We had to say goodbye to our little gray cat Emily today. We think she was about 20 years old, but we’re not sure, because she adopted us just over nine years ago, appearing in our back yard to steal our puppy’s food. She had a lot of problems, resulting from having nearly starved on her own without front claws, and having possibly been abused. She was missing half her teeth when she found us, and we think she suffered the cat version of PTSD. But over time she warmed up to all of us and became an integral part of our family. We like to think we were able to give her a nice retirement here, after all her troubles. She helped us say goodbye to another dear cat friend, Merlin, in 2000, and today we said goodbye to her.

I’ll miss her purrs, her silky, silver-gray fur, and the gentle tap of her paw when she wakened me in the mornings.

Just a few nights ago, The Lord of the Rings trilogy played on television again. We didn’t watch, because I intended to watch our DVDs again soon, but we caught the tail end of Return of the King, and the final song.

For days that song has stayed in my mind, popping into consciousness at odd moments. Today it did again, and I wondered about it, because I couldn’t recall the singer’s name, the name of the song, or the lyrics. The music just kept haunting me. So I looked it up, and remembered as soon as I sat down to do a search that it was Into the West. Annie Lennox sang it for the film. I love this song. Right now it’s helping me say goodbye to Emily. I learned that it was partially inspired by the death of young New Zealand filmmaker, Cameron Duncan, and first performed in public at his funeral. That makes it seem even more appropriate as Emily’s song of passage.

Safe journey, little friend.

The song is available as part of the soundtrack from the film: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [SOUNDTRACK]

I hate writing synopses.

As I understand it, most writers hate them. It’s difficult to pare down to a few pages the story that took you many hundred more to write in the way you think readers will best understand. It’s especially difficult for me while all the minute details and nuances are still very much alive in my mind. But agents want to see a synopsis first.

Some writers say a synopsis is easier to write before one writes the story, but I’ve always found that tricky, since my stories change as I write them. I outline the story that it turns out I didn’t want to write after all. The real story reveals itself as I go along.

But this synopsis may turn out to be a good thing, because it’s helped me see more that I want to cut. Maybe that’s what the agents really have up their sleeves, getting writers to analyze their stories from a different perspective. I’m heading back into editing mode. Good grief, this novel’s been through a lot of drafts. This will be the 9th, and it’s wearing me down. I’ll be glad to see the end of it.

According to my old bird guides, one of which dates back to a field biology class I took at eighteen or nineteen, this little guy isn’t supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be anywhere from Northern California to Alaska. But here he is, in Southern California. (Notice how we Californians capitalize the two regions, as if we wanted to be two separate states, like the Dakotas or the Carolinas?)

Anyway, he’s in the wrong place, I think. If it’s time for Rufous Hummingbirds to migrate to winter grounds, he’s supposed to be in Mexico, or on his way there. This feisty little Selasphorus rufus has claimed the territory around our feeder during the past two days. I’ve been paying attention to hummingbirds all my life, and we’ve fed them for years, here at the north end of the county and in the city of San Diego, but we never saw a Rufous before, at least not closely enough to identify it. With no green on his back (see below), he’s definitely a Rufous.

Maybe his range has been thrown off by global warming, as this Smithsonian site seems to hint, or perhaps they’ve always been around and I just haven’t noticed.