Where Art Meets the Heart

   Born in Oregon, I was raised by loving parents, a lumber mill-worker and a housewife. At eighteen I selected a course unsuited to me.  While my heart cried for escape, I was too frightened to make it happen.  It seemed my life would never get better.

   When the student is ready, the teacher always appears.  Mine was Richard Bach.  His book,  Jonathan Livingston Seagull, transformed me.  I started college, ended my marriage, quit a menial job and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science from Oregon State University.  I entered the field of social services and married again.  My goal was to help others overcome their limitations, like I had.  But working for the state, try as I might, the assistance I provided made little long-term difference in the lives of my reluctant clients.

   Again my teacher appeared.  This time it was horrific tragedy at the hand of my brother.  He shot and killed four of his neighbors.  Distraught, heartsick, I began writing about it.  My second husband was ashamed of me because of what my brother had done.  This destroyed our marriage.  I focused harder on writing.  My book, Surviving Murder:  How My Life Changed When My Brother Killed His Neighbors, is available through Smashwords at smashwords.com under the name V. M. Franck.

   My next growth step was ushered in by the sudden death of my sweetheart.  This nearly led me to suicide.  During this period I read another book by Richard Bach, ONE.  Again, his words helped, and due to his personal kindness I found my first agent.  After a healing period I met and soon married Phil, a fellow writer, and moved to a peaceful setting to write full-time.

   In 2001 I found Jerry Yarnell's School of Fine Art on public television.  He taught me to paint.  My first goal was to design cover art for my books and my husband's books as well.  Now, I paint for the challenge and joy of it.

   Navigating my way through it all, I learned firsthand that lives are transformed where art meets the heart.  It is my hope to inspire others to find this place within themselves and show it forth.

   Born in Salzburg, Austria, I emigrated with my mother and sister to Long Beach, New York in 1951.  At the age of six, I discovered fishing - my first love.  At the age of fourteen, I discovered poetry and the desire to write.  Several thousand poems later, at the age of twenty the romantic in me was sidetracked by marriage.  Needing a steady income, I spent 1968 through 1991 writing and designing computer software, becoming a Lead Analyst and Project Leader.  I designed and wrote approximately eighteen major systems for the banking and insurance industry.  Also during that time, my two daughters, Jessica and Corenna, came into the world. We all moved to California in early 1975.  By the end of the year, the first wife claimed independence, taking my daughters with her.  Needing new roots, I moved to Portland, Oregon in late 1975.  Another wife came and went.  My daughters decided they wanted to move in with me, permanently, in 1981.  I was a single parent from then on.  Between the stresses of the job, raising my daughters on my own and a few other factors, I came down with CFS.  The CFS lasted 8 ½ years before I figured out how to beat it.  In 1990, while fly fishing for steelhead, I met a writer, Violet Huntley.  She rekindled my need for creative writing.  Kidnaped and dedicating my future to that need, I retired from my stressful career in computers, married my kidnapper and moved to the country - where we now live with our cats, Lucy, Ethel and Po, our adopted turkey flock, now headed by Omar, the dominant tom - (Fleggy, Missie and Chester are still with us in spirit).  We asked my daughters if they wanted to join us, but they decided they were city girls and wouldn't be able to handle a quiet country life, opting instead for adventures in California - a pity, I think they would have enjoyed living here.

   I am now a dedicated, full-time writer, Bugtographer, turkey-wannabe and webmaster (with occasional time out for fishing and building rustic furniture).  I also have avid interests in astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, palaeontology and Quantum Zen.

   Through 1996, I honed my writing skills and wrote three and a half novels.  Finally ready for serious writing, I developed Time Enough to Love.  A novel inspired by meeting and marrying Vi, the story is set in various locales in the Pacific Northwest, forty-three years ago to the present. It is a myth-based adventure about reincarnation and twin flames . . . about The Mystical granting the ultimate, unforeseen happy ending.

   A second work, The Cat Did It, soon followed - a novel inspired by the unasked question to Teri Schiavo and Karen Ann Quinlan, "Where were you while your body lay in a coma?"  It is the mystical, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, adventure of life's unavoidable journey into the afterlife and how human frailties and unknowing can complicate that transition.

   Of late, my bug photos have been published in numerous scientific publications and regional insect field guides.  I am also participating in several insect studies sponsored by various universities.  In the non-Arthropod vein, I am studying and documenting the Rio Grande Wild Turkey population that call our yard their home.

