Rescue of the Week - TONY

Well folks, it's been a while since I've done a kitty, and I know the thing to do is probably to promote a black cat with it being so close to All Hallows Eve and all, but I couldn't help it. This guy's coloring just won me over. So without anymore gilding the lily, and with no more adieu, I give you: TONY the TIGER!!

Tony is about 3 months old and very pl;ayful. Lots of spirit and patience will make this a great companion for you for years to come!

For more information about this animal, call:

SPCA of Wake County at (919) 772-2326

Ask for information about animal ID number A059220

Bad starts

I'm an animal lover, as many of you may have guessed. I may not own a farm-full, but I never want to see any animal hurt. I'm a big softy like that. Guilty as charged. Some folks think sometimes I care more about what happens to animals than I do what happens to people. Well, when you have to deal with some of the people I've met in my time, maybe sometimes those folks are right.


As such, it's really hard for me when animals do what they naturally do, and one gets hurt because of it. And when my wife and I have to 'solve' the problem, it makes for a really rough start to the day.


Please forgive me, I'm just feeling sorry for myself and for my wife over something most of you will consider trivial. See, a little over a year or so ago, we discovered that there was a little wild rabbit living under our back deck. We'd see him (we're just guessing it was a him) every once in a while when we'd go out back, and he'd have to run like hell to get out through the fence before one of the dogs caught him. So we got in the habit of going out to check for him before we let them out.


Then he stopped showing up. Just wasn't around any more. We'd seen him maybe once in the last 3-4 months, and he'd gotten so much bigger we figured he'd moved on to start his own little rabbit warren. So we stopped checking for him, 'cause he was never out there anymore anyway.


Yeah, you know where this is headed. This morning, while I was upstairs getting ready for work, my wife let the dogs out to do their business. Apparently, one of them spotted him, and they chased him all over the yard with my wife, God bless her, trying to get them to leave him alone.


Being dogs, they didn't.


They caught him out behind the shed, and they hurt him pretty bad. She knocked on the door to let me know she needed help, and when I saw her holding him my heart broke. He couldn't move his back legs at all. Once she got the dogs off of him, she told me she had to pick him up because he kept trying to crawl but only his little front legs would move. And he was bleeding.


Having to choose between letting him live like that 'hoping' he would get better before something else got him, or putting him down as quickly and painlessly as possible, is a really shitty way to start a day. It just shits a little on how you feel all day long. Yes, it's the humane thing to do so he doesn't suffer, but for an animal lover who doesn't have access to anesthesia or anything like that, it really sucks having to put him down like that. I felt horrible. Hell, I still feel horrible.


If you want a question, tell me what completely unexpected things have ruined your day/week that you just can't plan for.


If not, no worries, I just felt like getting it off my chest. Don't worry, I'll probably delete this later anyway.

Who would star???

I overheard the greatest word the other day:

Placeholders.


I had never heard that before, and it is so fitting. Here's the concept: as a writer, do you ever 'cast' your books in your head? I have heard of some writers who do this, and it seems to work well for them. Jeffery Deaver, for example, once said at a reading that he had always pictured a grizzled Harrison Ford as Lincoln Rhyme, and I've heard that some other writers picture their protagonists as certain actors when they are writing the book.


I tried it. Apparently I picked the wrong actor.

See, I wonder if part of the rationale behind doing this is the hope that your book will someday make it as a big budget movie. That's an awesome hope. Thing is, I know my first one won't make it. I'm okay with that. As Chris Roerdan said this weekend, writers are the only people on the planet who think they could solo at Carnegie Hall the first time they pick up an instrument. I know that isn't the case (it's okay, trust me, I've read my first completed manuscript).



But the thing is, I keep trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Or rather, one of my favorite tall and lanky pegs into a moderately squared-off hole. If I were ever to have a book made into a movie, I'd kill for John Cusack to star in it. That would make the world totally cool for me.




Problem, though. Every time I try to picture Cusack as my protagonist, it doesn't work. He's totally wrong for the part. And I'm the one writing the part. HowTF did that happen?

So tell me, do you do this? Or have you tried it, only to be thwarted by your own imagination as I have? Am I just pissing into the wind here?