I've been asked so many times how I became a writer or why do I write. I only know that from the time I could really put words on paper, I have loved to write. I could express my feelings and write down something that was meaningful, maybe to me or to the family. I wrote short stories while in school about our vacations, I wrote poems and essays and even after I had a family of my own, I would write little poems for the holidays or little short stories for my two daughters. I never did anything with them, although my family were always after me to pursue a writing career. I just enjoyed doing it. I had a vivid imagination and as the years passed by I allowed that imagination to come out more and more.
I went through a few years where I didn't do much writing at all. To busy working or had other interests but in 1995 my husband and I bought a farm in southwest Arkansas and it wasn't long until my muse arrived.
When we first moved there, we didn't have a lot of cats, a few around the poultry houses and then when I discovered two kittens in one of them, I took them up to the house so I would have some outdoor kitties. I had a cat in the house at the time, Silver Anne, my Persian, but I wanted kitties outdoors too. Then a neighbor gave me a kitten they had rescued from the side of the road and before long, I had a lot of kitties outdoors.
One of the kittens I had taken from the poultry house grew into a big black cat who was as gentle as anything. The kitten that had been rescued grew into a loving gray cat. Dusky and Nancy were the start of many kittens to come.
Dusky was the best daddy of all and evidently his patience and personality was a trait that was passed down. It is well known that tom cats do not like little baby kittens but not Dusky. He never once showed any tendency to harm them and as they grew would often lie in the yard allowing them to crawl all over him or play with his tail. Nancy was a good mother too and it wasn't uncommon to see Nancy and Dusky lying together with their little family running around playing. And of course with my imagination, I visualized them as real like people.
Dusky and Nancy produced several litters and often we would have anywhere from a dozen or more kittens or cats around. We used them in our own poultry houses or gave them to other farmers so we could control them. It would have been fruitless for us to have them spayed or neutered as the life expectancy wasn't that great for them, so we or I should say, I started a cat business.
Dusky just disappeared one day and Nancy was really lost without her partner. She reproduced with other cats in the area but the trademark of most of my cats were they were all black cats. Occasionally I would have a yellow one or a tabby but most were black, some with white, others solid. Nancy was a soft gray color and her fur was as soft as velvet. It was thick but not really long. Dusky was a short hair as well, but occasionally I would have a long haired cat and one of those cats was one that I called Cassie. Actually her mother was a black and white spotted cat that was one of the first kittens born on the property and later disappeared as many of them did.
With the presence of coyotes who ran through our fields at night, the cats would often be caught out alone and sometimes we would find their remains but often we didn't, yet we suspected they had been caught by the coyotes or perhaps a wild dog that sometimes would wander through the area.
We'd been on the farm for over two years when I went back to work. During that time I didn't do any writing but I still had my kitties. When I quit working full time in 2000, I helped my husband around the farm and an idea kept popping into my head. I would dream about it, or it would come to me as I was working around the house.
One day I mentioned it to my husband, thinking he would laugh at me for wanting to write a story about Cassie and the cats. But he didn't and in fact, he encouraged me to do so. I first started writing it in long hand and after going through two tablets, I got the idea that the computer would be better and so I began to re write the story and add to it.
At the time, we had 25 cats living on the farm, either near the house or around the poultry houses or even at my daughter's home as she had moved a trailer onto the property. I had every cat named that was around the house and knew each one, even though most were black, they each had a special look or something so I knew who they were.
Our farm was surrounded on three sides by a pine forest and there were areas that had little clearings scattered through out. There was one not to far from our house and I would watch the cats as they would wander off that way to go hunting or play or whatever they did. And during this time, I noticed one long haired black female cat that I named Cassie seemed to have taken over and kept the cats in line. Nancy had disappeared the winter before and it was a few months before we discovered her remains which saddened me. But I think Cassie was her replacement as Nancy had been the matriarch and now Cassie had taken on that roll.
With that many cats, we didn't have cat fights or problems. It was common to go outside and as I called it, "see a carpet of cats". They would by lying in a group, some sleeping, some just watching and of course there were always kittens playing in and around them. The adults didn't seem to mind the antics of the kittens and I could hear the mothers with their soft mews get after them if they got to rowdy or were bothering another cat. It was funny to watch as the mother cats would mew their own sound to get the attention of their offspring and take them off to teach them hunting skills.
The story was written but I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I told my husband and family about it and gave them a short version and they all told me I had to publish it. I searched the internet looking for a publishing company and ended up with a small publisher that I paid to publish the book for me and I bought copies to sell.
I was so proud of myself but more important, my family was proud of me and encouraged me to keep writing.
And of course, I did and I haven't stopped yet. Please read my next blog entry as I give you some insight to Cassie's Clearing and how the cats lived there.
No comments:
Post a Comment