   Fleggy, a red haired Manx with six toes on each front foot, was born in October of 1991 in Portland, Oregon.  A stray kitty, she started showing up at my mother's house in early spring of 1992.  Curious, affectionate, polite and well-behaved, she instantly made a positive impression on my mother.  For a while, it seemed that Fleggy might have found a home, but my mother was concerned that with all the city traffic and Fleggy preferring to be outdoors, a better home would be in the country.  On Mom's next visit - Vi and I live in the country, about forty miles from the nearest anything - Fleggy came along and instantly claimed our eleven plus acres as her new turf.  Until recently, she was perhaps the best mouser a cat could ever be.  She was also the best watch-cat I have ever heard of.  Every day she would patrol the yard making sure we had no invaders or trespassers.  When we worked around the yard, she'd join us, either watching diligently or getting in the way, all the while commenting on our work in her soft little Manx voice.

    Last winter, however, while she was napping under one of her favorite fir trees, the neighbor's dog hopped the cattle fence, snuck up on her and bit her severely on the lower back.  The dog drew blood and damaged her hip.  The puncture wound healed, but she had irreparable nerve damage and started losing mobility in her hind legs.  Slowed and limping but undaunted, she still took up her daily post as our trusty watch-kitty . . . until the raccoons decided she was a threat to their territory.

    In June 2004 they decided she had to be dealt with, and four of them attacked her.  Fortunately, she was on the deck and I was in the den directly under the deck.  When I heard a commotion just outside the window, I ran to see what it was about.  I heard Fleggy yeowling and a raccoon grunting and growling as three more raccoons came running up the deck steps.  Still in my robe, I ran upstairs and found Fleggy under a pile of four raccoons.  All I could see was a small red-haired patch under a mass of attacking grey and black.  I think I took all seven steps in one bound to get to her.  Not sure if I should grab the raccoons, barefoot, I started kicking the raccoons off her.  The first raccoon I got square in the side and booted her a good five feet beyond the growling mass.  I must have broken several ribs on the beast because it instantly tried to limp/run away.  (I also broke a toe in the process.)  In spite of my own bruise, I kept kicking at the remaining pile of raccoons.  The next one got it square in the butt, and she too limped off.  The ramaining two raccoons took off after the first two, but before they could get off the deck, I managed to connect with another, and it too went flying.  The fourth raccoon got away unhurt.  Unfortunately, Fleggy wasn't so lucky.  She had a nasty bite on her hind right foot and was missing a few small patches of fur.  I'm glad I was as close as I was when the attack occurred, and hate to think what might have happened had I not been so near.  Vi and I cleaned up Fleggy, and for several days she seemed not too much worse for the experience.  But the attack apparently did more damage to the nerve in her injured hip.  She still has mobility in her back legs, but has just about lost the ability to walk.  She also seems to have developed periodic seizures that come on when she twists to scratch herself, sometimes even when we pick her up.  We have to be very careful with her now, not only for her sake but for ours as well.  The other day I picked her up to take her outside.  She had a seizure, unintentionally bitting down on my thumb and leaving a deep claw scratch on the back of my hand.  I didn't want to hurt her, so I endured the two teeth embedded deep in my thumb until her seizure was over.  When the seizure ended, she immediately let go.  My hand was a bloody mess, and she seemed to realize right away what she had done.  I've never seen a cat look so apologetic.

    Some say we should put her to sleep, but as a trusted and faithful member of the family for over twelve years, that is not an option.  As a result, Fleggy is now retired as our official mouser (Ethel has taken over in her stead, Lucy is only interested in cuddling, complaining when she's not getting cuddled and getting fat).  Fleggy is, however, still our reliable watch-kitty.  Her spirit unbroken, every day, weather permitting, she assumes her watch-kitty duties under the cherry tree in front of our house, protected by chicken wire fencing in her own private courtyard.  We carry her to her post every morning and carry her back every evening, checking on her numerous times during the day.  And at night, we help her groom and clean herself.  You would think a cat that went through Fleggy's ordeal might give up and become a depressed little lump, mourning the lifestyle she was so enthusiastically following, but that's not the case.  She still tries to keep up with her self-assigned duties, and we try to make sure she knows she's just as loved and cherished as when she was a fully functioning mouser and watch-kitty - after all, she is a central part of the family.  I've heard that the Manx breed can live to be twenty years old.  We look forward to her reaching that birthday.

    We are saddened to say that Fleggy passed away this morning.  She died quietly, in her sleep from complications due to the nerve damage suffered from the attack by the neighbor's dog last year.  We trust that God knows her worth as we do and has given Fleggy, our guard-kitty, a special place by the gates of heaven - just as she guarded our front gate.  May she always know the eternal bliss.

