Is it Too Late to Say Happy Halloween?

Vera seemed to enjoy her first costume

Hard to believe that Halloween was almost a week ago and that we're well into November now. Especially since it's after dark and we still have the air on. Today was hot, no joke. Fall weather? Not in LA.

Anyway, happy late Halloween to everyone! Vera Kitten is more properly Vera Cat now since she turned one in September, but this was her first Halloween with us so of course she got her first costume. Much to our surprise she seemed to take it in stride.

Camila got to dress up too. She was a skunk this year, but wasn't quite as happy about it as Vera was about hers. She did enjoy the big pumpkin-shaped cookie we got her from Three Dog Bakery though.

Camila seemed less than pleased with her costume...

but no less than in years past.

After the annual shaming of the pets we took the night off from work and went to Border Grill where we were served by a guy dressed as a bear-Jedi. Or maybe a Jedi-bear. It was hard to tell which, and I was too shy to ask. After that it was off to the LA Phil where they were playing The Cat and the Canary with live organ accompaniment. I had never seen the picture (kind of a goofy horror/comedy silent from 1927) or been to the venue, so it was time well spent. When we told the Jedi-bear where we were going he was quite jealous.

Sadly, now it's time to take the skeletons down from our trees and turn our thoughts to other things. For instance, what to dress Vera as next year!

Black Cat Appreciation Day

Today is the day we celebrate miniature panthers. Why do black cats need their own special Appreciation Day when grey, orange, and tabby cats don't get one?

It's because black cats are often overlooked and even vilified. It's not uncommon for them to be the last kittens left when their litter mates have all been adopted. Some of this is because, being black, they tend to disappear into the background. They're notoriously hard to photograph in a shelter setting, and they don't have the facial markings that animate their tuxedo-marked friends.

Fredo

None of which means that their personalities are any less varied than that of other cats, or that they make worse pets. But, unfortunately, there's still a strong undercurrent of superstition in the United States that makes some people afraid of black felines.

Even folks who don't actively admit to fearing bad luck from a black cat crossing their path sometimes hold back from adopting them. It's an odd idea, born of the middle ages, that associates color with virtue. White is considered pure, so the opposite must be... Yeah, stupid when phrased like that, but still pervasive in the culture.

In our house we have a tradition of keeping black cats around. Gabriel already had Lucy (a quirky, loving, male kitty) when I moved in with him, and several years later we found Fredo living off pizza crusts in an abandoned apartment. Turned out that the girl who originally had him moved and left him behind despite naming him "Hero". We took him in and changed his name, making him our very first rescue. He lived with us for 17 years.

Vera

After Fredo passed away last fall the house seemed like it lacked something. And so we got Vera in December, a kitten who had been dumped in a parking lot and was living off Christmas cookies (see a pattern?). We think she may have literally been dumped since she is missing a tooth-shaped piece from her tongue and has a notch in her nose as if it was broken from landing on her face. Fortunately none of this ruins her good looks and she's happy and healthy now.

Whenever someone asks "what's the harm in having a couple of little superstitions?" I always think of black cats. Superstitions and lazy thinking can do active harm when they make it culturally okay to mistreat or dismiss individuals based on superficial identifying characteristics. And if it seems like this is applicable to more than just cats, you're right.

Superstitions can be insidious. No one is free of them. But I can assure you that black cats are not bad luck. If they are, I'm pretty screwed. Because this is my latest tattoo.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Vera and Books

Wordless Wednesday featuring Sleepy Vera

Vera, Now With Less Body Parts!

Back from the vet - Day 1

Vera Kitten has lived with us only since December. When we adopted her she was tiny, recovering from near-starvation, and proportioned like a toddler. According to our vet she was probably about 16 weeks old. Imagine our surprise when, only 3 weeks later, she went into heat. Could our baby cat possibly be old enough to have kittens?

Yes.

It seems odd, but female cats mature sexually long before they mature physically. If Vera hadn't been rescued from the parking lot where she was found there's a good chance she'd be pregnant already. Kittens having kittens: a terrible outcome for everyone. So, please, spay or neuter your pet! Yes, it's an actual surgery for the female (naturally males have a much shorter recovery time since their reproductive machinery is easier to access) but it's worth it in the long run. Females in heat pee in unfortunate places (the pockets of jackets, couch cushions, toasters, countertops... just to name a few that I've heard stories about), yowl at all hours of the night, and try to sneak out any open door to meet up with the resident local tom cats. None of these things were in the cards for Vera though, because she was spayed on Friday.

Vera looking a bit like an angry flower

She's back home now and seems to be recovering nicely. She doesn't know it, but these several days of discomfort have lots of benefits. Recent studies have shown that for every feline "fixed" 0.57 are spared the uncertainty of ending up at a shelter. Less unwanted cats also means less stray cats, which in turn means a smaller impact on stressed wildlife populations. After all, cats are born hunters, and their presence can be devastating to songbird populations.

