Category: My Books & Stories
Cat Tales, 15
While the pernickety old woman pruned the rosebush in the front yard, a cheeky tom pranced along our back fence. I streaked over there, intending to see him off! I ran up the fence, made to dance along the top, thinking to tip the top crossbar every couple of paces with my right side foot and paw. For balance.
I was stuck! My rear claw too deep in the soft old timber! I wrenched and jerked to get free, tore my toe almost from my foot. Hurt! Hurt!
I miaowed and wailed and screamed for help. “Hurt! Tearing! My foot!”
My human came running. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”
“Oh no!” she said. “I’ll have to cut you loose and there’s blood already!”
“Hang on!” She pulled my leg back at the same time as snipping my claw through with the secateurs.
I screeched, would’ve jumped down and run, but she gripped me by the scruff of my neck. She moved me onto her shoulder and kneeled down to where she’d dropped her gardening apron. Moved me onto that and had me rolled up in it in a flash.
“Phew!” she said. Got to her feet. “I know I can’t trust you not to get free so you’ll have to come.” She took me into the garage. “We’re looking for the cat carrier. Give me a nudge when you see it.”
Me give her a nudge? I hate the cat carrier!
“Found it! Don’t move now!” She lay me on the work bench and slid the cat carrier out from under it. “It’s dusty! Where’s a rag?”
I wrenched and wriggled. Just about got myself free when she grabbed me and fed me into the cat carrier.
Yowling, I hung onto the doorway as usual but my heart wasn’t in the struggle. I smelled my blood. I wanted to be licking my foot. Let myself be pushed in.
She shut the little gate and barred it. “Well, let me think,” she said. “I doubt that I can carry you—carrier and all—all the way to the vet.”
I pressed into the back of the carrier. Really not interested. Found my wound and started licking.
The pernickety old woman went to the garden shed. Got out the wheelbarrow and lifted the carrier onto it. Trundled me down the drive, left turn into the street, across the road. Another left turn and a couple of blocks along. Right turn into the bad place.
I yowled. Felt sick. The turns and trundles dizzy-making. Give me peace and quiet. I don’t like it at the vet’s. They have pointy things they stick into me. They have rules. Dogs on their leashes, cats in their carriers. I wailed as the pernickety old woman carried me into the waiting room.
“Oh dear,” the secretary said while I took a breath. “Bleeding?”
“Yes, quite a bit of the red stuff,” the pernickety old woman said. She explained what she thought had happened.
“Come through,” one of the vet nurses said.
My human picked up the carrier and we went into the scary place.
————
Yes. They stuck me with something. I spent the night. Refused their food. In the morning, I was bandaged up. When we got home, the carrier and the wheelbarrow again, my human locked me in the shed. “Go to sleep,” she said. “They said you would want to. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Lodestar, Notes for Part III
For the purposes of ordering book covers at the same time for all three parts of Lodestar, I’m continuing with this part of the saga. Viewpoint characters will be Ahni and Srese and the implant by way of both Srese’s and Kes’s life-suits.
(For those following Kestrel–you know who you are–don’t worry.)
Some of the materials I’m rewriting have been ‘on the back-burner’ and ‘under the bed’ for more than ten years and have dated somewhat. This is a definite risk where science fiction is concerned.
Lol ‘under the bed’ is where we writers kept our manuscripts in the pre-computer days, when everything had to be either hand-written or typed or both. We kept our first drafts in grocery boxes under the bed between edits, and we stored our non-viable manuscripts under there for when we’d need to mine them—pick and shovel style—for anything useful.
‘On the back-burner’ was a rotation strategy when we happened to be writing two or three novels at the same time. This was never recommended, but a rule often broken, from what I heard. We’d have a metaphoric stove going, with front and back burners. We’d keep one or two works stewing on the rear hot-plates while the one we were working on was being stirred on a front burner.
‘Burner’ will no doubt be remaindered when we all change over to 100 percent electricity.
My favorite metaphor for the writing process is the composting one. This refers to the idea that all the notes and scraps of paper living on a writer’s desk, her study floor, the front and back pages of printed books, her handbag, my pants pockets, gardening shirt and every other flat surface or container are collected.
The next step is to layer them, perhaps in proposed chapters, and arrange them in strategic places around my chair in the study nook for subsequent inputting. Overnight—because I’d always be called away to deal with this or that household crisis—things melded in a mysterious composting process such as happens on a forest floor, resulting ‘magically’ in meaning and order.
This time, however, I’ll be incorporating new ideas and updating old materials. I’ll be repairing bridges, writing stealthy byways, and designing new camel-ways. No magic other than sere insights.
