Where Art Meets the Heart

   Born in North Bend, Oregon in 1949, I was raised by loving parents, a lumber mill-worker and a housewife. At eighteen I selected a course unsuited to me.  While my heart cried for escape, I was too frightened to make it happen.  It seemed my life would never get better.

   When the student is ready, the teacher always appears.  Mine was Richard Bach.  His book,  Jonathan Livingston Seagull, transformed me.  I started college, ended my marriage, quit a menial job and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science from Oregon State University.  I entered the field of social services and married again.  My goal was to help others overcome their limitations, like I had.  But working for the state, try as I might, the assistance I provided made little long-term difference in the lives of my reluctant clients.

   Again my teacher appeared.  This time it was horrific tragedy at the hand of my brother.  He shot and killed four of his neighbors.  Distraught, heartsick, I began writing about it.  My second husband was ashamed of me because of what my brother had done.  This destroyed our marriage.  I focused harder on writing.  The result was HIDDEN VICTIMS: The Other Side of Murder, published in 1993 by New Horizon Press.

   My next growth step was ushered in by the sudden death of my sweetheart.  This nearly led me to suicide.  During this period I read another book by Richard Bach, ONE.  Again, his words helped, and due to his personal kindness I found my first agent.  After a healing period I met and soon married Phil, a fellow writer, and moved to a peaceful setting to write full-time.

   In 2001 I found Jerry Yarnell's School of Fine Art on public television.  He taught me to paint.  My first goal was to design cover art for my books and my husband's books as well.  Now, I paint for the challenge and joy of it.

   Navigating my way through it all, I learned firsthand that lives are transformed where art meets the heart.  It is my hope to inspire others to find this place within themselves and show it forth.


ADDITIONAL BOOKS WRITTEN since publishing the nonfiction work, Hidden Victims:

   Born in Salzburg, Austria in 1948, I emigrated with my mother and sister to Long Beach, New York in 1951.  At the age of six, I discovered fishing - my first love.  At the age of fourteen, I discovered poetry and the desire to write.  Several thousand poems later, at the age of twenty the romantic in me was sidetracked by marriage.  Needing a steady income, I spent 1968 through 1991 writing and designing computer software, becoming a Lead Analyst and Project Leader.  I designed and wrote approximately eighteen major systems for the banking and insurance industry.  Also during that time, the first wife went, and a second wife came and went.  I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1975.  In 1990, while fly fishing for steelhead, I met a writer, Violet Huntley.  She rekindled my need for creative writing.  Kidnapped and dedicating my future to that need, I gave up my career in computers, married my kidnapper and moved to the country - where we now live with our cats, Lucy and Ethel (Fleggy is still with us in spirit) and an adopted menopausal raccoon we call Missie.

   I am now a dedicated, full-time writer (with occasional time out for fishing, maintaining this website, building rustic furniture and taking the occasional photo).

   Through 1996, I honed my writing skills and wrote three and a half novels.  Finally ready for serious writing, I developed Time Enough to Love.  A novel inspired by meeting and marrying Vi, the story is set in various locales in the Pacific Northwest, forty-three years ago to the present. It is a myth-based adventure about reincarnation and soul mates . . . about The Mystical granting the ultimate, unforeseen happy ending.

   A second work, The Cat Did It, soon followed - a novel inspired by the unasked question to Teri Schiavo and Karen Ann Quinlan, "Where were you while your body lay in a coma?"  It is the mystical, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, story of life's unavoidable journey into the afterlife and how human frailties and unknowing can complicate that transition.

   A third work, Vortex, is in partial draft.  Several additional novels are awaiting their time of construction.

   Fleggy, a red haired Manx with six toes on each front foot, was born in October of 1991 in Portland, Oregon.  A stray kitty, she started showing up at my mother's house in early spring of 1992.  Curious, affectionate, polite and well-behaved, she instantly made a positive impression on my mother.  For a while, it seemed that Fleggy might have found a home, but my mother was concerned that with all the city traffic and Fleggy preferring to be outdoors, a better home would be in the country.  On Mom's next visit - Vi and I live in the country, about forty miles from the nearest anything - Fleggy came along and instantly claimed our eleven plus acres as her new turf.  Until recently, she was perhaps the best mouser a cat could ever be.  She was also the best watch-cat I have ever heard of.  Every day she would patrol the yard making sure we had no invaders or trespassers.  When we worked around the yard, she'd join us, either watching diligently or getting in the way, all the while commenting on our work in her soft little Manx voice.

