This week has been busy; one of my closest friends got engaged, as well as had a birthday, Scott and I celebrated 15 years of marriage, my son had a complete meltdown about middle school and my agent asked me to revise a not-dead-yet manuscript.

Whew!

So I have been hunkering down and trying to Get It All Done, which means I have been going without as much leisure time reading, watching British dramas and sleeping (hate that one!).

There are some things, however, without which I will not do:

–Coffee (the picture of me is when I am pointing to where there is no coffee at a conference a few years ago. My expression says it all).

–Playing Scramble 2 on my iPhone. I like playing until I place in the top 3, which doesn’t take long on off hours. During peak times, it never happens–I’m just not good enough.

–Twitter. I love interacting with friends there, and I usually get book recommendations, too.

–Exercising. I’m trying to work out five times a week (the summer was unusually weighty for me, and I am too cheap to buy new clothing).

–Fun errands–yes, they exist. A couple of days ago, I took my bike to Sunset Park, the Chinese section of Brooklyn, where I bought a ginormous container of soy sauce for less than $4. And more sambal oelek, a necessity for our spicy-loving house. Then yesterday I headed the opposite direction to an artisanal cheese shop, where I got three different types of nifty cheese to pair with Pinot Noir or Syrah. Fun errands do tend to be food-related.

So if you had to pare everything down to the necessities, what would be the necessary frivolities you’d keep in your schedule?

Hello all!

No, do not adjust your computers; it is Wednesday, which is normally the day Carolyn Jewel posts here, but since she actually owns cats, she posted on Friday to allow me to find a topic that wouldn’t include bemoaning the fact that I can’t have cats (or dogs, for that matter) due to ferocious allergies (that was not a bemoan, just a statement of fact).


So today I wanted to talk about some of my favorite fictional cats! Probably the first fictional cat I encountered was the Cat In The Hat, that sassy troublemaker created by Dr. Seuss. Because I am a worrier, I was always concerned that the kids and that destructive Cat wouldn’t get everything cleaned up in time before the mom arrived home. Of course, the Cat had powers beyond normal Cat-dom, so everything turned out all right. Whew.

Later on, I dove into Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, which stars the Cheshire Cat, one of the creepiest cats in literature. That smile! That sardonic wit! Gives me the shudders just thinking about it now. It probably didn’t help that my parents had the Annotated Edition, which attempted to explain why Lewis Carroll created the cat that way (yes, once again, super-egghead parents freak Megan out).

I met Catwoman in Batman, and have to say, is there anything more seductive than Michelle Pfeiffer in that latex suit? Whoa. And when she acts all feline, it’s devastating (just ask my husband!). Holly Golightly‘s companion in Breakfast At Tiffany’s is a cat as careless as Holly is, only Holly actually takes responsibility for her pet.

In Jim Butcher‘s Dresden Files series, Harry Dresden lives with a 30-lb. cat named Mister (I would not say Harry owns Mister, nor that Mister owns Harry; it is a reciprocally beneficial relationship). Mister is a fantastically written cat, which is to say disdainful, proud and clearly opinionated.

But probably my favorite cat is the the feline in The Cat Returns, a film by Hayao Miyazaki. The Cat, voiced by Cary Elwes, is charming, rogueish, clever and witty. Swoon. PLUS he saves the day for the heroine.

Yay for fictional cats! If you could own any fictional cat, which would it be?

Megan