Cats on Tuesday: About Scrungy

Small brave carnivores

Kill pine cones and mosquitoes

Fear vacuum cleaner

haiku author unknown

Since Gretchen has her own site now, I said that I would explain why I named my site Scrungy's Creator.

I'm going back a few years to around 1987: I had been halfway through my first novella and had lost a precious orange and white cat that I had taken in since birth. He was born under a utility shed next to our modular home in a great oak wood late in May. He was the tiniest of the litter of three. I believe it was his mother's first litter. She was a popular visitor among all the residences of the woods. Over the years she must have had two litters a year and each time under some ones shed. She got to be known as Momma cat. A very small, mottled brown and tan tabby. We brought the little orange and white kitten into the house because it was so much weaker than its siblings and it had been a late, cold spring. Pumpkin was the cat that I had completely declawed at six months old. It was the most pitiful sight to see him with all four paws stitched up. That's when I vowed never to do that to a cat again (pitifully, I broke my vow when it came to Gretchen). He was also the cat that no one, not even the vet knew that he was not a she, until he operated on her and found out she was actually a he.

Another season went by and we moved from within the woods to the top of a hill, overlooking the wood, pond and stream. A place that will always remain in my dreams and is the kind of place I've been hoping to move to someday. If it had not have been for the job that went with the house and property, I would still be there to this day. Because Pumpkin was completely declawed he was never an outside cat. He was very happy in his new, roomier home at the top of the hill, but one day he went out and disappeared. Three days later we thought he had returned. In the tall grasses at the edge of the lawn was an identical cat, male, but the only difference was that he was fully clawed. We never saw our Pumpkin again, but the new cat hung around. He belonged to no one but the vast wood. I now believe he was the father of all Momma Cat's kittens. Every one of her litters had a few orange kittens. He could have even been Pumpkin's father.

The cat that showed up at our door, the one who looked identical to Pumpkin, I named Scrungy. At the time of his appearance he was very scrungy. Dirty, un-kept, and a little sickly looking. He also had a huge gash across the side of his neck that was trying to heal. Obviously from a fight with another tom or a raccoon. Raccoons were plentiful in our woods, and we even raised one from a baby, once. We fed the new tom; he fattened, and hung around on his terms. The wood was his home; we were just a convenience; his food and sometimes shelter.

In my little white house on the hill, overlooking a barren field, the wood; I began to write about an abandoned cat named Scrungy. Because of my real job, I worked upwards of sixty to eighty hours a week alongside my husband, writing was an occasionally thing. It wasn't until we were deep into the winter season that I completed the first draft of Scrungy: Abandoned. Complications from a back injury kept me from working and then I began writing in earnest. Eventually, we moved to Montana for a couple of years where I re-wrote Scrungy several times before being satisfied with it. When we moved to Oregon, I wrote the sequel to the first Scrungy book, Scrungy:Rescue. In the meantime I've been working on other novels. When I am finished with the current novel, Bubba and Bean, I will begin the third book in the Scrungy series. Scrungy is not on the market yet. It is still making its journey through agents and publishers hands. Because of a lot of illness in the past ten years, I've not pushed to publish Scrungy as hard as I probably should have. My family and friends are after me to publish. And yes, I would not be truthful if I said I didn't want to be published, also. I just like to write. But I do want it published, and that is why, when my daughter edged me into the blogsphere, I took the name Scrungy's Creator as my blog name, perhaps as a part good luck charm and part inspiration for me to continue. I hope to have several more books in the Scrungy series before I've exhausted the ideas and the plots for this little kitten that was dumped along a deserted road in the middle of a vast wood, where he learns to survive, find love, companionship, and a life for himself. The white cat that I had for six months before Gretchen came into my life was named Preylor, after Prelyor, the king of the abandoned cats in this series…a massive white tom with odd colored eyes. There are many, many cats that come and go from my little catdom and hope that there will be many more.

Belonging to Gattina's Cats on Tuesday group is the best thing that could happen to me. It gives me inspiration. Challenges me to use my imaginings and write weekly stories about cats. It has also deepened my love for cats, and all things living. Thank you Paula. Thank you Gattina. And thank you, Thomma Lyn, for opening me up to the Cat Blogosphe

There are no pictures to post for this story. A few years ago I sent all of the pictures of the real Scrungy and Pumpkin to daughter#4. She's also an illustrator and wanted to work on the Scrungy series with me. I didn't realize I hadn't kept any pictures for myself until after a frantic search through all my files and boxes of pictures last night, for a picture to post today. The picture that I use for my logo is a close likeness of what Scrungy would have looked like as a kitten, after being cleaned up, of course.