I see I’ll have to adopt some kind of engineering metaphor to take care of all that road-building.
Hope to have you along.
Cat Tales, 14
Despite the danger of the currawongs, I got used to doing my proper Hand-of-God work, and revelled in the thrill of seeing off intruders.
Small dogs, magpies and kookaburras all took flight when I ran at them. My large belly flubbered and wobbled as I ran, was one visitor’s unkind remark, after her little dog hid under her chair. My human glazed a stern glare over her face.
I am big, I accept it. Comes with being a daytime cat, apparently. My size helps me stay on top of the heap.
When even the pheasant-coucal stopped coming, probably because I chased him from the premises one too many times, I started to look for more excitement.
I had a go at climbing a tree. Got as far as the first branch, not more than a metre and a half from the ground.
The pernickety old woman, moving very fast for a human of her age, slapped an aluminium ladder against the trunk.
While she tied a denim apron round her waist I did not have the good sense to keep climbing. Always a sticky beak, I stopped to see what she was planning.
She climbed the ladder and lifted me from the tree. “Forget it,” she said. “You’re too heavy. Lucky for you I saw you before you got too high.”
“I’ll explain why one day,” she said through my complaints.
She continued wrapping me in the apron, tying the corners tightly round her waist. There’d be no getting free.
She climbed down and took me back to the deck. Where I lay about, sulking, and licking my wounded pride.
Cat Tales, 13
Now came the time of the big birds. They made me so mad!
I could sit inside on my chair, or I could sit with my human on the deck under the awning. Whenever either of us went into the yard, a pied currawong would chase us back onto the deck or into the house. Currawongs are like large crows I’ve heard it said, except they are black and white.
We had some Bangalow Palm trees in our yard, and when their berries turned red, all the currawongs in the neighborhood congregate in our other trees where they wait their turn to eat the berries.
Too bad I can’t show you. My human tried to take a pic and they swooped her. She came running back in under the awning. We had to make do with just the one that lives nearby and sometimes comes by itself.
Yellow eyes. Fierce-looking. It even has a berry in its beak.
There’s another sort of black-and-white bird around, as well. They have red-brown eyes and grey-white beaks, and aren’t as big or fierce. They’re Australian magpies. One of them comes into the yard to listen for worms traveling underground. When it hears one, it pokes its beak into the grass to catch them.
When I chase the magpie, it just jumps up higher than I can jump, and comes down again when I’m not looking. I’ve given up on it. I don’t like worms.
Lodestar 40, Kes and Ahni
A big one today. Well, big in events and emotions. I’m positioning this as the final chapter in the second installment. I’m undecided about Part III.
It can either be Sard’s story, The Remaindered Avatar, posted already as far as it goes, but needing me to write a finale.
Or I can break new ground with Srese’s ongoing story? With Srese as the viewpoint character in this installment, Kes and Ahni continue their lives in the background with every so often a spot-lit action.
Cat Tales, 12
That big fluffy white rug is me of course, relaxing in the sun, while the pernickety old woman has her coffee and catches up on her social calls.
“Frog eggs?!” she said excitedly. “I have some too.” She laughed. “They’re no problem in my frog pond. I have an old cast iron bath now, that someone was tossing out in the white-goods recycling event.”
I pricked up my ears. Rolled over and sat up. Stared at the frog pond in the back of the yard. Reeds and a yellow flowering plant showed above the rim. On the white ledge nearest lay a bent piece of wood.
My human went on with her conversation. “There’s not a canetoad on Earth that can jump backward and over the lip. And they are not that good at climbing. Yes, I’ll teach my cat not to hunt them.”
Huh, I thought. We’ll see about that. I’ll hunt whatever catches my eye. And something did catch my eye just then. I stared.
The piece of wood on the lip of the pond moved! All by itself! Not a breath of wind!
This I needed to investigate. I hopped down from the deck and stalked silently toward the frog pond using all the cover at my disposal.
“Won’t do you any good,” the pernickety old woman called from the deck. “It’s the Frog Pond Guardian at her post.”
Her words made no sense. Belly to the ground, I leopard-crawled nearer, the nasturtium patch grew densely to well above my head.
I peered around the corner …
A large water dragon stared implacably back at me. I’d heard rumours about this lizard. In the backyard nextdoor it was supposed to have bitten off the head of a hen sitting on a nest of eggs.
The lizard moved! I backed up in a hurry! Waited there in the protection of the nasturtiums. Peered round the corner.
No. It just changed position. Lay there, immoveable.
“She’s just sunning herself,” the pernickety old woman said from behind me. What is it about her? She is always, always, giving away my hunting position.
Rita de Heer 