Companion animals have played a hugely important role in my life ever since the age of three when my aunt and grandfather deposited an adorable (albeit parasite riddled) mixed breed puppy at my family's door with the explanation that "no child should grow up without a dog." "Bozie," so named in honor of my mother's childhood dog, lived the life of Riley in our house for fifteen happy years.

Since Bozie, I have been privileged to be the guardian of several wonderful felines, notably a feisty tiger-striped tabby, Gabby, the inspiration for my heroine's cat, Puss, in Tempting and the eternal queen of my heart. Gabby passed over The Rainbow Bridge in 2003 and since then I have been honored to share my home and heart with several other cat companions, including Molly Jane or "Dinah" as she's known in Vanquished, Sweeney in It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life and Willie, the inspiration for Willie Whiskers in The Haunting.

At the onset of Vanquished, Hadrian is not so much a lost soul as a buried one. He has literally hidden away nearly every part of who and what he is except for two aspects of his identity: his passion for photography and his fondness for cats. His rescue cat, Dinah, is literally the one being to whom he relates in a totally honest and loving way. At both times in the book when he is physically threatened, once by gaming house debt collectors and later by the villain's henchmen, his main fear is that they will harm his cat as a means to get back at him.

In real life, our Molly Jane came to me as a street cat albeit as the most insistent rescue I've ever encountered. Rather than waiting to be rescued, she simply decided to live with me. It was the week after September 11th and the country was still very much in shock. My husband at the time and I were sitting on our front porch trying to make sense of it all when this plucky little black and white cat toddled down the sidewalk, paused, looked up at us, and then bounded up our porch steps. She leapt into my husband's lap and immediately began laving kitty kisses on his neck. (Smart cat). Determined not to add to our feline brood, we went inside and closed the door.

All the next day, I wrote a grand total of maybe five words as I was completely obsessed with checking outside for signs our four-legged visitor had returned, but there were no further sightings. Later that night, I was walking home from my book club meeting when this black-and-white specter streaked across Caroline Street, narrowly avoiding being hit by oncoming cars, and then landed purring at my feet. A believer in, if not omens than certainly meant-to-be's, I scooped her up, carried her home, and the rest is, as they say, history.

In It's a Wonderfully Sexy Life, my cop heroine, Mandy, is constantly fighting the battle of the bulge and so I thought it would be fun to pair her with a similarly calorie-challenged feline companion. Like his fictional counterpart, my real-life Sweeney is a former stray though not a shelter cat. My neighbor had nabbed him for the crime of eating her outdoor cat's food and was planning on taking him to the local shelter where a cat of his er... girth probably wouldn't have lasted long in the "small, cute and cuddly" competition for a home. I took one searching look into his jade green eyes and begged her to give him to me so I could find him a good home. Several trial "good homes" later where the sin of fighting off the resident cats from the food bowl was summarily repeated, Sweeney came home with me on New Year's Day. He got a good home after all -- mine!

The Haunting is not only set in a house that looks a heck of a lot like the turn-of-the-century Victorian I called home for five years but it also comes complete with my cat, Willie. Far from serving as feline eye candy in the book, Willie has a starring albeit secondary character role, including going up against the villain near the book's end. In real life, however, Willie has a rather easy time of it. Aside from the electrical cords that occasionally beckon him to mischief, his life is one of tummy scratches and lap cuddles, blissfully villain-free.

I rescued Willie along with his five day-old litter mates and starving and rather exhausted mother three years ago on Fourth of July. I was humane trapping in a neighborhood where there were a great many feral cats and one particularly rascally fellow whom I never did catch raced beyond my reach. Hands sheathed in heavy leather work gloves and arms and torso covered in an old flannel shirt despite the 96 degree heat, I lifted up the branch of a rose bush and found the little family sheltered beneath. My rescue buddy, Mirinda, scooped up all six kittens, including the small, flea-riddled wet scrap that would later morph into my gorgeous Willie, while I set the humane trap for the mother cat.

To fast forward, it all ended happily, with my keeping the mother cat, Willie, and two of his siblings. Look for Willie's sister, Daisy Bud, in my upcoming Harlequin Blaze, Strokes of Midnight and his mother Tessa (AKA Tessa the Contessa) and other sister, China Blue AKA China Boo-Boo in future books.

I spent six challenging, but wonderful years launching and operating a national grassroots campaign, The Pet Overpopulation STAMP OUT. The campaign's goal, issuance by the US Postal Service of a commemorative stamp to educate the public about the importance of spaying or neutering pets, was achieved in 2002 thanks to widespread public support. More than 200,000 Americans wrote to Postal Headquarters urging that "Spay/Neuter Your Pet" be issued as a commemorative stamp. Celebrities including Mary Tyler Moore, Betty White, and Bob Barker added their voices to those of veterinarians, animal advocates, and yes, politicians from both parties. The stamps, depicting the adorable, furry faces of a former shelter puppy and kitten, were introduced to a national audience on Bob Barker's "The Price is Right" TV game show in early 2002 and then later formally issued at an American Humane Association conference and gala by none other than Joe Camp and the newly discovered Benji. Printed in a quantity of 250,000, "Spay/Neuter" proved to be a sell-out item, second only to the Elvis stamp in terms of sales.

Jan/Feb 2006: PAGES magazine interviewed Hope on volunteerism among authors and the focused on the STAMP OUT Campaign.

• top •

Pets911
Pets911 provides the only free national directory of spay/neuter resources. Visit online or call their toll-free, bilingual telephone number, 1-888-PETS911, to locate spay/neuter resources in your local community. Listings for pet lost & found, adoption, shelters and rescues, and emergency veterinary clinics are also provided.

The Cat's Closet
A cat lover's emporium.

• top •