As much as we hate to see our kitten in the "cone of shame" we made the choice to spay.

I know that anyone reading my blog probably has made the same choice. But just in case you're still considering it, here are some facts from the Humane Society of America that may help you make up your mind.

Thanks for listening. We will now return to our regular program of cute animal photos, trivia, and comic book news.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

One of my favorite images from Betrayal of the Planet of the Apes

Yeah, I missed doing the whole New Year's wrap-up blog post thing. But this week marks my birthday. That's kind of like a personal New Year, right? I'm going with "yes" and so, without further ado, here's what's going on with me, past and future.

2011 resulted in some big transitions. The largest happened when I left my position as a zoo keeper. I loved my job, the people I worked with and, most of all, the animals I cared for. But the commute was  becoming horrific and left me with little time to write. So I took the plunge last spring and became a fulltime freelancer. It's scary to work "without a net", but rewarding too. Since last February I've had a number of prose short stories published (check out the links on the right if you'd like to read any), done several non-fiction articles, and had my sci-fi story "Oceans of Darkness" reprinted in the Zahir Anthology 2011.

And then there were comics! I was thrilled to have a backup short in Fear Itself: the Homefront #2, with art by Lelio Bonaccorso, appear soon after I left my day job. Over the summer I had two shorts published by Double Feature: The Liar, written with my husband and partner Gabriel Hardman (who also did the art), and The Carpetbaggers, with wonderful spooky art by Kyle Latino.

My favorite project of the year was beyond a doubt Betrayal of the Planet of the Apes, the four issue Planet of the Apes miniseries Gabriel and I did for BOOM! Comics. We loved every minute of writing it and Gabriel really outdid himself on the art. We were lucky enough to get Jordie Bellaire to handle the colors too, a real coup in my opinion. The fourth issue just arrived in shops last week, but if you missed it there's going to be a trade paperback collection in July. In fact, you can already pre-order it on Amazon of from your favorite comic shop.

Big Sur!

We also attended what felt like a ton of cons (Emerald City, Heroes, NYCC, and Comicon, among others) and even slipped in a tiny 3 day vacation to Big Sur where I finally saw a condor in the wild. Sadly, we also lost our beloved cat Fredo in October. He finally succumbed to cancer, but not before living five years longer than anyone had dared hope.

And what of the future? Gabriel and I are writing a followup miniseries to Betrayal called Exile on the Planet of the Apes. The talented Marc Laming is handling the art this time around, with Jordie back on colors. The first issue ships in March and I promise there will be plenty of apes riding horses, apes arguing politics, and general ape intrigue. You can hear us talk all about it here. I'l also have a story appearing in Outlaw Territory Volume 3 later this year, as well as a short about hyacinth macaws coming soon from Bizarre New World. Not to mention the sorta secret new sci-fi OGN that Gabriel and I are hard at work on!

As to cons, we are planning on attending Emerald City again, C2E2 for the first time, Baltimore, Vancouver, and NYCC. Whew! To top it all off, we also have a new fuzzy black kitten named Vera, who was rescued from a parking lot. You can read her story here if you'd like. So that's the news. Never a dull moment when you're working freelance, apparently.

Fuzzy Kitten Vera

Meet New Kitten Vera

Every cat loves the "Feline Dream Curl" scratching post

Yes, it's true. There's a new kitten in the Bechkman household. Her name is Vera. 

She had a rough start in life so we were afraid she would be too skittish to settle in with our crazy dog Camila and our grumpy cats, but it's been almost a month now and so far, so good!

Not at all sure about that camera...

She still hides a lot of the time, but now at least she hides in the same room with us instead of trying to get as far away from us as possible. When things are quiet she's extremely affectionate, so hopefully she'll settle down before too long.

We hadn't planned on getting another kitty so soon after losing Fredo. I told my vet that we might consider a kitten if he heard of one that was black, had an extremely sad story, and really needed a home. I was confident that there would be no kittens available until the spring... Wrong! The very next day one of the techs called us. She had found a half-dead kitten two weeks before, starving in a parking lot, barely surviving off of the stale Christmas cookies that fell out of a dumpster behind a grocery store. It's likely that she was abandoned there as opposed to being born feral. Like I said, a very rough start!

Posing in front of our film collection, of course.

The tech was surprised that she had made it living like that as long as she had, and named her Amazing Grace. This being Los Angeles and Amazing Grace being a bit of a mouthful, we rechristened her with a movie star name: Vera. Doesn't she look like she could grow up to be the femme fatale in a feline film noir?

So there you have it: a new kitten for the new year. Welcome home, Vera!

Vera's first venture out of hiding, two days after moving in with us.

Wordless Wednesday featuring New Kitten Vera