Waiting to Find Out Where Portulacca is Sleeping
Where is Portulacca Sleeping? or WIPS, as I call it for short, is actually one of the very first cat-centered picture books I ever thought about putting together. It has taken decades to finally fall out into book form. The idea came from my parents’ cat, Portulacca. She used to sleep in the oddest places—a roasting pan, the dish drainer. My dad put a shoebox on his chair to keep her from usurping his spot while he went to pour himself a cup of coffee. He returned to find her asleep in the shoebox. When he reached for another branch of holly, turning away from the wreath on the kitchen table for only a moment, she settled into the middle of the wreath, delaying his preparations for Christmas. Dad put his socks out before he took his shower and by the time he was ready to put on his shoes, she would be sleeping on those socks. Well before cat videos inundated YouTube, my father had a vast photo collection of Portulacca sleeping in odd places. Her napping habits were delightfully annoying.
Not all of these instances made the final cut into the final version of WIPS. Books don’t work that way. In fact, as I alluded earlier, I had a hard time making this book work at all. I struggled with a version that stuck to the true story my father’s photos told. My writing group told me it needed more structure—maybe I could trace a path through the house. Another decade went by and an illustrator told me to change the point of view of each of the pictures. He suggested I have Portulacca sleep in spots that were increasingly absurd, maybe ending with her on the bed—surprisingly normal. His ideas were entertaining and good—but it wasn’t the book I wanted to write. There was something more than the hilarity of where she slept that drew me to the story, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
My niece and nephew visited California. By this time, Portulacca was long gone, but her story still nagged at me. I told our very young visitors, they could pursue our cats, but the cats might not want to play—and if the cats went under the bed in Aunt Julie and Uncle Tom’s bedroom, leave them alone. That meant they had had enough. Under that bed was their safe haven.
Of course, an hour later, our nephew came running into the den declaring, “Tarmac hissed at me!” Tarmac was a good-natured and jovial cat. He met us at the door when we came home. He regularly dragged his feather duster down the hall to drop it at our feet. He had never hissed at anyone. So I asked our nephew the question Tarmac had already answered for me, “Did you try to get him out from under our bed?”
“Yes.”
“I asked you not to do that, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
After that visit, I imagined a child pursuing Portulacca around the house, discovering her hiding places. I thought about using a grandmother as a calming influence to teach the child how to win the cat over. My brain wisely discouraged me from trying those pictures. It kept telling me they were too complicated. I revisited the idea several times before I abandoned my hopes again, but there was something important in that version too. Again, I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
Years passed, another decade at least. Tarmac was now long gone and as much mourned as Portulacca. A skinny gray cat appeared in our yard. Judging by his energy, he was young. Judging by the frantic way he followed our feral cat, Mommy, he was high strung and stressed. He nosed Mommy out of her food dish, crowded her out of the sleeping shelters we built for her, pushed her out of her favorite sunny spots on the deck. Where she moved, he moved. She could not escape him.
To preserve Mommy’s sanity, we brought the gray into our house. He continued his disruptive behaviors with our indoor cats and quickly earned the name Loki, a reference to the Norse god of mischief. The grandmother in my story faded away. In my head, a little boy and his kitten were now pursuing Portulacca through my parents’ home. Gradually the little boy faded away and only the kitten remained. For the first time in a couple of decades I attempted some drawings. The kitten appeared: small, grey, smart and doggedly persistent—the essence of Loki, a cat we never knew as a kitten, but who will eternally be one.
When the human boy in my story finally faded away completely and the kitten became Loki, Portulacca changed too. My husband Tom was the first to notice it. He saw one of the my paintings and commented on her tail. Only, he didn’t point out “Portulacca’s tail.” He pointed to what he called “Chicago’s tail.” We had recently lost our huge, gentle, white-footed tabby. In my grief over Chicago’s death, I inserted him into the story. The truth is, his nature was more patient and tolerant than Portulacca’s. A story about Portulacca and Loki would have involved a lot of hissing and spitting, even some slapping perhaps. Portulacca would have stood her ground. Chicago had the personality for the story. And truthfully, it is our cat Gracie who sleeps under the bedspread, as Portulacca does on the final page of the picture book.
My stories collect themselves. Pieces come together over time and from different parts of my life and my imagination. I don’t think and plan as much as I wait. I’ve been waiting for Where is Portulacca Sleeping ? for a very long time. Portulacca inspired it. With a little help from Chicago and Gracie, Loki enabled me to complete it. I hope you enjoy it.