Category Archives: Wendy Welch

What’s a Cat Husband to Do?

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Jack’s weekly guest post

DSCN0441Somehow or other the connection between the bookstore and cat/kitten rescue has become somewhat blurred.

Before even ‘The Little Bookstore’ was published we’d already started. Of course we had our own Valkittie and Beulah then, but they were staff so that was different. The first few kitten rescues didn’t necessarily go according to plan, but that’s another story (or even book).

But this blog post is about me!

I’m a crazy cat lady’s husband and I’m experienced enough now to recognize fellow beings. It’s interesting to observe the different sub-species. Some just hang quietly in the background looking slightly defeated, while others gamely tote carriers and bags of food or litter (have you any idea how much a bag of litter weighs?). But sometimes the balance can be different and it’s the male who takes the lead.

We are in the throes of finally converting from a very informal mix of disparate cat enthusiasts to a proper rescue organization with charity status, a bank account and premises. In the process a number of husbands have emerged to prove there are ‘crazy cat guys’ as well! First there is Brandon who carried out the very first work to the premises, and then there’s Donald who set up a PayPal account to garner the funds we need, then finally there’s Crazy cousin David who is transporting lots of needed materials across three States.

Where do I fit in?

I’m every one of these models – sometimes I hang quietly, sometimes gamely tote carriers and bags of food and litter (yes, I do know how much they weigh!), and I even sometimes have to say “we can’t have any more in here”. But right now it’s about helping pull a plan together that will put us in a much better place to handle a desperate need.

So I’m going to head  to Scotland for a month, and when I get back I fully expect our house to be full of kittens and a second mortgage to be paying for their care. It’s a good thing I love Wendy……

PS You can visit the new organization, APPALACHIAN FELINE FRIENDS, by clicking the link!

 

The Monday Book: THE DISAPPEARING SPOON by Sam Kean

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thedisappearingspoonMy publisher and agent are constantly warning all their authors against books that lack a narrative arc. (In other words, the book is a series of short stories or anecdotes that don’t build into one big story.)

And I like these kind of books, although per their advice I’m trying not to write them. So I LOVED The Disappearing Spoon. It’s a series of anecdotes connected by the periodic table’s geography: the column of noble gasses, to one side of them the alkalis, to the other the acids, each bent on negating the other.

Kean makes explaining how atoms are put together simple, like Venus Flytrap once famously did on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. He explains their layers, how they all want eight neutrons (I think it was neutrons) in their outer layer and every action they take is designed to make that balance happen. How these actions are interrelated to the rest of the universe, making stuff go or stop.

And then there are the funny stories about the scientists: bitter, driven, sweet, under-rated, over-rated: the people who discovered the stuff, and whether it made them happy or not. LOVE the people stories.

Then there are the the little bits like the title anecdote, about lab assistants making spoons out of gallium (which melts at 84 degrees) and serving tea with them. (Wonder how many wives, mothers, and girlfriends got gallium poisoning in the early 1900s? Wonder if there’s such a thing as gallium poisoning?)

But my favorite thing about this book is how he uses the periodic table columns to show how related elements are grouped, and how they are grouped next to things that are either very like or so opposite that they are inevitably paired in life and in our minds. It’s fascinating to dip into.

This is not a narrative you read in one sitting, but a bedside book you dip into. I’ve even read fluffy books between chapters of Kean’s denser, yet not frighteningly so, stories. He makes the ideas accessible, and the explanations simple. Like sitting down for tea with your favorite 9th grade science teacher. Just don’t use the spoon he gives you.

117 stars for The Disappearing Spoon, although a few of these have swift half-lives.