Furbaby Friday with Ellen Dye!

I’m happy to welcome fellow Wild Rose Press Author Ellen Dye–from the next door state of West Virginia–to share her kitty family and latest Women’s Romantic Fiction release, Relatively Crazy.

Ellen: Growing up as a true urbanite, living in apartments and moving frequently for my mother’s job, we always had a kitty or two in our family who faithfully made the move with us from town to town or state to state. Occasionally a stray, underfed, lost feline would make its way to us and was always welcomed, fed, loved and made to feel at home. But always there would be a frantic rush to find a new and permanent home for our new arrival before the landlord found out that we were over the allowable amount of kitties firmly agreed upon in our lease. And even though we never failed to find happy accommodations for our new friends I was always sad to have to say goodbye.

This is how I knew I wanted to grow up to be a Crazy Cat Lady, even though this was many years before the term was even coined. It became my dream to own a cottage in the woods where limits on kitties allowed would not exist.
My childhood girlfriends spent untold hours creating dream homes for their Barbie dolls, imagining comfortable yet spacious living areas for their future husbands and children. I, on the other hand, occupied myself arranging Barbie’s overstuffed furniture topped with paw-pleasing cushions and blankets into groupings I thought would allow for maximum kitty relaxation and calculated necessary paw space required per kitty so I could adjust my cottage-in-the-woods to comfortably house at least a dozen purring family members.

Time passed, I traveled, I grew up and then when I was ready to settle down I found my dream cottage in the West Virginia woods. Our family of four kitties and son happily settled in, relishing the peaceful quiet of the woods. Soon enough kitties just seemed to appear on the doorstep, some in need of food and shelter, some in need of medical attention, and all in need of a loving home. True to my childhood dream, I’ve had room—and no landlord to prevent—welcoming each unexpected new arrival into their forever home.

On Christmas Eve, this past year my son and I counted six kitties in our little family, five boys and one girl. It had been something of a sad holiday as just a few weeks prior we’d lost our beloved 15 year old elder-kitty, Pewter, who been with us since she was a six week old kitten, to kidney disease. And although we loved each of our kitties dearly, we still missed our silver tabby girl deeply.
The morning had dawned cold and blowing a bitter wind as my son and I were enjoying a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and watching our six kitties enjoying a holiday breakfast of chunk white tuna. It was the kind of bitter cold outside that makes one grateful for the simple luxury of a warm home and hot beverages and no outside chores to be done. Just as I mentioned this to my son, he stood and leaned toward the window. “Mom, I think there’s something in the snow.”

I turned just in time to see a fluff of gray creeping across the deck between frozen snow piles left from our last storm. Heedless of the cold I hurried outside and saw a heartbreakingly thin, sad puff of dirty gray and white fur crouched between piles of leftover snow. As I crept closer, two frightened green eyes watched me closely.

“It’s okay. You’ve come to the right place,” I whispered, inching closer. “Let’s get you warm and fed.”

I guess she decided I was a pretty good egg as she let me pick her up, carry her inside to warmth and a bottomless bowl of tuna fish. And she was immediately welcomed to the family with open paws by the rest of our herd.
In keeping with her holiday arrival we chose the name, Merry and as it turned out it fits her well. She is a very happy young lady who purrs almost continually and is always ready for a tussle with her favorite catnip mouse or a leap up the scratching post tower for a rollicking game of swat-the-tail with her favorite buddy, Elliot.

And now that spring has arrived she enjoys taking a sunbath on the deck, but she doesn’t wander off onto the grass. I think it’s because she’s as happy in her forever home as I am.

Blurb for Relatively Crazy: 

On her fortieth birthday, housewife Wanda Jo Ashton is expecting her husband’s standard gift of an E and E from T—that being Elegant and Expensive from Tiffany’s. However, what she gets is the news that her formerly successful, dependable, corporate attorney husband is leaving her to pursue the rich life of a kept man.
Left with nothing, she has no choice but to escape the San Francisco area with her sixteen-year-old daughter in tow and head toward the mountains of West Virginia and the embarrassingly quirky family she left behind twenty years ago. Here, Wanda Jo must carve out a future, complete with career and home, in the midst of family feuds, computer phobias, and the occasional home-brewing explosion.
Only the presence of her daughter and a few good friends, including her old buddy Sam Branson, make life bearable at all. Can it be true that the good life begins at forty?

Download Relatively Crazy in Kindle at:

 https://www.amazon.com/Relatively-Crazy-Ellen-Dye-ebook/dp/B076GNYR8X

***Follow Ellen’s Amazon Author Page at: https://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Dye/e/B002C79CSA

Thanks for stopping by! Please leave Ellen a comment.