Cats actually belong on the dedication page, a practice to which spouses and other familiars might take umbrage; the jacket-photo strategy is clearly a Plan B operation. We writers like our cats and wish to thank them for presiding over the long labor that produced our measly books.
My cats don’t appear in my jacket photos (at fifteen pounds apiece they tend to crowd the frame) but I am deeply grateful to them nonetheless. They pin me to my chair for hours on end, forcing me to finish sentences, paragraphs, sometimes entire chapters before I dare disturb their stiletto-clawed selves. They listen to me read hundred-page first drafts, their green eyes squinting in ecstasy. They remind me to feed them, which reminds me to feed myself. One cat-less colleague maintains I’ve wasted the equivalent of a year at a writers’ colony with all the getting up to open the door and then getting up to open the door again, but this is an unprovable theory, a little like saying Faulkner would have doubled his output if he hadn’t spent so much time drunk.
A cat, in short, in one of a writer’s minimum daily requirements, like a cup of coffee and a new pen. If you must pursue this hard, inconstant business, you will have to seek the soft and constant company of a cat. Your basic wide-body tabby will do, but if you plan to write a romantic saga that spans more than two generations, you might consider upgrading to a Himalayan or a Russian Blue.
In any case, remember this: Your cat is your mews.
