Cartoon of the Day: Cats

KAY KENDALL & TERRY SHAMES: LIT SALON IN BERKELEY 6/12

Upcoming Literary Salon in Berkeley, CA

When: Wednesday, June 12, 7:00 p.m.

Who: Kay Kendall, Terry Shames

Where: RSVP for venue address (Berkeley, CA)
This is a free event, but YOU MUST RSVP to attend.
Space is Limited. Address of venue sent with acceptance. 
Please make a comment below with your email address

Kay Kendall

Before Kay Kendall began to write books, she was an award-winning international public relations executive, working in the US, Canada, the Soviet Union, and Europe. She has graduate degrees in Russian history and was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Because of her degrees in Russian history, Kay often brings Cold War elements into her tales. She takes great pains in her books to get historical settings and details right—no anachronisms allowed.

Kay Kendall has written three historical mysteries. Her second book, Rainy Day Women (2015), won for best mystery and best book at Killer Nashville in August 2016. It is the second in her Austin Starr mystery series. The first was Desolation Row (2013), published by Stairway Press. Her latest mystery, After You’ve Gone, is an Austin Starr prequel. Kay and her husband live in Houston, Texas. They’ve rescued abandoned pet bunnies for twenty years and currently have three rabbits and a bemused spaniel.

Kay is president of the Southwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and is a member of the national board of MWA.

Terry Shames

Terry Shames writes the award-winning, critically acclaimed Samuel Craddock series, set in the fictitious town of Jarrett Creek, Texas. From an early age, Terry Shames wrote stories based on the small town in Texas where her grandparents lived, a fictional version of the town that sparked her imagination. 

Her mysteries have been finalists for numerous awards, including The Strand Critics Award, The Lefty Award, and the Macavity Award. A Killing at Cotton Hill won the Macavity for Best First Mystery, 2013. The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake won the RT Reviews Critics Award for Best Contemporary Mystery of 2016. The latest in the series is A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary. 

Raised in Texas and a University of Texas alum, Terry has lived in Berkeley, CA for many years. She is a member of the Northern California chapter of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. 

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Be sure and RSVP to janet @ mysteryreaders (dot) org
 

Cartoon of the Day: The Motive

HT: Kate Derie

THE TIMELESS TEACHINGS OF GURU ZUZU: Guest post by Tony Broadbent

TONY BROADBENT:
THE TIMELESS TEACHINGS OF GURU ZUZU

If you live with a cat, you live with a teacher: one that watches your every move.

So, unless you’re at work or sitting in a coffee bar or doing any one of the thousand things one does in one’s busy, busy life, outside of home, that cat of yours is probably watching you, right now.

But don't look! Don’t move too quickly to see if you are, indeed, the subject of studied feline gaze. Cats abhor sudden movements.

And, anyway, by the time you do look up, your cat will have already gone back to doing what they do best: staring at nothing you can see; or pouncing on something other; or yawning, sleeping, stretching or knitting; or giving themselves a carefully choreographed wash and brush up.

Or blinking at you in that slow-motion Cat Morse Code that cats perfect from the time they’re kittens; signaling to you that the next mealtime is fast approaching, and a fresh bowl of water and clean litter box wouldn’t go amiss, while you’re at it.

For which you might even earn yourself a “purr” or slow blink.

But you already knew that about cats. You live in their world and your job is to remember your place in it. Which means you simply have to work out how best you may serve their needs. For as all cat owners know all too well, no one owns a cat; cats don't have owners, they have staff.

Or, as the wondrous Terry Pratchett, once, reframed it: “In ancient times, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”

Which is no doubt why, when at one point I found myself pondering the mysteries of life, earnestly, trying to stay awake, aware, and alert; and to be in the ‘now’; I was as surprised, as anyone, when, courtesy of my very perceptive wife, a certain little, black pussycat came into my life.

I mean, I’d always liked cats; when a child, my family always had cats; and I have many cat stories and snapshots to prove it. But then I left home, went off to college, off to work; changed jobs; even changed countries, and, well, I didn’t have room or time for any cats in my life. And I didn’t really consider myself a cat person, anymore. I very definitely didn’t have need of a cat. I mean, whoever does?

How could I ever have known just how wrong I’d been?

But, then, as the Buddhist Proverb promises: “When the student is ready, the Teacher will appear.”

She was called Zuzu; her name, like her, seemingly, conjured, as if from out of the very air; was extraordinarily patient with me from the very start; never demanding, ever gracious, ever loving. Always, just waiting for me to slow down; smell the roses; smell the coffee: To just breathe.

“Purrfect! Now, you really can begin to live in the ‘now’.”

And so I began purposefully observing Zuzu in all her daily wanderings. Just slowing down enough, often enough, to take note, to see how she navigated her world; how she dealt with “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” and I found she led me to new pathways of thought, new insights, and an unexpected trove of wisdom:

‘Give love, to get love. Love is always a two-way street.’

‘Find out what it is you love doing, and do a lot of it.’

‘Love means understanding that sometimes the one you love simply wants to be alone.’

‘Never forget who and what you are, and that you alone are responsible for what it is you think about.’

‘Always remember; never lose your sense of humor. Life’s far too short.’

And so much more; much of which I’ve included in: The Timeless Teachings of Guru Zuzu. All in the simple hope other people may delight in them, too.

As Eckhart Tolle, acclaimed author of The Power of Now, once observed: “I have lived with several Zen masters…all of them cats.”

How very true.

“To be or not to be?” Your cat will always have the “purrfect” answer.

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Tony Broadbent is the author of a series of mystery novels about a Cockney cat (yes, cat) burglar in post-war London: The Smoke, Spectres In The Smoke, Shadows In the Smoke; and two books on the early days of The Beatles: The One After 9:09 - A Mystery With A Backbeat and the non-fiction: The Beatles in Liverpool, Hamburg, London. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cartoon of the Day: The Writer's Life

Cartoon of the Day: The Tell-Tale Heart