Some time ago I was aked to write a Holmes story for a major anthology. I did, but I found that I loved the characters I’d created so much I couldn’t just drop them. So I wrote Something The Cat Dragged in – which has just appeared at Wildside and on amazon, to my delight. Someone asked me how I came to think of Mandalay, the cat hero. That’s simple.
Years ago a friend ended up sitting on my couch, telling me sadly that it was her birthday, and no one had given her anything. It wasn’t that she wanted presents so much as she wanted to know someone cared. I left her for a few seconds and returned with the wrapped gift I’d had for her, she opened it and was happier. Then Thunder (my Ocicat) who had just returned inside again after his initial greeting and departure patted urgently at her knees. She looked down and he was offering a very recently dead mouse. She burst into laughter and cheered up completely. And that was where Mandalay came from.
Since then another Mandalay story has occurred to me, I hope that it too will be published. After all, there’s a lot of us out there that love Sherlock Holmes detective stories – and cats.
