Author Archives: wendywelch

Tails of Dogs and Cats

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Jack’s weekly guest post –

I’m a bit of a fan of Alexander McCall Smith, ever since I stumbled across the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. I also fell for his Scotland Street series as well – particularly for his very accurate depiction of a certain element of Edinburgh society with which I’m familiar. The slightly down at heel Georgian New Town intelligencia, complete with their locked private gardens!

One of the characters in the Scotland Street series is a dog called Cyril and McCall Smith manages to get inside his mind wonderfully. In many ways Cyril became one of my favorites.

But then along came the incredible Freddie De La Hay – one of the residents of Corduroy Mansions a new series set in the Pimlico neighborhood of London. Freddy is first introduced as an ex-drugsniffing dog made redundant from Heathrow Airport as a result of a campaign against sex discrimination (all the drugsniffers were male). Once again McCall Smith gets right inside the mind of a dog as it smells its way around its world, eating expensive shoes and catching Russian spies along the way. Despite a fascinating range of humans, it’s the dog that once again does it for me!

What got me thinking about this was an experience I had yesterday. We took in an older cat a few days ago that had initially been rescued by our friend Jessica. She was going to keep her, but her existing feline co-habitee didn’t approve at all. So Jessica paid to have Sweetie Pie spayed and then she came to us until we can find her a permanent home. All well and good!

Wendy left at lunchtime yesterday for a couple of days of business in Richmond and I was left keeping an eye on the lodger. Sweetie Pie seemed quite content relaxing on a stool in the mystery room. Then Kellie, our cafe chef, came in around 5 pm from a grocery run – “Sweetie Pie’s outside”, she said. “what?” I said – –

Sure enough – she was out in the front garden and when I went to pick her up she ran down onto the sidewalk. We both tried to catch her, but she kept running further off. eventually it got too dark to see where she was and I gave up. What on earth would I say to Wendy – and Jessica – how would we tell her that the cat she recued and paid to have spayed had run away on our watch? Wendy phoned later and I broke the news. We commiserated with each other and agreed that at least she had been spayed so there wouldn’t be exponential explosion of kittens.

Feeling disconsolate, I headed down to our basement bedroom and noted both dogs and our three indoor cats all in their favorite spots. Sitting on the edge of the bed to take of my shoes, I glanced up. Owen Meany had been lying beside Zora but now he was magically up on the window sill! No – wait – he’s still beside Zora – what?

Sweetie Pie holds court

Sweetie Pie holds court

There she sat, calmly licking her paw and preening herself. “What?” she meowed – “fine neighborhood you have here. Nice cats! What’s for dinner?”

THE MONDAY BOOK: Caleb’s Crossing by Gwendolyn Brooks

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Caleb’s Crossing is, when pressed into a small nutshell, the novelization of what happened to the first two Indian scholars to attend in the late 1600s the college that would later be named Harvard. The ultimate fate of these two lads is true; how it happens is fleshed out in Brooks’ magical storytelling, through the eyes of Bethia, an English settler on the island that will become Martha’s Vineyard.

Let me start by saying Brooks had a 50-50 rating with me before Caleb’s Crossing. I LOVED her novels People of the Book and Year of Wonders, but couldn’t work my way through March (the Little Women father’s experiences in the Civil War) or, surprisingly enough Nine Parts of Desire, her ethnographic study of Muslim women. Which is weird because I’m an ethnographer and teach Islam and Women’s Studies, so I should have been able to get into that. I’m going to try again in a couple of years.

Sometimes books just have to hit their particular reader at a right time. And to my mind, Geraldine Brooks is a word wizard. I loved Caleb’s Crossing as much as her other two, and for similar reasons. When Brooks recreates a world, she does it with such authority, accuracy, authenticity that you can’t see the edges. Her characters aren’t anachronistic for their time.

Plus, her vocabulary rings true. She’s just pure dead brilliant at making ancient words tumble so gracefully from her characters’ mouths, and has the added artistry of being able to explain them without doing what my friend Mike Samerdyke calls “an information dump.” Try this paragraph, from when Bethia and Caleb (one of the two native scholars) meet:

“He walked through the woods like a young Adam, naming creation. I learned to shape my mouth to the words—sasumuneash for cranberry, tunockuquas for frog. So many things grew and lived here that were strange to us, because they had not been in England. We named the things of this place in reference to things that were not of this place—cat briar for the thickets of vine whose thorns were narrow and claw-like; lambskill for the low-growing laurel that had proved poisonous to some of our hard-got tegs. But there had been no cats or lambs here until we brought them. So when he named a plant or a creature, I felt that I heard the true name of the thing for the first time.”

See how fast she establishes background, setting, mood? You can hear birds, smell forest. And you get the tensions right away. She’s equally adept at the relationship between Puritans and Animists. Because the book is observed from one woman’s point of view, she can often discuss intense themes and cultural conflicts with a light touch, almost stepping sideways to hit them full on.

I look forward to rereading Nine Parts of Desire next year sometime, when my head is in better shape to take it in. And I thoroughly recommend, for those who like historic fiction, enjoy lyrical prose, or love a good armchair passport experience, Caleb’s Crossing. Make a cuppa, curl up, and plan to be gone about five hours.