Thank you, Library Journal!

"A delightful new series"! Woohoo!

Library Journal

Berkshires pet psychic Pru Marlowe finds her highest-paying client dead in his living room with his throat torn out. The prime suspect is the victim's blood-covered pit bull, Lily. Trying to save Lily places Pru squarely on the path to danger. VERDICT Simon, author of the Theda Krakow (Probable Claws) and Dulcie Schwartz series (Grey Matters), launches a delightful new pet series that will appeal to fans of Shirley Rousseau Murphy and Rita Mae Brown.

How far should we go to save our pets?

These days, we can get our kitties chemo or a new kidney, but should we? My buddy Vicki Constantine Croke wrote this thoughtful and well researched story for yesterday's Boston Globe Magazine, asking just how much is too much? Pictured is Boswell, a goose, getting anesthesia before his chemotherapy.

Wear your pet!

No, not "where your pet?" I mean, why not wear your pet as the wonderful ornament to your life that he or she is?

My friend Laurie has long pursued a variety of interesting crafts and arts, developing a real flair for folk art that looks (and feels) good. And now that she and her husband Ted have adopted a dog, they've discovered pet love. The result, as these pictures show, is PETS RULE JEWELS, a line of jewelry that incorporates images of your pets! A few months ago, when Laurie was still working out the kinks in the idea, she made me a pair of earrings with a photo of Musetta in them and asked if I'd wear them and let her know how they felt, how they hung, and what I thought. I loved them. They're light enough that I can wear them all day and night, they hang just right and catch the light. They're pretty. And at some point someone will go ... "wait a minute, is that your cat?" She's my friend, but beyond that, I just love these. And, yes, she does dogs, too. (That's Dolly, their adopted pup, to the right.)

The whole process is simple: Contact Laurie at petsrulejewels@yahoo.com and arrange to email her a picture of your pet. She will go over the details (sizes, etc., are at her website page), but they are VERY reasonably priced - and she's covering her own shipping costs for the rest of June.

The real cost of pets

Hmm... I understand the point of this New York Times article on the costs of having a pet. The writer is trying to alert folks on a budget about the often overlooked expenses of living with an animal. Or she just got a copy of the 2008 APPMA pet products trend report and pitched it at her editor as something fun. (Hey, we journalists do that.)

But talk about missing the boat. First, she mentions not buying a dog from a pet store in a kind of obligatory way. BUY a pet? Reputable pet supply stores no longer sell pets. They pair with shelters to do adoptions, but they do not sell puppies or kitttens, and those sad, grimy little corner stores that do ought to give any half sensible person fair warning. Yes, you might be the last chance for the poor animals there, but odds are you won't get a healthy animal. Then, she talks about adopting from a shelter but seems surprised that "you cannot just walk in and pick up a dog or a cat." She mentions that the usual fee may include shots and/or neutering, but not why shelters ask questions. It's not just to screen out the crazies (that, too), but it's also often part of a national effort to better pair people with pets. People who know what they're getting in terms of temperment, health, needs, and lifespan, are better able to make the lifelong commitment. The shelter asks questions because they don't want that cute kitten coming back in six months, when she's no longer quite so adorable. Or that frisky puppy returning in a year, untrained, because his once-playful antics no longer amuse the clueless owner.

Yes, regular vet visits are expensive. As is proper food, bedding, litter, etc. But if someone is going to write about who pays the real cost in improvident pet adoption, that writer should at least note that too often it's the animals who pay – and they pay with their lives.

(Thanks to Scott Delucchi of the Penninsula Humane Society for explaining how shelters are making sure more animals have healthy "forever" homes. Look for more in Probable Claws.)

Amphibimania!

I know I'm associated with cats, and I do love me some felines. But when I was much younger, I also had a serious thing for toads and lizards (not snakes, I like legs). I still remember my pet toad, Dyatt (pronounced "Dwight") fondly. And so, for the hidden herpetologist in all of us, I am thrilled to present this news story about a gigantic prehistoric toad, Beelzebufo!

(the above is an artist's rendering of the 10 lb. Beezlebufo facing off against the largest modern toad, with the pencil for reference. Seems to me, this modern toad could be eaten whole by a cane toad, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.)

Guest blogger: Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is one of my favorite people. Not only is she a generous friend and kindred spirit, she's a wonderful writer. Her latest novel, Girls in Trouble was a BookSense pick and was named a top book by Mostly Fiction, and I know she has another in the works! (She has her own fun blog, Caroline Leavittville, too.) It was while we were talking about her latest work-in-progress that the idea of pets in books came up, and she sent me this sweet essay on "Animal Instincts and the Novel."

(I'm down in the New York metro area, Caroline's neck of the woods today, speaking at Partners and Crime and seeing her will definitely be one of the highlights of my trip!)


If I could, I would have six cats and four dogs. Or at least one of each. But I’m allergic. Really allergic. Sigh and alas. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a pet—which I did for twenty years, a beautiful, cranky, jagged shelled Vietnamese tortoise named Minnie. Minnie kept me company through my single years in NYC, and was even the litmus test for whom I would marry (Jeff was the only man who would eat dinner with Minnie perched on the dining room table). Minnie recently died, but because characters—and animals—live forever on the page, I paid homage to him by making him a character in the novel I’ve just finished.

