Maggie Pill Mysteries

  Cat lovers love their cats, but sometimes we have to admit that they aren't all Einsteins. A relative adopted a stray who came to her door, a beautiful short-haired gray. It soon became obvious that he was either developmentally disabled or had had a traumatic head injury. The unkind would say that he was dumb, like Lorilee's Special Ed. The cat, which she called Dickie, could not learn and did not have an apparent thought process. He existed in the Now, and the Now was hungry and unhappy with where he was. If he was inside, Dickie wanted to be out. If he was outside, he wailed to come in, only to turn around and sit by the door, asking to go out again. Dickie liked his food cheap and smelly, and any time his hostess entered the kitchen, he became convinced he was starving. He'd go in and out between her feet until she gave him something--or pretended to. He'd follow her to the food dish, watch her mime dropping something into it, and look eagerly into the bowl when s...

 The second cat we meet in my upcoming book, Cats and Crimes, is Callie, though she would turn up her nose at second billing. Callie rules the household, at least in her own opinion. She's Lorilee's main confidante, and she simply knows that everyone loves her. My Callie was actually named Trouble, and she was our longest-lived cat. She showed up in our driveway as an abandoned kitten in 1994, just after our son left for college, and she died over two decades later. In that time she became a full member of the family, and other cats came and went while she remained. Trouble liked being outside for most of her life and was in fact once lost in the wilds of Michigan's UP for over a week. She did fine with that, but when she got older and less agile, she became, like Callie, uncomfortable outside the house. That was probably wise with the fox, coyote, and predatory bird population on our property. The cats in the story are a mix of cats I've known/lived with/heard about. ...

  About four years ago, my sister and I went out to lunch, and while we ate Chinese, we talked about my books. She said, "I think you need to write a crazy cat lady series. She could solve mysteries and the cats could be the fun part." I agreed that was a great idea. We both loved cats (though she loved every animal she ever met), and over our lifetimes we had lots of fodder for cat personalities, from barn cats to house cats to shelter cats. But I was in the middle of the Sleuth Sisters series, so the idea went on the back burner. When my sister died suddenly a few months later, I promised myself, "I'll write at least one crazy cat lady story someday, just for her." Enter CATS AND CRIMES. My protagonist, Lorilee Riley, has multiple cats, who sometimes help her and sometimes hold her back, but every pet owner understands that. The book releases on November 15, so I thought I'd do a series of posts on the cats who inspired the cats...if that makes sense. Cat ...