blog about that now? It has to do with my work in progress. If people were accused of witchcraft, their cats perished along with them!

Here's a quote which put me off the coronation of QE1, Somehow I don't think it would have been depicted in the Cate Blanchett films about Elizabtheh 1.:

“Last Saturday the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was solemnised in the city with mighty bonfires and the burning of a most costly pope, carried by four persons in diverse clothing, and the effigies of devils whispering in his ears, his belly filled full of live cats, who squawled most hideously as soon as they felt the fire. The common saying all the while was [the cats’ screeching] was the language of the Pope and the Devil in a dialogue between them.”

https://alphahistory.com/pastpeculiar/1677-londoners-burn-live-cats-wicker-pope/

How horrible. It's one of the issues that I am researching for my book because it's relevant to the plot. Cats feature in my book as they try to help a victim of war. 

My cats know all these things as do their human friends. Very special, heroic humans, I might add! 

I love history and have incorporated it in my novels and I do no less in my new book. History, even if one is writing a contemporary novel, has shaped the world and us in it. Things happen because of it. 

Hatred, bigotry, religious intolerance are integral to my plot and characters. 

I think fiction would be shallow and pretty meanignless without demonstrating why things have happened the way they have. History and events in it are, for me, the impetus for getting my story off the ground. It not only has to be off the ground it has to fly, move and affect the reader!

As one of my cats, in the book says, "I have always made allowances for humans because they are so incapable of being fair sometimes." 

Cats can be difficult, even the cats know that, but they aren't in the position to incinerate entire populations of human beings just because they feel they ought to.