My novel Traveling Angels is about how we forgive the unforgivable. It revolves around Isabelle, a photographer whose car crashes on a foggy road, killing a mysterious woman who is standing in the middle of the road, her car turned the wrong way. Wrestling with guilt, Isabelle becomes obsessed and involved with the survivors—and one day, impulsively, she rescues a tortoise in a pet shop, which becomes a catalyst in her relationships.

I never had so much fun writing the tortoise scenes. Nelson, the tortoise, not only gave Isabelle a deeper humanity, but I found that when initial readers were scanning the pages, they were always fascinated by him! Suddenly tortoise lore was interesting! Was it true that tortoises bite red things and the only way to get them to loosen their incredibly strong jaws is to put them in a bathtub (yup.) Do tortoises really make clicking sounds like reptilian music? (They sure do.)

My novel fast forwards thirty years at the end. “Nelson must be gone by now,” a character remarks sadly, but how could I let that happen? By novel’s end, he’s older and probably no wiser, but he’s still there, alive on the page and in my heart. Just like Minnie.

Cats on wheels!

One of our great local shelters here in Boston, Animal Rescue League, has launched a mobile pet adoption van. When I had lunch with two of ARL's guys last week, we talked about this and I asked about screening. After all, for someone to take an animal in while it's still a cute kitten or a puppy only to bring it back a few months later, when it is considered less cute and adoptable, is a crime. But as this article makes clear, the ARL is being pretty good about screening. At any rate, they're trying -- which is why I'm contributing both a set of signed books and the right to name a character to their big October fundraiser "Moonlight Ball", and why we'll be doing a fund-raising event later this year. More details as they come together.


And, yes, this is where we got Musetta. This is what she looked like in those days:

To spay or not to spay?

Seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it? With millions of perfectly fine, healthy and loveable animals literally dying for want of a good home, spaying and neutering only makes sense. But should spaying and neutering be mandatory? That's an argument that's raging in the animal world now -- with groups like the Humane Society of the US facing off against other respected animal advocates. While some say such laws would eliminate or reduce the number of cruel "puppy mills" and "kitten mills," and perhaps allow stronger actions to be taken against hoarders, others see these potential laws as being driven by a hard-core animal extremist agenda that seeks the eventual elimination of all domesticated animals.

Animal rights vs. animal welfare, it's a thorny topic (and the theme of Cries and Whiskers, too, when a feral-cat rescuer meets an untimely death).

Where do you stand on the issue?

The planned extermination of pets?

What follows is a guest blog by Diana Engelbart, a retired breeder of Birmans. She's also a co-founder of Birman Rescue and former treasurer of CFA Purebred Rescue and serves as a state coordinator for the Winn Feline Foundation. Do you think she makes the case? Let me know by posting below!
- Clea

The Planned Extinction of Pets

Way back in 1951 as I was learning to use my legs, Mom and I encountered a black bulldog owned by a neighbor. All of the children in the neighborhood would run in terror from the ugly dog. Not me. As hard as my stubby legs would allow and as hard as his stubby legs would allow we would drag our respective Moms toward each other until we were within a slobbering hugfest of each other.

And so it has been from that time until now. The cats I share my life with provide a wealth of enrichment and love. I hope that I enrich their lives as much as they enrich mine.

If the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, The American Humane Association, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The Animal Liberation Front, et al have their way pets will become extinct.

It is happening now, town by town, city by city and state by state. It is called mandatory spay/neuter. Rhode Island enacted mandatory spay/neuter last year, as did Albuquerque. Bills are on dockets in several states, including Massachusetts and California.

Ostensibly to control the overpopulation of cats that we all know exists; these ordinances do not deliver on their promises. Where these ordinances have been enacted, to a one, they have failed: the populations of unowned cats continues to climb, administrative costs skyrocket, promised revenues never appear and euthanasia rates climb as people “dump” pets they can’t afford to sterilize and/or don’t want to be surveiled by the “Muffy and Fluffy” patrol.

You see, some of these ordinances strip you of your Fourth and Fifth Amendment Rights (Unlawful search and seizure and self incrimination). The jack booted thugs of the Animal Cops can search your home without warning any time of day and they know who you are because you had to register to receive this abuse.

Mandatory spay/neuter does precisely nothing to address the problem of increasing populations of unowned cats, and the attendant problems that such increases bring, while neatly stripping you of your rights,

It is highly unlikely that Fluffy Tomcat will apply to city hall for a license to breed. Equally unlikely is that Muffy Momcat will sashay into the nearest Veterinary Hospital and request to be spayed.

A more effective, non invasive to human civil liberties, and humane approach is that of Trap/Neuter/Return. These programs exist, run by volunteers gasping for funding. Only one TNR program in the country is legislated; that one is in Cape May, NJ. Cape May’s TNR program is at risk after its facilities burned. One has to wonder how that fire happened.

Seattle tried to enact TNR, but was blocked by the HSUS.

My friends, the agenda is NOT the welfare of the animals; it is the elimination of all “uses” of animals, including the ones who purr in your laps or guide you when you can not see.