Furry Family

the fur never flies around here…

Fiona, our resident collie, was born on 04/04/04 and was one of four female puppies in the litter. She served as Cat’s consultant on all articles written for Dogs in Canada magazine, and she makes sure Cat actually leaves the house once or twice a day. Fiona has a vocabulary of about 200 English words as well as 1 French and 1 Italian word, and claims to have a higher IQ than Cat. Dogs think they are so clever…

Then there’s Skye, who turned 2 in December 2014. She’s a big girl, around 95 pounds, friendly, goofy and absolutely stuck on… the sky. Planes, birds, bugs; if it flies in the sky, it’s Skye’s great interest. She can’t edit her way out of a treat bag, but she does keep Mum’s feet warm as they get pins and needles under her weight. Happy girl. Always smiling.

The three cats, Willow Jack Sparrow and Salonge, take up space, snore loudly and eat all of Cat’s profits. Willow is also known as bad Willy (for good reason). Jack Sparrow is a rescue kitty and definitely a pirate by any other name (in Nova Scotia, where we live, they’re called “privateers”). If something is missing, Jack has it. Salonge is a French flirt, a pretty little black bit of fluff. She poses and pretends she is the female characters in Cat’s writing. The cats of Cat have manuscript veto power; when a job reaches “the end”, Cat leaves the “MS” on her desk, and if all the cats do not sit on it within a week: REJECTED.

Cat writes about her pets and always has. She has completed the draft of a mixed-media memoir, entitled Lives Have Nine Cats and Other Tales of Pet Motherhood; this bittersweet book is resplendent with prose, poetry, drawings and photographs that track her life as, first, the sister of two cat siblings, and then as the mother of a stack of dogs and cats. Cat is currently editing the book to final draft and is negotiating with a publisher.