cats rumble – A.M. Dellamonica

I am very happy to say I’m going to be reading at Powell’s Books in Oregon (the Cedar Hills / Beaverton location) on Monday the 7th, at 7:00 p.m.

This is a genuine bucket list item for me: here in the Pacific Northwest, Powell’s is pretty much mecca for bibliophiles, and I’ve always wanted to read there. When I am out and about in my Powell’s shirt, strangers ask, often in hushed tones if I’ve been there, and when I brag that I’ve even been part of the big post-Orycon group author signings at the store. . . well, they’re impressed. You must be a real author after all, is the reaction: it’s serious cred.

I’ll be reading from the steamy and mildly hilarious “Wild Things,” and signing copies of Indigo Springs and Blue Magic, and perhaps even a few anthologies I’ve had stories in. If you’re in Portland, I hope you’ll stop by.

As prep for this first foray into BLUE book touring, I hauled out the little red suitcase Wednesday and started putting in things I’m afraid I might otherwise forget. The battery charger for the camera, par example, and a certain catnip-flavored item for an exalted Portland entity named Xerxes.

So maybe it’s the smell of the treat in the suitcase, or perhaps it’s just the obvious sign that I’m gonna be gone, but Rumble is unimpressed. He’s spent much of the past two days alternating between dragging the case around the house and rendering it inaccessible by means of passive resistance.

He was also extremely friendly on Wednesday night, and would not be deterred by the squirtgun, which means I spent more of the night awake than is optimal.

There is (barely) a writing-related point to this post, which is as follows: It’s Friday morning: do you know where your characters are? Do you know as much about your protagonist as I know about my cat?

1. Rumble is willing to pretend to follow a small but fixed number of rules. Since we have been strictly enforcing the ‘no jumping on Minnow’ rule, he has decided he is no longer banned from the kitchen.

2. The one commercially available toy that Rumble will always play with is the Silly Kitty hemp mouse, which, according to Sophie’s Pet Palace, is about to be unavailable forever.

3. Rumble was named for the very loud kitten purr that we almost never hear anymore; as an adult, his purr is very grunty.

4. But once, late at night a couple years ago, I woke and he was doing it, purring like a motorboat between our sleeping heads.

5. When we got back from Alberta after the worst of the family funerals, he slept, for one night, with his cheek on mine.

6. There are three identical hairbrushes in my house. Two are mine and one is Rum’s. If he sees me brushing my hair, he looks beseechingly at me and meows and meows and meows.

7. If Kelly is braiding my hair, he’ll sit up on a stool in front of me so I can simo-brush him. He will get up on the stool if he sees us fetching hair elastics. He will come running if I bang the hairbrush on the stool.

8. Rumble will often come if we call Minnow’s name. Because why should she get any love? (I think you can guess what happens if we call his name.)

9. Sometimes if we’ve both been gone awhile and have come home, he’ll forget we’re back, and go to the door and cry for us.

10. He loves David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds and will always come check out what’s on the toob when he hears Sir David’s voice.

11. He can’t count to ten and probably doesn’t want to know ten things about your pet, but I might.

12. Even when he is hogging my office chair, he is pretty photogenic.

Tag Archives: cats rumble

Feline protest of Powell’s Reading

Ten true facts about Rumble