Pets in your stories

We got a new kitten at the end of June. Winnie's a cutie and at this moment she's sleeping on top of my printer. She's seen the big, adult cats in the household do it, so she follows suit. Mimi, my other tabby, is lying on top of the tub containing my American books. They're about a feet apart. If I turn around, Crystal is sleeping in the Longaberger basket where I keep the paper for the printer. (This is a 6-cat household, and yes, I've heard all the cracks about being a crazy cat lady. Actually, it's my kids who keep bringing them home.)

One of the things I do when planning out my American Romances is to decide if there are pets in the story. Pets, or the lack of, can say a lot about a character. For example, in The Christmas Date, my heroine has a cat. Marie gets a lot of pressure from her girlfriends to find a man, and she's told she'll be old and alone with just her cat to keep her company. In the book I'm working on now, the 10-year old girl hopes that she'll be able to finally have a kitten soon--she's never had a pet. The dad (hero) is already struggling to meet his kids' needs, but there are all these small ones, like a pet, that he's simply not aware of or hasn't realized how much of a priority they are. Hence, conflict.

Winnie took about a month to settle in. The big cats no longer hiss at her and for the most part tolerate her tugging on their tails and eating out of their food bowls. She's found the downstairs basement litterboxes (hooray!) meaning I was able to get the kitten-sized one out of my bathroom. She's stopped crying for her siblings (that was the heartwrenching first three days) and now crawls into people's laps and purrs. She was a wild thing, born outside to my daughter's best friend's grandmother's cat.

So as you go forth and read the next books, look for pets. My inclusion of them is a deliberate thing.

Michele