Connecting the dots between characters, tension, and being bitten. Sounds like a stretch, I know. But my writing brain can’t help itself.

A week ago, last Friday, our cat was diagnosed with diabetes. She is now on an oral prescription medication, and we have to keep a handle on her glucose levels and check her ketones, as well.  To that end, she now has a glucose monitor attached to her left side, which was designed for humans. It’s about as big around as a silver dollar and as thick as two or three of them stacked together. It makes monitoring her glucose level easy but, as with everything having to do with this cat, it’s not actually an “easy button.”

We have had to schlep her to the vet numerous times in the past two weeks and there are multiple follow-up appointments scheduled for her over the next couple of weeks and months. Of course, she hates all of it. Every single aspect. From the oral medication to the lack of treats now on offer to being shoved into the cat carrier and driven to the vet. All. Of. It. But that is the nature of the beast. We have a joke around our house that Gidget’s secret is the same as the Hulk’s. She’s always angry.

I tried to gently groom the mats out of her fur the other night and she bit me. Her biting is not unusual. She is a rescue, like all our cats before her. She, however, was semi-feral when she showed up in the yard after a huge dust storm in 2011, which was the first time in Arizona we started using the word haboob to describe such events.

We almost named her that. Haboob. It would have been fitting. Instead, we settled on Gidget.

Gidget and I have an ongoing love/hate relationship. When people visit and reach out to pet her, I always warn them.

“She’s a biter.”

“Aw,” they respond. “But she’s so sweet.”

I smile “Yeah. I know she comes across all ‘pet me,’ but it’s a trap.”

So, I honestly know better than to expect her not to bite. The trouble is, she’s a very pretty cat with long, soft fur, and she has the prettiest, most musical purr of any cat I have ever had the pleasure to know. She likes to get up on the bed while I am reading at night and pats me with a paw to get me to pet her. Which I do, but I have to take my focus off reading to do so. Otherwise, there is no chance I will escape unscathed.

This time last, she got me good. Three deep punctures on my right hand that have turned red and painful with mild swelling and inflammation. I am healing, but my inflamed hand reminds me to be wary.

The problem is, she doesn’t have a warning system. She goes from purring to biting in less than a twitch. As much as I know the possibility is there, I almost never see it coming.

As a writer, my brain can’t help but connect this to the use of tension in a novel. The way that we sense it coming and then are relieved when the author lets a character off the hook, or upset yet not surprised when the character gets trapped, wounded, or worse. Petting Gidget is like that stretching and releasing of the tension that keeps us on edge while reading.

For me, it’s not the tension that makes me turn the page. It’s the character(s). Like Gidget, they pull me in, make me step closer, lean in, even when I know I might get bitten. It’s the characters I keep coming back for, the reason I offer my hand even when I know it’s a trap.

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