Category Archives: book repair

Val-Kyttie, Quite Possibly the World’s Most Sarcastic Cat

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VAL-KYTTIE, BOOKSTORE MANAGER, SURVEYS HER DOMAIN

We have a small problem at our bookstore. For those of you new to this blog, my husband and I own, operate, and live above a bookstore called Tales of the Lonesome Pine housing 38,000 books. That’s what my upcoming book is about–all the silly things we did six years ago to get this place going, and all the crazy, fun, bittersweet things happening since.

One of the things that is NOT in the book is that we foster animals at our store, offering them temporary shelter until they can find a loving forever family. Mostly we rescue cats, but we have taken in the occasional litter of puppies. With some 7,000 domestic animals euthanized in the States every DAY, we do our part to keep as many as we can out of the shelter.

Very noble, right? Except our two staff cats do not agree. Val-Kyttie, 16, and Beulah, 6, understand nothing about their brothers and sisters in the shelter needing our help. Or maybe, being cats, they understand but just don’t care. Whatever the reason, they have taken to spraying to announce their displeasure at the adorable fluffy kittens gamboling across our shop floor–to the coos and awws of customers who used to come and pet THEM.

We talked to our cats about the perils of jealousy, and explained they themselves had once been abandoned strays, so why should they begrudge poor orphan kitties a home? They remained unmoved. We threw out some fifty books before we realized this wasn’t going to stop.

Spraying is not something you want to happen in a shop where books are stacked and shelved floor to ceiling. Jack and I now know about six different ways to save a book from cat pee. (Instructional video coming soon to fine K-Marts everywhere….)

While we pride ourselves on being able to rescue just about any book–battered paperback, dust jacket, even leather embossed covers–our strategy really lies in prevention. Both staff cats now wear pretty purple collars that release calming pheromones. We buy special magic elixir ($25 a bottle, thank you) that thoroughly eradicates the smell and discourages cats from returning to mark the same spot.

And on the advice of the Internet (yes, I know) that cats dislike pine and citrus scents, I invested in air freshener stock and  loaded up on those little Renuzit cone things, smelling of oranges. I by far prefer the lavender ones, but anything was worth it to keep the cats from harming any of our inventory.

We set the cones strategically about the bookstore, and had several customers comment on how pleasant the place smelled. (I love the smell of old books: dust and ideas mingled together. Now ours had orange blossom wafting in as well.)

It was all going swimmingly until Heather, our ever-vigilant, miracle-working cleaning lady spotted one of the cats, er, spotting in the bathroom. Val-Kyttie took out a whole stack of Danielle Steels with one thrust.

What can we say; her aim was true.

Then she minced one delicate step to the left and sprayed the orange air freshener, knocking it over like a bowling pin, before turning to saunter past Heather out of the bathroom.

Heather swears that Val-Kyttie winked.

We’ve instigated a few changes in the ol’ home bookstore. We no longer keep books on the floor; they are above the “strike zone.” The cats still wear their pretty purple collars, and they seem to be adjusting to our status as a cat rescue station. Heather keeps an eye out for occasional lapses, but these are fewer and farther between as the weeks pass. Our bookstore now smells pleasantly of dust, ideas, old books, cleaning fluid–and lavender.

THE HUNGER GAMES WE PLAY WITH BOOKS

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So on Tuesday of this past week, Amazon lost (for less than six hours) its ability to sell Kindle editions in the United States because of a technical glitch. What caused it? Those On The Inside suspect it was Harry Potter’s fault. (The fact that he’s not a real person doesn’t matter. This is cyberspace we’re talking about.)

All 7 of the Potter Books became available on March 27 (Tuesday) through Potterworld, and the uploading…. well, it wasn’t  a straw that broke the cybercamel’s back so much as a magic wand.

About a million e-reading people–what is the collective noun for e-readers anyway? An exaltation of larks, a kindle of kittens…. okay, best collective noun response gets a free book from our bookstore, postage included. Title to be negotiated, but we’ll try to accommodate your request–

{Ahem} Back to the blog. About a million e-reading people in downloading frenzy crashed the Kindle sales. The breakdown occurred at 11:55 am PDT, and by 11:58 the news was going viral. How’s THAT for market share?

One of the ironies is that the crash may have been precipitated by Potter, but it was aided by a duel of duelers. The Hunger Games had hit the theatres just a few days before, and loads of people were trying to download that trilogy as well. (Hmm, I’m getting an idea for a plot. Teens dueling to the death over … oh, wait a minute.)

So, as people attempted to download the next teen megahit the previous wunderkind thrust Voldermort’s wand into the clockworks and KABLOOEY!

(Perhaps it was revenge?)

The big question in the industry is, in the six hours before it was fixed, how much money did not change hands?

But in all honesty, what I want to know is, did anyone, in desperation to lay hands to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, or Mockingjay, call his or her local bookstore? Because then something very good could have come out of this silver e-cloud’s lining.

Perhaps Amazon’s breakdown can be measured not in market lost but in markets gained, reopened, rediscovered. Remember walking downtown to your local bookstore? Remember bookstores? Yeah, we’re still here, and oddly enough, when we “crash” it’s called closing. As in closing down. Which bookstores do when customers don’t come in.

Why visit a bookstore instead of Amazon? Well, aside from that little crashing thing, how about fresh coffee, pleasant and witty conversation, exercise (physical AND mental), a chance to see who’s reading what, a chance to see who’s written what, a chance to find out about other authors besides Patterson, Collins and Rowling (not that they’re not great; they’re just not everybody), a chance to pet the store cat or dog, and did I mention pleasant and witty conversation?

Bookstores, greenhouses, yarn stores, hobby shops run by independent people are fun. They are sweet. They are little watering holes where like calls to like and knows it will get an answer, rather than a “we are unable to assist you; please try your call again later” or even “you are order number 765843; thank you.”

I’m not against e-readers, but I am aware of the effect they have on bricks-and-mortar bookstores, and of the tertiary effects if all our third places–those tucked-away shops and pubs and gardens that are neither home nor work, where we sit and smile and be ourselves for fifteen minutes–go away. We need them for balance. We need them to be in right relation to each other.

I don’t hate Amazon; as a first-time author, I’m forced to use it as one of the ways I sell my own book. But Amazon is one of six ways one can order a book in America. Six. Count ’em: six. (To see the list, visit the section on pre-ordering my book. You can get any book via those methods. ANY book…..)

So huzzah to Amazon for crashing, and here’s hoping that six-hour window launched at least one reader on a voyage of discovery about the battles for life that really matter.