My cats Stuart and Charlotte, who share my office (my husband’s allergic to them and this is where they have to live) are now in their sunset years. They just turned seventeen and if they were human they would be entering college soon. As felines though they’re pushing ninety. I love these cats even if they have turned my office into an aging cats’ nursing home. Charlotte is diabetic and all her insulin equipment is on my desk – single use syringes, softclix, Accu-Chek, Karo syrup etc. (Frankly college would not be all that more expensive than her meds and vet visits.) Stuart has kidney problems but is still pretty chipper and since he once went totally haywire on a visit to the vet, he’s not on medication.

Both of them shed all over my computer and manuscripts and I had to get a new office chair because they threw up on the old one so many times. You might say that my office doesn’t exactly meet  professional standards.

Why am I going on and on about my cats? Well, if you love cats you probably like reading about mine, or anybody’s cats.  And if you don’t love cats you probably do love some animal that you’d like to write about. And if you don’t have pets, there’s probably a story there too. The thing is that we’re either passionate about our animals or equally passionate about not having any.

Here’s a 5 minute exercise: Write about your pet, or a pet you once had, or why you never wanted a pet.  We’d love to hear about your pets under comments.