    Last winter, however, while she was napping under one of her favorite fir trees, the neighbor's dog hopped the cattle fence, snuck up on her and bit her severely on the lower back.  The dog drew blood and damaged her hip.  The puncture wound healed, but she had irreparable nerve damage and started losing mobility in her hind legs.  Slowed and limping but undaunted, she still took up her daily post as our trusty watch-kitty . . . until the raccoons decided she was a threat to their territory.

    In June 2004 they decided she had to be dealt with, and four of them attacked her.  Fortunately, she was on the deck and I was in the den directly under the deck.  When I heard a commotion just outside the window, I ran to see what it was about.  I heard Fleggy yeowling and a raccoon grunting and growling as three more raccoons came running up the deck steps.  Still in my robe, I ran upstairs and found Fleggy under a pile of four raccoons.  All I could see was a small red-haired patch under a mass of attacking grey and black.  I think I took all seven steps in one bound to get to her.  Not sure if I should grab the raccoons, barefoot, I started kicking the raccoons off her.  The first raccoon I got square in the side and booted her a good five feet beyond the growling mass.  I must have broken several ribs on the beast because it instantly tried to limp/run away.  (I also broke a toe in the process.)  In spite of my own bruise, I kept kicking at the remaining pile of raccoons.  The next one got it square in the butt, and she too limped off.  The ramaining two raccoons took off after the first two, but before they could get off the deck, I managed to connect with another, and it too went flying.  The fourth raccoon got away unhurt.  Unfortunately, Fleggy wasn't so lucky.  She had a nasty bite on her hind right foot and was missing a few small patches of fur.  I'm glad I was as close as I was when the attack occurred, and hate to think what might have happened had I not been so near.  Vi and I cleaned up Fleggy, and for several days she seemed not too much worse for the experience.  But the attack apparently did more damage to the nerve in her injured hip.  She still has mobility in her back legs, but has just about lost the ability to walk.  She also seems to have developed periodic seizures that come on when she twists to scratch herself, sometimes even when we pick her up.  We have to be very careful with her now, not only for her sake but for ours as well.  The other day I picked her up to take her outside.  She had a seizure, unintentionally bitting down on my thumb and leaving a deep claw scratch on the back of my hand.  I didn't want to hurt her, so I endured the two teeth embedded deep in my thumb until her seizure was over.  When the seizure ended, she immediately let go.  My hand was a bloody mess, and she seemed to realize right away what she had done.  I've never seen a cat look so apologetic.

    Some say we should put her to sleep, but as a trusted and faithful member of the family for over twelve years, that is not an option.  As a result, Fleggy is now retired as our official mouser (Ethel has taken over in her stead, Lucy is only interested in cuddling, complaining when she's not getting cuddled and getting fat).  Fleggy is, however, still our reliable watch-kitty.  Her spirit unbroken, every day, weather permitting, she assumes her watch-kitty duties under the cherry tree in front of our house, protected by chicken wire fencing in her own private courtyard.  We carry her to her post every morning and carry her back every evening, checking on her numerous times during the day.  And at night, we help her groom and clean herself.  You would think a cat that went through Fleggy's ordeal might give up and become a depressed little lump, mourning the lifestyle she was so enthusiastically following, but that's not the case.  She still tries to keep up with her self-assigned duties, and we try to make sure she knows she's just as loved and cherished as when she was a fully functioning mouser and watch-kitty - after all, she is a central part of the family.  I've heard that the Manx breed can live to be twenty years old.  We look forward to her reaching that birthday.

