CATS, KITTENS and a BLACK CAT APPRECIATION DAY.

The end of the summer season is coming, or so the weather tells me. The season of visitors and visiting seems over for a while, and I’m noticing a certain empty space.

Cat, our crotchety and very elderly tabby, died last autumn and, at times, we miss having her about. Cats have always been part of our home - single, double, triple cats and even, in a season of kittens, quadruple – but for several practical reasons, there is no cat here right now.

I’m suddenly reminded to make a quick diversion to a lovely picture book that had one small boy giggling away for ages: THERE ARE NO CATS IN THIS BOOK by Viviane Schwarz*. 

Do click on that title to see the video - and Viviane has created more brilliant books since.

Right. Back here for my Cranky Laptop admission.

Since last October, I’ve been peeping into a certain Cat Adoption website, looking at the various moggies pictured, and day-dreaming about the very lovely moments of about cat owning.

I ignore memories of gruesome remnants on the kitchen floor, the itchiness of fleas, the clearing up of ailments, the midnight retching or the early morning yowling. I even close my mind to the possibly eco-unfriendly litter tray used when Cat got poorly. Instead, I gaze at all the cat portraits and imagine a soft, purring cat sitting snugly on my lap. Ah!

Now, on that website, at the start of the summer holidays, there were three pages rich with cats and kittens. Yet, if I had to choose right now, just as schools start back, only one, thin page-full of photos remains - and some of those cats will need kind and careful placing. I do hope that good new homes are found for these cats, but it’s still not time for us to take on a new cat, not right now,

Yet, during these cat-lurking months, I’ve come across something I hadn’t expected. Ursula Moray William’s little Gobbolino was not the only black kitten that needed to find a friendly home.

I’d wondered whether I was imagining this pattern or catching some quirk of the site but when I mentioned this idea to a sensible animal-loving friend, she’d heard the same from a veterinary nurse. Besides, even the national website carries a story about a large litter of five black kittens along with a request for help, explaining that black kittens take at least a week longer to be “homed”. Black cats (and black and white cats) aren’t chosen so speedily either and August 17^th was even designated Black Cat Appreciation Day, which is both good and sad at the same time. As I’ve really been eyeing all the tabby cats, it makes me feel a little guilty too.

Wondering why this was, another factor popped into my mind. When I visit EYFS & Key Stage One school-children, I often take a sheep puppet with me. Named Barley – as in baaaa! - he’s a great favourite with young children, probably more a favourite than I am, in truth.

Yet I’ve noticed that Barley never comes over clearly in newspaper photographs despite his popular personality. Visually, it’s not easy to see his precise features or expressions in a photo – and, yes, Barley does have some.

There must be something about the photographic play of light within all these black “pet” portraits that diminishes their full personality – their noticeability - which does seems a pity for all those real-life cats and kittens, much more than for my soggy cloth sheep. Not a comfortable thought at all. 

Mog, as we (and a certain retailer) know, is a striped tabby and comfortably lovable - but Slinky Malinki is definitely cunning. 

Or what about the dark, dangerous world that opens for hero-cat Varjak Paw when the Gentleman with the Black Cats enters the house?

 

Maybe, thinking of all those homeless felines, a new Gobbolino needs to be created? A kitten with sweetness and appeal? (She scribbles in notebook and recalls an old, shelved m/s in filing cabinet . . . . Bother. Shelved cat was definitely a tabby. )

Onward!

*Meanwhile, whilst checking on Viviane Shwarz facts (and spelling), I noticed there's a link to Viviane's (possibly grown-up) web-comic, CAT AND BAG. It certainly seemed worth investigating – especially as I hadn’t thought about "web-comics" up till that nosy moment.

Onward!

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE! Or, On Second Thoughts . ..

Yesterday afternoon, I spoke without thinking about the full consequences. (There’s a lot of “forgetting the full consequences” in the air at the moment, in my opinion.) I'd left the CRANKY LAPTOP to itself and gone into town to buy a few needful things.

Now, in the morning, I’d been pondering about the plight of Jo Cotterill’s LIBRARY OF LEMONS. The week before, when I'd been in my local Waterstones, I'd expected to see a copy on the shelves. There wasn't. When I asked why, their system replied that it was out of stock. As the title's been mentioned in the media recently, the absence was a puzzle.  I’ve since checked and there are plenty of copies. They just weren't in my Waterstones. 

So, though I got no Lemons, there were books I wanted. I bought the new David Solomon’s MY GYM TEACHER IS AN ALIEN as a present and Terry Pratchett’s THE SHEPHERD’S CROWN for myself and a couple of other titles. Quite a big spend. 

However, what with all the flourishing of Gift Card and my SoA discount card and the bookseller's nudge about Why Not Choose a Half Price Title?, my itsy-bitsy little Points Card missed being stamped at the till. (Still with me?)  


So, yesterday, as I’d be passing, I decided to call in again and claim my red-stamped rights. Gradually, as Waterstones Central has pulled itself together again, this smallish two-storey branch in town has become busier and better. 

I could hear faint hammering and sawing sounds overhead. Workmen passing purposefully in and out from vans outside. 

"Improvements," I thought, idly, as I waited at the till. "More shelving. Good."

Then I saw a printed Notice: an A4 sheet apologising and announcing that this Waterstones branch would soon have its own in-house coffee shop.

I was, at that moment, delighted. Enchanted, even. I love being surrounded by books and I do like coffee. In fact, I was surely in need of a coffee right then? Immediately I started daydreaming about sitting in such a place musing, scribbling notes, all that Being A Writer stuff.

 “A great idea”, I told the nice young man stamping and squiggling on the grid on my Points Card.

Instantly enthusiastic, he told me he'd been drafted in from the big city branch and that he missed having the scent of coffee around him. We nodded our mutual approval. The shop might not be that large, but a coffee shop is a coffee shop, right? Surely? 
However, as I stepped back out on to the pavement again, all at once I was definitely not smelling the coffee. Suddenly I thought “Oh! Coffee Shop? That means FEWER books!” and I felt very dim and stupid. 

My just-a-fantasy coffee shop would be taking up real world space. Furthermore, this is in a town that has a host of coffee shops but only one such bookshop! Even worse, after my positive response, I could now imagine those higher up in Waterstones being told “Yes, the customers are really happy about it.” 

How I wished I’d kept my mouth shut! But that wasn’t all. I remembered, back when I’d been browsing for Solomon’s book, that there'd been a notice by the front door: a friendly, wacky, hand-written advert for a Full-time, Experienced Bookseller. I’d wondered which of the long-term staff had gone but the queue had made it impossible to ask.   

Now I wondered if that "coffee V. book-stock" choice had been a real book-lover's last sip? A change just that bit too far? Especially as there was now an equally friendly, wacky advert for an Experienced Coffee Shop Manager?

Ah, well. Ah, well. I do truly wish my Waterstones bookshop – all bookshops – well in these tough times. None of it is easy. Will the planned coffee shop work out? I don’t know. Will it bring in more book-buying customers or attract more book-selling staff? I don’t know.

Nor, thinking on it, could I be absolutely certain that those upstairs improvements are why the teen and Y/A section was currently squashed back into the children’s corner? Or if that was why there was no shelving space or stock for A LIBRARY OF LEMONS?  

I must say that the coffee had taken on a bitter taste.

Onwards. Where else can one go?