Interview with Lydia, Arlene Sachitano's tuxedo cat

Lydia is the feline companion of mystery author Arlene Sachitano. When she's not writing her novels, she authors she story part of the Storyquilts Lucy Winters Mystery block of the month series. Check out her novel, Quilt As Desired.

Arlene's publisher, Zumaya Publications, is one of my mom's publisher's too... Cool!

In Lydia's own words...

My name is Lydia and as you can see I’m a black and white tuxedo cat. My early years were spent living with a group of college students. When they graduated, I was unceremoniously dumped at the Oregon Humane Society, which I have to say, was quite beneath my social standing. Fortunately I found another situation with a family (the Sachitano’s) who were at that point in time petless. I’ve let them live with me for the last seven years. It has taken a lot of effort on my part but I’ve just about gotten them whipped into shape.

Welcome to my blog, Lydia! No preambles here: Are you the boss of Arlene?

I do think of it as an employer, employee relationship.

What type of books does your human mom write?

My female human writes murder mysteries, although with all those quilter’s they are a bit cozy for my tastes. I’ve given her many demonstrations on killing using my toy mouse and occasionally the real thing, but she just keeps saying “that’s too graphic for my audience.” What a bunch of wimps!

What does your mom do besides writing? Is she a hermit or does she actually set her foot outdoors? My mom has to be dragged outside.

My human knits a lot! I must say knitting is rather fun, especially when I bite the yarn in half and run away. She gets sooo upset, it’s really a hoot! But I digress. . . We have a country home near the Oregon coast and my human teaches knitting there. I love the country, once a lizard got in our house and I ate all of it except its tail, which I left to show my human. I could do without the 75 mile drive, though. I only tolerate the drive if my human plays a book on tape that I like. I really prefer Harry Potter or any book read by a British reader. When my human turns the book off for any reason, I yowl until she puts it back on. This method which works like a charm, I might add. My male human took me without a book once and I almost wore my voice out telling him about it.

I like to stare at my mom while she writes to make her aware that she’s ignoring me and make her feel guilty. What do you do to annoy Arlene while she writes?

Oh, darling, I can do much better than stare. I do see myself as an integral part of the editing process (who knows what she’d write if I didn’t censor her work), so whenever my human gets her laptop out, I come running. I can tell you my fool proof approach: (not that I’m saying you’re a fool, even if you are a dog), I sneak up on the back of the sofa and then turn around and slide tail first down my human’s chest until I’m right between her hands. I hook my claws in her shoulder to check my slide and voila! I’m right in the middle of things.

My human writes quilting mystery stories so we usually make a quilt to go with each book. I’m quite the designer if I do say so myself. For the quilt on the front edge of Quilt As Desired, (we give the pattern away at signings) it was my idea to leave off the final pieces which resulted in angled corners.

Of all your mom’s books, which one is your favorite? Why?

Hmmm, that’s a toughie, in my human’s quilt mystery series, the first one, Quilt As Desired, does feature a cat named Fred who gets to attack a dog. I did encourage that. In the second book in the series, all the characters went to an out of town folk art school, and the cat got left home. That didn’t seem fair.

(Attack a dog, huh? Obviously Lydia likes to fantasize too much...)