    We are saddened to say that Fleggy passed away this morning.  She died quietly, in her sleep from complications due to the nerve damage suffered from the attack by the neighbor's dog last year.  We trust that God knows her worth as we do and has given Fleggy, our guard-kitty, a special place by the gates of heaven - just as she guarded our front gate.  May she always know the eternal bliss.

   I laid them over my heart.  They purred soft and steady, snuggling beneath my chin, and as I sat back in the easy chair, I knew they had come to heal my heart.  Two little black and white kitties, nearly the same, yet very very different, and so like my two dogs, made we wonder if Brandy and Cocoa had been reborn as cats.

    That's what I'd said to Brandy shortly, after she died in the winter of 2001.  I saw an image of her, just as I woke up, peering through the gate to our driveway.  She seemed despondent, wondering why she was on the outside looking in.  As I woke up, I said to her, "If you and Cocoa want to be with me, you have to be reborn as cats.  See, Phil is so allergic to dogs that I promised I wouldn't get any more.  Come back as cats."

    First, it was Cocoa, my springer spaniel, and then Brandy, my cocker spaniel,  my dogs of 14 years, who passed to the next level.  Fleggy, who had been spending the night cuddling with them in the shed, was now alone.  Manxes do like solitude - it's required of watch cats.  But since she was getting older, it would be nice to have backup from someone young and strong, someone to snug up to during the winter cold, or so Phil and I figured.  Even if she didn't like the intruders at first, she'd get used to them.

    In the spring of 2001 Phil came home from fishing and told me his friend's cat had just had kittens.  Born April 16, 2001 Lucy and Ethel entered a family with a nine-year-old girl who loved them.  When they were six weeks old Phil's friend decided the kittens had to move outside - to become barn cats.  Barn cats can become wild.  So if we wanted a kitten before it became wild, we'd better get it now.  Seeing them at play, learning that they always played together, we decided on two.  We instantly christened them Lucy and Ethel, since we have such a hard time agreeing on names.  (At first Phil called Fleggy - Flegnarm - a name I just could not call her.)

    Two handfuls of kitties came home with us that day in June - little lover kitties that adopted me as Momma Cat.  They slept on my chest.  They snuggled in next to us in the easy chairs.  Too small to make it up into the chair without help, at first they slept on my feet, dog-like.  In fact, I learned early on that they had a lot a Brandy and Cocoa's characteristics . . . enough to make me wonder.

   Initially it was hard for us to tell them apart.  Gradually we detected differences in their markings and in their behavior.  Lucy was definitely a munch cat - cleaned up whatever Ethel didn't want to eat.  Both especially like chocolate chips.  Their ration of three a day was eliminated when Lucy developed bladder crystals.   Chocolate is not good for cats as it turned out.  And they like cheese.  Lucy responds Pavlovian style to the word.  The summer they came home with us Phil began catching Chinook regularly, so the two cup-sized felines started their lives with healthy rations of fresh chinook, coho and steelhead almost daily (they prefer chinook).

    Lucy aka Fat Cat aka Lucykins aka Lucybugs turned into a consummate cuddler.  Mostly she's a house cat and likes to stare out the window or sleep on our laps or in a variety of places.  During the winter she likes to sleep on our heads at night or under the covers.  Lucy's a little pushy with Ethel and is irritated when Fleggy is in what she sees as Her Place on Phil's lap.

    Ethel aka Skinny aka Ethelkins aka Ethelbugs is a hunter.  She prefers to be outside chasing bugs or mice or birds.  She does like to cuddle, but only on her terms and with her timing.  She has an endearing way of turning her head to the side and snuggling upside down next to us.  She's sleeping on my lap as I write this.  She, too, likes to sleep on our heads or under the covers.  Both cats would sleep in my hair if I let them.

    As for becoming friends with Fleggy - they tried at first, but Fleggy hissed and swatted at them, enough times that they picked up the behavior.  Now that Fleggy is incapacitated, the animosity is fading and hopefully the friendship can begin.

    Even now I sometimes think I see my dogs in the eyes of our cats.  Do we love our kitties?  Yes, and they love us, regardless of what my biology professor said about being anthropomorphic.  They are lover kitties, after all.