About This Blog ~ This blog is about a series of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) super-hero, sci-fi, fantasy adventure novels called Rainbow Arc of Fire. The main characters are imbued with extraordinary abilities. Their exploits are both varied and exciting, from a GLBT and a human perspective. You can follow Greg, Paul, Marina, Joan, William, and Joseph, as well as several others along the way, as they battle extraordinary foes or take on environmental threats all around the globe and even in outer space. You can access synopses of the ten books using the individual links on the upper, left-hand column.





The more recent posts are about events or issues that either are mentioned in one or more books in the series or at least influenced the writing of the series.









Sunday, January 12, 2020

Cats in the Rainbow Arc of Fire series



Schnozz was something else.   Smart and sassy, she ruled the house at 6555 Palmer Park Blvd in Colorado Springs before I moved to Denver.  The drive to Denver when I moved, taking her to the small apartment on Humboldt St. in Denver, was traumatic for her.  The 1-bedroom apartment was so much less roomy than the 3-bedroom, 4-level house.  And when temporary roommate and not much of a BF Frank Massey brought to the apartment Sneezer from the Dumb Friends League, Schnozz was further distressed.  The two did not get along well but finally tolerated one another.

When I sent Frank packing back to Virginia but kept Sneezer, and we all moved to another small apartment in another building in the Humboldt apartment complex, relations were only marginally better.  They eased a bit when the three of us moved to a 2-bedroom apartment two doors down from the second small 1-bedroom, and each cat had his or her places to pass the time.  Sneezer took the spare bedroom and would sit atop a carpeted cat pedestal and watch the passersby on the sidewalk below.  Schnozz ruled the bedroom and the carpeted pedestal there.

It was the death of Schnozz that formed a centerpiece in the green book, Volume 4, Worlds Beneath Us.

Speaking of Sneezer:

I have never had a more lovable or loving cat.  He would curl up in my arms on that couch as I watched TV and fall asleep.  At one point he weighed 23.5 pounds, much too heavy.  I had to put him on a diet so that he returned to his regular weight of 17.5 pounds.  He was still a big, heavy cat, regardless.  When he was 20 years old, his kidneys had already been failing.  His weight had alarmingly dropped to barely above 6 pounds.  He would not eat solid food, so I drained cans of chicken and he would slurp up the juice.  But one morning, long after he'd confined himself to a spot between the toilet and cabinet in the carpeted bathroom, he came out to the kitchen one morning as if to eat as he had every morning at the condo on Franklin St prior to his extended illness.  While I was happy to see him, I was immediately shocked to see that he was walking on one of his front legs on the first joint instead of on his paw.  His paw was bent under, and it must have been painful for him to walk like that; but he seemed determined to get to the kitchen.  I was heartsick.  I believe he'd had a stroke and was reliving the past when he was younger and healthy and loved to have his morning meal before I left for work.  I had to call the vet and tearfully arrange to bring him in that afternoon.

He would always sound so mournful in the car on the way to the vet's office to get his regular checkups and shots.  He loved living in the condo and hated to leave.  But this morning he was silent.  I had wrapped him up in a favorite towel and he sat on the passenger seat, looking tired but determined.  After he drifted away on the table in the vet's office, I could not contain myself and cried like a baby all the way home and for hours after.  As with Schnozz before, I had him cremated and have his ashes still.

After Schnozz was gone, my friend Dino and his partner Larry were shedding their three cats in favor of dogs.  They gave me Miranda, the eldest.  Sneezer took quite some time to take to her in the 2-bedroom apartment on Humboldt after she arrived.  Miranda, like Schnozz, only lived to be about 12-13 years.  She had moved along with Sneezer and me to the condo on Franklin St.  At some point, she developed terrible tumors on the back of her neck from the rabies shots from the vet.  She then endured three separate surgeries, six months apart, to remove successive tumors as they aggressively developed, one set after another.  They would not stop.  I finally had to wrap a sock around her neck to keep her from scratching at the wound that the doctor no longer could find enough skin to close at the end of the third surgery.  Again, as with Schnozz, I had to contact the vet for a dreaded house call.  I let Miranda sit peacefully in the front garden amidst the foliage until the vet arrived in the early afternoon.  She left peacefully on that same living room couch pictured above.  Her death was mentioned in Olive Branch, the last volume in the series.

Strangely, a few nights later I awoke to a familiar sound from the kitchen.  I looked up and Sneezer was staring in the direction of the kitchen, around the corner from the bedroom.  A night light from the kitchen counter had put his curious head and pointed ears in silhouette.  We were both listening momentarily to the sound of Miranda, again scratching at the taped sock around her neck.  Of course, even though I checked the kitchen counter where she used to lay before she died, feeling the welcome heat from the back of the fridge, she was not there.  Take this haunting story as you like.  I have never seen a ghost before, but both Sneezer and I heard something from the kitchen that night that sounded remarkably like the sound of Miranda scratching.  

This was Calico Miranda in the Franklin St. condo before she started to develop the tumors.  She loved to sit atop the cable box for warmth:



After Miranda had gone, the sister of a woman I worked with had, with a coworker at Coors Brewery, rescued a few-weeks-old kitten at the site.  He needed a home.  Linda asked me and I said I would take him.  I named him Pudge because, when he would scrunch himself up, front to back, he'd look rather pudgy.  Again, Sneezer was not too keen on a new roommate.  But Pudge was smart and determined, even as a kitten.  Just as I was telling a friend on the phone that I did not see what I was going to do to help them get along, I looked down and Sneezer and Pudge were eating their breakfast together off the same small plate.  Pudge had figured out how to push open the folding bathroom door and was eating contentedly next to the much bigger Sneezer.

Pudge is with me still, as is Tabby, who replaced Sneezer.  Tabby was discovered going door to door in the sister's boyfriend's neighborhood in Denver, getting food wherever she could beg it.  She may have been owned by a family across the street from Linda's sister's boyfriend.  But when he saw Tabby sitting by a couple of the family members on the sidewalk and he asked if they owned her, they offered, "Yes, do you want her?"  One morning he catnapped her, put her in a cat carrier, took her to his girlfriend's house, and I picked her up there, where I had gathered up Pudge a couple of years earlier.  As with Pudge, I took her to the vet and got her fixed (that family had neglected to do what they were legally required to do regarding spaying a pet).  The vet told me that, even at six months old, she was fully ready to have kittens of her own.

Pudge and Tabby made their way on Mark's and my first long drive between Denver and Indio.  We drove non-stop to limit their suffering, only getting gas occasionally for the van we were using to transport the cats and our two TVs.

After such a small condo, only a bit more than 900 square feet, the 2100-square-foot house must have seemed  enormous.  I first found them curled up together in one of the litter boxes.  They seemed terrified of their new surroundings.  By our final night before Mark and I had to fly back to Denver, they'd entirely disappeared.  Numerous times I searched the whole house and the neighborhood (though how both had gotten out of doors was highly improbable).  We eventually had to leave for the airport, but I told my best friend and my sister, who would feed and look after them while we were gone, to keep laying out food and checking the litter boxes.  They confirmed that food was being eaten and litter boxes were being used, but no cats could be found anywhere in the house.

It was Mike a few days later who finally realized that they might have squeezed under the narrow opening in the back of a long, low chest in our new bedroom and would remain there until food had been left out and the unwanted strangers had departed the house.  He tilted the cabinet forward and found two surprised cats staring up at him.  They took off for the moment, but we were relieved after I got his call.

Here are Tabby (top) and Pudge in 2007 in the condo in Denver: