October 1, 2024

Number One and the Blue Jay

This post is something a little different from me. Here’s a personal essay I wrote detailing a humorous story involving my very pampered cat and an annoyingly noisy bird. 


Like many newly committed couples, when my husband and I were first married, we decided to adopt a pet. Since our apartment at the time didn’t allow pets, that clearly meant we needed to adopt a cat. So at seven months into our marriage, we adopted a white, seven-month-old cat. She slept through the whole adoption process, clearly not caring about her sweet kitty fate. We named her Number One, and she exemplified her namesake as she was truly the best cat. Her laid-back attitude persisted through all areas of her life.

Except when it came to the blue jay.

Our tiny one-bedroom apartment had a single window in the bedroom which looked onto the narrow alley between our building and the adjacent one. There were a few concrete pillars lining the gravel alley roadway to prevent cars from hitting the building, and they made perfect perches for the local birds. Sweet little finches, chickadees, and other winged friends would sing or chirp just outside the open window, filling our apartment with beautiful bird songs.

However, one day, a horrible squawking noise came loudly through the window. CAW! CAW! I rushed over to see what made the awful sound and barely caught a glimpse of the fat, blue-colored bird before he flew away.

The next time the noisy blue bird came to screech at the top of its birdy-little lungs, it caught the attention of Number One. I was sitting on the bed reading, and the cat jumped up next to me. The bed was situated in front of the window, so the cat climbed over me and the headboard and then stared out at the feathery visitor. She began making those weird chirping noises cats love to make—the noise that indicates they see pray and they’re excited about that.

CAW! the bird squawked in reply.

Number One began whipping around her white tail, pressing her fluffy body against the screen in the window.

“Cat, no!” I scolded as her tail smacked me in the face. I was worried she’d rip the screen out of the window in her attempt to reach the bird, so I removed her from the windowsill. As soon as the bird saw me, he flew away.

Figuring the ordeal was over, I got back to my book and proceeded to pet my happy cat as she peered out the window, probably wondering if the bird would come back.

He did return barely a minute later. Again, I got smacked in the face by a tail, removed the cat from the window so she wouldn’t destroy the screen, and scared away the bird. But this time, I also closed the window.

Of course, the blue bird came right back. His screechy greetings were muffled this time by the closed window, but now Number One had less of a windowsill to perch on. She balanced as best as she could on the top edge of the headboard, pressing her white furry body against the glass, and proceeded to whip around her tail and meow at the aggressive creature just outside.

I gave up on reading my book in bed and retreated to the living room, figuring that eventually, the bird would tire of my cat and fly away.

And he did.

But he came back. All the time. That aggressive, noisy bird would appear outside our apartment multiple times a day.

We kept the window closed so the cat couldn’t damage the screen. In turn, the apartment became unbearably hot since it was summer and we had no AC and no airflow. And, of course, you could still hear the bird’s ear-piercing cries through the closed window. Plus, you couldn’t sit on the bed during a bird visit because the cat would be busy racing back and forth across the headboard, smacking everything with her tail.

Something had to be done.

We knew the bird kept returning specifically to visit the cat. They noisily chatted with each other every time the bird called.

“Maybe if Number One couldn’t reach the window, the bird would stop coming by,” my husband suggested.

“How are we supposed to do that?” I asked. “Cover the window completely?”

“Number One can’t jump very far. If we move the bed away from the window, she probably won’t be able to reach it.” The window was around four feet from the floor, and Number One could barely jump onto the sofa, let alone reach something higher. His idea held merit, except for the fact that our bed was a massive wooden hand-me-down piece of furniture, and moving it was no small feat.

“How?” Since the room was so small, there wasn’t enough space to rotate the bed to situate it next to the wall opposite the window—which was the only other spot we could practically put it.

My husband shrugged. “Take it apart. Reassemble it so it’s facing the window.”

Several hours and much ado later, we had successfully moved the bed a whole five feet across the room.

However, we had severely underestimated our cat’s resolve to visit with the damn bird.

The next time we heard the taunting CAW! from outside the window, my husband and I shared a smug smile, knowing we had solved the problem. Number One was desperate to get up to the window and paced on the floor underneath it. Eventually, she decided to muster the courage to jump up to the window sill. She backed away from the wall a bit, squatted down, mustering all of her kitty jumping power, the sprung up into the air… and then went smack into the wall. She scampered off defeated.

Although her first attempt was unsuccessful, the bird kept coming back, and she kept trying to jump up to the window. She made it about once every three tries. The bird would fly away when he saw a person, so going to the window to yank the cat away would also scare away the bird. I also tried going outside and chasing the bird away from the lane, but he kept coming back.

Now we not only had to deal with the constant annoyance of the bird screaming right outside our window, but our cat was going to seriously injure or even kill herself trying to get up to the windowsill.

I had no idea what to do. I needed serious help.

I grabbed my phone and dialed.

“Hey sweety, it’s good to hear from you! How are you doing?”

“I have a Dad-question,” I stated. I had a lot of dad-questions after moving out of my parents’ home. The power shut off; what do I do? My car tire is flat; what do I do? I came home and the floor is covered in water; what do I do? You get the idea. I still call with dad-questions occasionally. My dad knows a lot of stuff. “There’s this bird. It’s blue. And if makes awful noises.”

“Ahh, it must be a blue jay. They can make quite the racket.”

“Okay, well, it’s befriended our cat.” I proceeded to explain the situation: the noise, the lack of airflow, the rearrangement of the furniture, and our cat’s intent on killing herself.

After getting a good laugh, my dad launched into fix-it mode. “Most birds, including blue jays, are terrified of snakes,” he explained. “Even something that looks like a snake will be enough to scare them away.”

“I could get a rubber snake!” I exclaim.

“It’s even easier than that. Just cut up an old garden hose into four to six-foot lengths—”

“I don’t have an old garden hose. I would have to buy a new one. I could just buy a rubber snake—”

“We used to take an old garden hose, chop it up, and hang all the pieces among the branches of the apple trees in the orchard because the birds kept eating the apples. Someone’s gotta have an old garden hose. Maybe ask one of your neighbors—”

“Dad, I live in an apartment building. All my neighbors live in apartments. None of them have an old hose.”

“I guess you could use a new one, but an old one would be best. It worked super well in the orchard. We didn’t have trouble with the birds after that. You know, I bet there’s a lawn maintenance crew that has an extra old garden hose you could use.”

“There’s a specialty toy store just down the road from my work. I can stop by during my lunch and grab a rubber snake.”

“You could ask around. Someone will have an old hose. But I guess you could buy a new one.”

“I’ll just buy a toy snake. Thanks so much, Dad, for the idea! I love you!”

“Love you too, sweety. Glad I could help. Call anytime you have another dad-question.”

The largest rubber snake they had at the specialty toy store near my work was six feet long. It was perfect. I shoved the floppy rubber toy, which was surprisingly realistic, onto the window sill, and the blue jay never visited again. Number One stopped trying to jump up to the window and proceeded to live a long kitty life.

The toy snake would go on to scare away a variety of birds and squelch annoying squawking on a few occasions. And to this day, the sound of a blue jay makes my blood boil.

Surprisingly, Number One wasn’t afraid of the snake toy; however, thinking back, I don’t think she was afraid of anything. She didn’t have another close encounter with a bird friend until a bird got trapped inside our house, but that’s a story for another day.

September 1, 2024

New Book Announcement: Starship Blunder: A Shareverse Anthology

I am so excited to announce my next book release: Starship Blunder. This book has been a new type of endeavor for me. It’s an anthology full of stories set in the Starship Blunder world. I had the pleasure of working with eleven other writers in order to put this collection together, and I’m absolutely thrilled with the result.

All of the best talent, most promising soldiers, and highly competent individuals were picked for the elite Starship Prime. Together, they will travel to faraway galaxies and make connections with new alien species currently unknown.

Unfortunately for Sarah Hawkins, she didn’t make the cut and instead pilots the Starship Blunder. With her team of misfits, has-beens, and generally underqualified crewmates, she does her best to explore not-too-far away planets and check in with the alien species that humanity would prefer to forget. But their biggest challenge is to keep the hunk of junk Blunder in good enough repair to prevent crash landing at every single stop.

The book will release on October 1st, and I have a lot of fun things planned to celebrate, including a virtual launch party on October 5th at 2 PM EST. A few of the authors included in the collection will join to talk about their stories, and we’ll partake in sci-fi silliness. Also, everyone who attends will receive a special giveaway, so don’t miss out!

RSVP for the Starship Blunder Virtual Launch Party

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, I’ve kept you updated along this whole journey and even included a sneak peek at one of the stories. (Do subscribe if you’d like!) Also, I’ll be sharing fun tidbits and art related to the book all month on social media, so check that out as well.

I can’t wait to share this fun collection of stories, and look forward to seeing you all at the launch party!




August 26, 2024

Book Review: A Secret History of Witches by Louisa Morgan

I had to impulse buy a few novels before taking our family vacation since I knew I would have lots of downtime to read while traveling, and also because vacations are the perfect time to catch up on reading. I bought this book based on the description: “A sweeping historical saga that traces five generations of fiercely powerful mothers and daughters…” I LOVE Edward Rutherford and Ken Follet, who both write multigenerational epics, so I figured this book would be right up my alley. I could give or take the witchyness.

Enough preamble and onto the review.

I found this book very “meh.” The writing is fine, but the story really lacked the deep historical involvement that this style of sweeping tale should feature. Each woman’s tale followed a remarkably similar trajectory: discovery of powers, inevitable romance with a socially inappropriate man, and the eventual relegation of her powers as disillusionment sets in. This repetition made the book feel monotonous.

The witchcraft details were similarly repetitive. Every woman crafts a love potion—the only type of potion described in the book—and always uses the same rites. Additionally, the phrase “three times three times” appears in the novel TWENTY-SIX times. Yes, I counted. This oversight by the editing team was particularly jarring.

The storyline during WWII, which receives more focus, could have been so much stronger. Veronica, summoned by Queen Elizabeth, joins a coven that allegedly alters the course of the war. Instead of interacting with the war directly or putting themselves in harm’s way, the four women safely hide in the basement of Buckingham Palace and recite their spells three times three times (see how awkward that phase is??).

On the positive side, the narrative was clear, and the characters were distinct enough to keep me reading through all 459 pages.

This reading experience taught me that I'm just not into witchcraft and magic. Looking at Louisa Morgan’s other works, I should have picked one of her later novels. For those deeply interested in witchlore rather than historical depth, this might be a fitting read. However, if you're looking for a richer historical tale, check out anything by Edward Rutherford.

Check out more of my book reviews

August 7, 2024

Board Game Review: Bureau of Investigation

I wasn’t sure of the title of this game since it’s part of the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Series, but it's set in “The Cthulu Mythos,” where you play as a Bureau of Investigation Detective in Arkham and other places. Whatever the name is, you can find it on Amazon here: Bureau of Investigation Board Game

Let me back up…

I really enjoyed playing the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective games. In these, you play as a team of street kids who help Sherlock solve mysteries. Each set includes a number of cases the players solve cooperatively.

The gameplay for the Sherlock games includes “visiting” locations and reading their entry in a case booklet to gather information. Typically you only need to visit a few places to solve the case, and the more places you visit, the lower your final score will be.

I found many of the cases infuriating because the solutions contained logical leaps. Even when we visited all the required locations and a few more, we still didn’t come to a conclusion as definitively as Sherlock would. We would occasionally reread everything to see what we missed and still couldn’t see how the case was supposed to be solved.

But gripes aside, the game mechanics are really clever, and I think more board game publishers should make games like this. Heck, I could probably write one. (Maybe I should… but back to the topic!)

Even though I’m not the biggest fan of horror, I love Lovecraftian-style stories and have played several Lovecraft video games and board games. You know everything’s going to go to shit in the end, and it’s fun to sit back and watch the insanity slowly unfold. Also, cool monsters.

I’ve played through four of the five cases in the Bureau of Investigation set. The first two cases followed fairly closely to the mechanics used in the Sherlock games. I enjoyed the ambiguous nature of the cases, and fully expected not to come up with a solid answer at the end since I never really did in the Sherlock sets either.

The third and fourth cases, however, rejected all the established mechanics and did their own thing.

The third case included a time loop mechanic, which was pretty fun, except that we didn’t realize initially that the case had three booklets instead of the standard one, and we couldn’t figure out what to do for the longest time. This case ended up taking quite a lot of time to solve, and you had to keep erasing and rewriting figures on a map to keep track of details. It was a cool idea, but it would have worked better as an app or computer game where you have a device to keep track of the details for you.

The fourth case very much reminded me of those Unsolved Case Files, in that you are given a bunch of documents and evidence for a cold case and are asked to solve it. That’s fine, except that I don’t particularly like solving those cases since you’re looking through a large stack of information for the ONE contradiction that solves the entire case. This case should not have been included.

I wanted so much more from this set. I had hoped the developers had learned from the thoughtful critiques of the Sherlock games from the board game enthusiast community and would have put out cases that were fun and solvable. I really want to support this inventive way of making board games, where players experience a story together. I hope more board game developers hop on this niche and produce some quality cases that are solvable and give players the satisfaction of puzzling together something truly unique.