The Fraidy Cat

An essay I wrote a few years ago. 

The Fraidy Cat

            Out in the country, down by the lake, is no place for a fraidy cat. Yet here I find myself, surrounded by more creeping, crawling, flying, hopping, web-spinning creatures than ever slithered across the imagination of a Hollywood horror maven. 

            They’re everywhere: wasps at the window, ants in the pantry, beetles in the bathroom, gnats in the knickknacks. And nowhere, it seems, is unsuitable for spiders. They loaf in the lavatory, hunt in the hallway, clamber in the closet—you name it, they’ve been there.

            I was discussing the unbearableness of this situation with Kismet and Roswell, my feline daughters, and posed what I believed to be a perfectly reasonable solution. “You are predators,” I reminded them. “Go ye therefore and eat bugs.” They both gave me a look of scathing disdain (if you have a cat, you know the look) and proceeded to get on with the terribly important business of lounging about in a regal fashion.

            It’s not that they don’t hunt, of course. Kismet proudly brings me whatever rodent is in season. I thank her sweetly and return same to the Great Outdoors before too much harm results.  Roswell, on the other hand, prefers grasshoppers. She won’t eat them, naturally, just brings them inside to madly chase. I have tried to convey to her that my suggestion was meant to result in fewer bugs in the house, not more. She doesn’t care, being a cat.

            So, I had given up expecting my darlings to be of any use whatever in protecting me from the ongoing invasion of things-with-too-many-legs. I decided to let sleeping cats lie and Kismet was doing just that on her favorite pillow, my stomach. She opened her eyes when I scratched her head, blinked lazily at me, then fixed her gaze on a point high above, at ceiling level. I watched her big green eyes drift slowly down, down, down . . . when the sudden realization that there’s only one thing that wafts vertically downwards like that had me shoving her off and rolling aside just before the spider landed in bed.  It was brown and spindly-legged—the most dangerous kind. I dispatched it quickly, then grabbed Kismet up in a grateful hug. “You saved me from a brown recluse, Kizzie!”

            Her look (you know the one) seemed to say, “Of course, what else?” 

            Not to be outdone, Roswell, some weeks later, hopped up next to me on the bed for a nap—and continued hop-hop-hopping across the quilt in full predator mode, leading me to hop-hop-hop out of the way of a large and shaggy spider. When we were all through hopping (the spider, permanently) I exclaimed to my savior, “Rozzie, you do care!”

            To which she replied with a look (yes, that one) plainly saying, “Care about what?”
            Those two don’t fool me anymore. I know they’re my guardian angels. They just save their heroics for when it counts: when they feel like it.

Is Perfection Too Much to Ask?

Becoming a writer changes how you look at the written word. You instinctively pick apart your own and others’ writing, honing in on every little thing that could be improved. Some things are so basic they wave bright, red flags. Obvious spelling and punctuation errors make that shortlist. Other things take a little more experience to note, like clumsy transitions and awkward turns of phrase. We writers probably all have pet peeves that jump up and scream, “You have got to be kidding me!” whenever we see them.

My list of Writing Sins that Really Annoy Me ranges from the specific, such as making nouns plural by adding an apostrophe before the S, to the more nebulous: “Why can’t I seem to follow what this writer is saying without getting lost?” The former bothers me so much I’m tempted to not even insert an example, lest I hurt myself. Okay, for you, because I love writing and want to be helpful (deep breath, repeat after me: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down …): potatoe’s. Ack! I may have to lie down now.

But the one mistake I’ve been seeing too much of lately is so glaring that it should shock anyone who thinks of writers as people who have a reasonable facility with their native language: improper use of the simple verb “to go.” Twice in one week I saw the same error in articles written by professional freelance writers—in an online magazine about writing. Both times, the author said “I had went” when she meant “I had gone.” Presumably, someone edits this magazine; presumably, this editor saw nothing wrong with saying “had went.” One could be snarky and point out that these articles were part of a series on freelancers having trouble getting paid by their clients, and the reason for nonpayment was not so much deadbeat clients as poor-quality writing. While I doubt that most clients would withhold payment solely based on a botched conjugation, the fact that it would even be a question strikes me as outrageous. Professional writers get paid to write well; bad writing should not be part of the portfolio.

Call me a grammar geek. Call me obsessive-compulsive. Heck, call me naïve. But I believe that professional writers have an obligation to write correctly. We don’t all like the same style of writing and not all writing will be to our taste. But a writer should at least be able to use basic grammar. If you’re a writer, you owe that to your clients—and your readers.

Need help? The Owl at Purdue Online Writing Lab is a great resource for writers of all genres. It has sections on grammar and punctuation with many helpful examples. Worth checking out, even if your writing, like Mary Poppins, is Practically Perfect in Every Way.