How to Outsmart a Cat

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

Invader Zim, Ruler of the Universe (Zim for short) came to us as a tiny kitten found in the woods with his mother and promptly named by our son after a cartoon character. He is now around fifteen or so, and refuses to live in comfort in the house. He will come inside, but only if the door is left open. Because we live where it snows, my husband built him a box on the porch that has a heat lamp, bed, and even a small window.

He also has a cat perch where he loves to sit and look in our living room window. My husband says we are his fishbowl and he likes to sit there and watch our activities. I think it allows him to be part of the family without being inside.

The thing is, he has my husband trained and unfortunately, my husband’s recliner is right next to the window and the perch. Zim waits patiently until he sits down and finally gets comfortable, and then bangs his head on the window. Not gently, not a polite knock, but a bang that you can’t ignore. I don’t know how he hasn’t ended up with brain damage. Zim, not the husband. Although, who knows. Because it drives my husband nuts.

Zim bangs when he wants food. When he wants cream. When he wants my husband to come outside and sit with him. And my husband is very well trained. Plus he has a finely developed sense of guilt so he can’t just sit there reading while Zim whacks his head on the glass.

So this weekend we moved all the furniture in the living room. Completely swapped the whole thing so that the recliner is now next to a window that does not have a porch or a cat perch and is not where Zim can see the husband. I wondered how many people rearrange their whole house to accommodate a cat that doesn’t even live inside. But it gave my husband peace of mind and allowed me to deep clean before winter.

So we outsmarted the cat.

For one evening.

Zim can no longer see us so he has started yowling. Loudly. For me, it’s no big deal as I can just take out the hearing aides. For my husband, with acute hearing and that guilt complex, he’s back to jumping up to get cat food.

Zim, ruler of our universe, has prevailed.

Epilogues in Fiction

/ Lisa / Leave a comment

Be forewarned, there are spoilers here relating to a book.

I just finished These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant. It was a great story I thoroughly enjoyed. Until I got to the epilogue. I’ve never read a book where the epilogue ruins the whole story. Typically they let you have a few more moments with a character, see how they managed after the drama of the story. This epilogue fulfilled that role, but, for me, left a gaping plot hole. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has read the book to see what they think. Maybe I missed something, which is entirely possible.

The premise of the book is that a father had his baby daughter taken away by grandparents. He retrieved his daughter and since then they have lived out in the woods, helped by an old friend and a hermit neighbor who watches over them. The premise is believable and well-written, there are great subplots, and the story is easy to sink into. The characters are fully developed and as a reader, I was immediately invested in their story. You know from the beginning that there will have to be a reckoning, but the journey to that end keeps the reader hooked.

Warning again, here comes the spoiler.

Finch, the daughter, witnesses a murder. The consequences mean that father and daughter may now be identified and found. The father will have to turn himself in, he knows he will lose his daughter and face jail time, and that Finch will be returned to the evil grandparents. Before this can happen though, the hermit steps in and, in the middle of other plot twists, says he murdered father and daughter and has proof. He is arrested and it gives father and daughter a way out.

And then the epilogue. A few years later. Finch eventually went to live with the grandparents and went to college. In these last pages she is returning to the cabin in the woods to see her father. She has lived a full life in her teen years, and her father let her go to the grandparents because he realized she needed that full life.

Wait just a second.

The grandparents were the antagonists, but suddenly in the epilogue they are the good guys. The solution to all the past drama is that grandparents and father simply don’t speak to each other. There are no consequences for the father., or for the grandparents in how they initially took Finch. We never get to see the father face the grandparents over what happened in the past. The old hermit, presumably sitting in prison for murder, continues to do so even though father and daughter were clearly never murdered. The grandfather is actually a judge, but does nothing to show the hermit was innocent after all. They all just let him continue with whatever sentence he was handed for confessing to something he didn’t do.

The epilogue made me not like any of those main characters that I had just spent a few days with. How did no one in the editing side of things not sit up and say ‘hey, wait a minute’. How did no one mention to the author that there should have been some culminating interaction between the father and the grandparents to tie up the main reason for the whole plot? Not to mention the fact that a young girl who loved the hermit could simply just shrug shoulders and move in with grandparents who buy her a car and send her to college.

Like I said, this was the first time the final ending pages of a book ruined the whole thing. Typically when I check a book out of the library and love it, I’ll buy a copy so I can reread it. I actually was planning on doing that but now I can’t get past the epilogue.

Has anyone had a similar experience with a disappointing ending? What book was it, and why did the ending fail? I see this as a good lesson for us writers so I’d love to hear your stories.

Creativity in Driftwood

/ Lisa / 2 Comments

Last week my husband and I took a vacation to the Oregon coast. We like to go there during low tides or after storms to look for agates and rocks of all sorts. We hadn’t been in a long time and we both were very in need of a break. Plus, this was our dog’s first road trip to the ocean.

On one of our walks we saw a young man building a structure out of driftwood. He was busy digging a large hole in front of the structure, tossing out sand and oblivious to our passing.

We see people doing things like this with driftwood, typically building a simple pile of sticks for kids to play in, or to sit in while they have a small fire. But the things this young man built were different. For one thing, there were several of them along the beach. For another, they were complicated. Good sized, intricate, wood woven into arcs and organic shapes, and clearly more like artwork than just playing around building a camp.

On top of that, we noticed other things as we walked in the vicinity. Closer to the waves there was a simple circle of stones, already getting covered in sand. There was a slender piece of driftwood upright in the sand, decorated. I took a photo, which is below, but you can’t really see the details. There were feathers, shells, pieces of beach grass, and stones decorating the wood. I felt uncomfortable after I took the photo, as if I’d gone into someone’s church during service and started snapping pictures.

My husband spotted a ring of sand. It may have been a hole originally, like the one we saw the young man digging. But the tides and waves left only a hint of what had been, and left patterns of movement in the sand that showed what change looked like. It was like a subtle reminder that nothing remains constant.

I’ve been thinking about those structures since we got back. Why was the young man building so many? Why did he build them at all? Did he see them as transitory art, or were they just something to do with the things he found on the beach? Did he want people to use them? Did he sit back later and watch the afternoon crowds and how they interacted with his creations? Or was he, too, transitory, and moved on without looking back?

That led to more questions. I wondered if people saw the creativity, or just saw camps. I wondered if people respected them, or destroyed them. Did kids play in them and dream adventures? Did homeless people sleep in them at night?

So many possibilities. So many stories.

I wonder if that young man knew he would make imaginations soar? I hope so.

Oh, and Corbie loved the beach. The picture below is him with the wind blowing his ears up. He was the most well-behaved dog we have ever traveled with and we made sure to pay attention to what sticks he played with.