I’m allergic to my muse

By Dorothy Rosby

I used to think the only thing standing between me and great writing success was my cat allergy. It wasn’t true, but I still liked to think it.

A writer with a cat is almost a cliché. Search the internet for “author with cat,” and you’ll find a multitude of devoted cat lovers: Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates and Truman Capote to name a few. I’m not sure why cats appeal to writers. Maybe because writers want a muse that mews. Or maybe because cats are quiet, so they don’t distract the writer from her work. Or maybe because they’re cats so they teach us to handle that staple of the writer’s life: rejection.

My son also had a cat allergy when he was growing up, so whatever the benefits, it was best if we didn’t have one. In lieu of a cat—or a dog, which was what he really wanted—we welcomed a menagerie of critters including fish, a canary and several hamsters. I tolerated the fish and adored the hamsters and the canary.

Several successful writers have kept birds. Charles Dickens apparently had his pet raven, Grip, stuffed after its passing. I didn’t do that with Mr. Tweeters when he died, though I did keep him in a small box in the freezer until the ground had thawed enough to give him a proper burial.

In my research, I couldn’t find any evidence of writers with hamsters but one author named Katie Davies did write a children’s book called The Great Hamster Massacre.

It didn’t matter anyway. At that point it was less about me having a muse and more about trying to keep my son from wanting a dog. It didn’t work, by the way.

At one point we took in a rabbit while her owner was away. Her ears were longer than a cat’s and she showed no interest whatsoever in our canary, but otherwise she was almost like having a writer’s cat. Her feelings toward us ranged from affectionate to neutral to contemptuous. She lounged at my feet when I was at my desk. And she was quiet and prone to hair balls. Who knows how my career would have blossomed if I’d refused to return her to her owner.

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