Crazy Cat Lady?

 

My upcoming project introduces a woman who has 8 cats. (It doesn't have a title yet, so ideas would be appreciated.) She gets involved in solving a murder (of course), so it's almost a textbook example of a cozy mystery: amateur sleuth, humor, pets--you know the drill.

The first completed draft is currently with a beta reader. After that will be revision, edit, revision, edit, etc. for months, so the "when?" is up in the air.

The book was fun to write, because I used cats from my own past--not that I ever had eight at once. Some pics below are representations; others are real cats from my life.

The Professor, a very ornery character, is based on my daughter's cat Taz, who was kept in a box for the first year of his life and never got over it. He lashed out at anyone who got close (except for her), so we all learned to give him a wide berth. Taz was black, but he had the same look on his face as this guy.

Albert is completely black and...large. He's an amalgamation of two cats I've known, a gorgeous black and one named Siegfried, who is big enough to hunt bear with a switch.

Callie is clever and spoiled. She most resembles my late cat Trouble but incorporates traits of other cats we've had who did things that amazed us, like opening doors.

May is shy and suffers from diabetes. We had Pretty Kitty, better known as PK, a stray who never seemed to believe she had a right to anything.

Mayson was born with one eye and aspires to be an escape artist. Friends from long ago had a cat like him, and it was amazing to see him adapt to his disability. I don't have a pic of a one-eyed cat, so here's one a fan sent me of her cat "reading" a Sleuth Sisters book.

Bruiser refuses to be "owned" by anyone and comes and goes from the house by mysterious methods. He's based on Fred, a stray we adopted who had scars everywhere and liked to go hunting with my husband. I would see them go off through the woods, Hubby with his gun over his shoulder and Fred at his heels. For days after a fight with something, one of Fred's ear tips hung like a flag until he finally lost it entirely. 

Ed is--well, dumb, the cat version of a doofus. My sister took in one like him because she saw that he was too clueless to make it without help.

Maew is Siamese and, as one might expect, aloof. In the book people mistake her for a statue, which actually happened several times with the Siamese we had when we were kids, Ching-a-ling.

I've always loved animals. (I'm the cute one!)