Amy Sue Nathan

Eat, meow and leave

At the beginning of the week we found a mother cat and three kittens on the patio in front of the house.  One of the dogs discovered them, I can only surmise, when she decided to jump up on back legs to look outside through the dining room window because she was finished looking out the other seven thousand windows in the house.  Then it was the middle of the night when she decided to check on the cats and wake me up to tell me there were, indeed, still squatting on our property.  Of course I was awake from then on, as he/we watched the kittens play in the dark amidst the withering flowers and plants succumbing to the fact that I stopped watering in July Fall.  The next day he and mama cat had a staring match through the window.  I then decided those tiny, wobbly kittens must be hungry and although feeding them would endear me to them for life, I was sure, I used my favorite plastic platter and spread a can of tuna near the rim so the kittens could reach it easily.  That would have been great if the mama cat would have then let them have any.  Which she did not.  When I saw the tiny kitties licking an empty plate, well, what was I supposed to do?  More tuna.  More plates.  I pushed the plates to the two spots where the kittens were hiding and then when I hid, they ate the tuna.

And we haven’t seen them since.

I had rigged the dining room curtain so the dog could not wiggle through where the two sides meet. I left the outside lights off so the cats would be harder to see.  But they were gone.  I thought mama cat would come back.  My daughter and I decided on a place to feed them where the dog wouldn’t see them.  I researched feral cats and called the local humane society.  Heck, we even named all four of them.  There was no way I was taking in 4 cats but we decided if one came back — well then our hand might be forced.  No need for all the planning.  The cats are gone.  There are many cats in our neighborhood for some reason – we’ll often see a cat lying on our walkway as we drive off in the morning or walking across the front lawn.  But for 24 hours these cats were our tenants and just as we’d written their story.  They were gone but not forgotten.

You know, like a dropped subplot.

Dropped characters who have no graceful or dramatic exits and dropped subplots with no imaginable or actual ending are probably my biggest pet peeve in reading and writing.  Everything in literature needn’t be tied up neatly with a bow, but I think there should be a reasonable explanation or an understanding of a character’s departure.  If there’s a subplot we don’t need to read “the end” but we do need to know (or think we know) where something is headed.

A writer friend of my uses spreadsheets to do this.  I’m not quite as organized.  OK, I no way nearly as organized.  I have scribblings on paper that say “Don’t forget about so-and-so” which is the writerly string on my finger.  Throughout my WIP I try to weave different storylines that have beginnings, middles and endings that do not coincide with the beginning, middle and end of the novel.  Some of those secondary endings leave the reason without question and some point to possibilities and allow the reader to surmise, wonder and think.  I rely on my betas at this point to help discover nuances missed and threads that have detangled.  Since I know what happens, what doesn’t and what I want out of the story I’m often too close to it all.

I have shelved authors who drop subplots.  It disappointments me so much that I don’t read them again.  No second chances with me – there’s too much out there to read.

I can only imagine it was that way with the cats.  A big wide world to explore and without the lure of more than a can of tuna (it was albacore!) they were not sticking around for more. But like a book with elusive subplots – I do keep looking out the window hoping they’ll come back.