A.M. Dellamonica

And the writing point about this is: are your characters at least as different as my two cats?

1. Minnow drools like a running firehose when she’s being petted. Bites, too, and seems entirely unaware that she’s doing it.

2. She can’t move her eyes very well–it’s like they’re too big for her skull–and so turns her whole head to look at things.

3. She really likes to chew on plastic, and has that fiendish cat way of finding it wherever it is hidden.

4. She sings, operatically, late at night to the one toy that came to our house from her first home. The aria-yodels to Turtlebaby are heartfelt and loud, and if they happen to wake one out of a sound sleep, they can convince you that she’s regurgitating her own pancreas.

5. Minnow is the first cat we’ve ever had who wasn’t either black and white or gray and white.

6. She is a creature of passions. She loooooooves Turtlebaby. She loooooves the rubber zoom groom brush that keeps her overcoat glistening and soft. When she wants love she scampers around looking bug-eyed and beseeching.

7. She gives every appearance of enjoying it when I photograph her.

8. Somehow this matches up with the big bulgy eyes–her skin feels drum-tight. It’s not the loose rolling cat flesh one usually encounters, and when she purrs it’s a thrum, an intense hum bound in a high-pressure sheath.

9. She prefers cheap, grocery-grade treats to the healthy vet-bought ones. Baby loves her junk food.

10. Another passion: she lives to eat grassy things, especially chives, and loves to nom them back like an antelope cropping the savannah before coming indoors to spew green-laced biocontent all over our floor.