Author's Animal Antics - Edie Ramer

Author's Animal Antics is a new regular blog feature here at Sarah's Book Reviews where I'm very excited to have some fantastic authors come and chat to us about their pets.  I'm thrilled to introduce the lovely Edie Ramer as my guest today...

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The animals in my life and my book.

I love my cat so much, I wrote a book and made her the heroine. In Cattitude, she changes bodies with a woman, and of course she hates it. If you were sleek and strong in a lovely cat body--never having to worry about bad hair days, cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping--wouldn’t you want your cat body back?

I didn’t make the transition easy for Belle. I piled on the problems, including a murderous beauty queen. In real life, though, Belle is the queen of the house. She’s a bit arrogant (and who can blame her?) but never malicious. She loves to cuddle and is a great mouser.

Belle - the star of Cattitude!

Though she’s the queen, she’s not our only four-legged family member. We have an eleven-year-old English setter (field type) that we got ten years ago from a rescue association, and last February we inherited a seventeen-year-old beagle when my father-in-law died.

English Setter Sky

Yes, you read that right. Seventeen.

Not only is she old and arthritic, but when we got her she was obese, smelly, with a flatulence problem, and she snores. Despite all this (and some bathroom issues), I love her. Absolutely. She’s already gone from obese to stocky. Because her diet’s better now, the flatulence isn’t quite so bad. We’ve learned to take her outside more often, even when she doesn’t want to.

Beagle Rose

But one thing she came with and still has is a terrific personality. She’s ready for anything. When we walk the dogs, she runs to keep up with our long-legged setter, panting all the way. She can’t hear well and she’s starting to get cataracts. When she’s been outside for a while, I’ll open the door to see if she wants to come in. She’s usually on the grass facing the road and I have to step on the porch before she sees me out of the corner of her eyes.

Her whole body comes to attention and her face lights up, as if she’s thinking “There you are! I’ve been waiting for you!” Then she bounds toward me, ears flapping, tail wagging madly, her mouth open in a giant smile.

Rose - look at her cute grin!

How could I not love her? The only thing I’m sorry about is that we didn’t have her when she was younger.

I’ve already decided she’ll be a character in the next book I write. One of my characters will reluctantly adopt a smelly, flatulent, snoring old beagle who will be completely loveable. Or I could make her a human character. The heroine’s smelly, flatulent, snoring old uncle who is a loveable rogue.

If you have a pet, what character would yours be in a book?

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Thank you so much for visiting today Edie!  Edie Ramer is the author of a lovely paranormal romance story called Cattitude where the heroine Belle is a cat who ends up swapping bodies with a human and falling in love with her former owner Max.  This is a great story & you can read my review here.  Edie has also offered to giveaway a copy of Cattitude to one of my readers so click here to enter (Giveaway closes 22nd October 2010)

Find out more about Edie and her work here - Website / Blog / Twitter / Facebook

For more information about the Author's Animal Antics feature click here