   I laid them over my heart.  They purred soft and steady, snuggling beneath my chin, and as I sat back in the easy chair, I knew they had come to heal my heart.  Two little black and white kitties, nearly the same, yet very very different, and so like my two dogs, made me wonder if Brandy and Cocoa had been reborn as cats.

    That's what I'd said to Brandy shortly, after she died in the winter of 2001.  I saw an image of her, just as I woke up, peering through the gate to our driveway.  She seemed despondent, wondering why she was on the outside looking in.  As I woke up, I said to her, "If you and Cocoa want to be with me, you have to be reborn as cats.  See, Phil is so allergic to dogs that I promised I wouldn't get any more.  Come back as cats."

    First, it was Cocoa, my springer spaniel, and then Brandy, my cocker spaniel,  my dogs of 14 years, who passed to the next level.  Fleggy, who had been spending the night cuddling with them in the shed, was now alone.  Manxes do like solitude - it's required of watch cats.  But since she was getting older, it would be nice to have backup from someone young and strong, someone to snug up to during the winter cold, or so Phil and I figured.  Even if she didn't like the intruders at first, she'd get used to them.

    In the spring of 2001 Phil came home from fishing and told me his friend's cat had just had kittens.  Born April 16, 2001 Lucy and Ethel entered a family with a nine-year-old girl who loved them.  When they were six weeks old Phil's friend decided the kittens had to move outside - to become barn cats.  Barn cats can become wild.  So if we wanted a kitten before it became wild, we'd better get it now.  Seeing them at play, learning that they always played together, we decided on two.  We instantly christened them Lucy and Ethel, since we have such a hard time agreeing on names.  (At first Phil called Fleggy - Flegnarm - a name I just could not call her.)

    Two handfuls of kitties came home with us that day in June - little lover kitties that adopted me as Momma Cat.  They slept on my chest.  They snuggled in next to us in the easy chairs.  Too small to make it up into the chair without help, at first they slept on my feet, dog-like.  In fact, I learned early on that they had a lot a Brandy and Cocoa's characteristics . . . enough to make me wonder.

   Initially it was hard for us to tell them apart.  Gradually we detected differences in their markings and in their behavior.  Lucy was definitely a munch cat - cleaned up whatever Ethel didn't want to eat.  Both especially like chocolate chips.  Their ration of three a day was eliminated when Lucy developed bladder crystals.   Chocolate is not good for cats as it turned out.  And they like cheese.  Lucy responds Pavlovian style to the word.  The summer they came home with us Phil began catching Chinook regularly, so the two cup-sized felines started their lives with healthy rations of fresh chinook, coho and steelhead almost daily (they prefer chinook).

    Lucy aka Fat Cat aka Lucykins aka Lucybugs turned into a consummate cuddler.  Mostly she's a house cat and likes to stare out the window or sleep on our laps or in a variety of places.  During the winter she likes to sleep on our heads at night or under the covers.  Lucy's a little pushy with Ethel and is irritated when Fleggy is in what she sees as Her Place on Phil's lap.

    Ethel aka Skinny aka Ethelkins aka Ethelbugs is a hunter.  She prefers to be outside chasing bugs or mice or birds.  She does like to cuddle, but only on her terms and with her timing.  She has an endearing way of turning her head to the side and snuggling upside down next to us.  She's sleeping on my lap as I write this.  She, too, likes to sleep on our heads or under the covers.  Both cats would sleep in my hair if I let them.

    As for becoming friends with Fleggy - they tried at first, but Fleggy hissed and swatted at them, enough times that they picked up the behavior.  Now that Fleggy is incapacitated, the animosity is fading and hopefully the friendship can begin.

    Even now I sometimes think I see my dogs in the eyes of our cats.  Do we love our kitties?  Yes, and they love us, regardless of what my biology professor said about being anthropomorphic.  They are lover kitties, after all.

A sad note.
Ethel passed away suddenly on November 21, 2016, from complication of diabetes.  She was 15 1/2.  She now has a spot in our pet cemetery with our other dearly departed family members: Fleggy (cat), Brandy (Vi's dog), Cocoa (Vi's other dog), Gumpy (cat), Yoda (cat) and Simon (turkey).  Laying her to rest was a sad time, one of the saddest I've known.  I will miss her, her cuddles, how she slept on my lap every night while we watched TV, how she clung to me when I brought her upstairs every night for pre-bedtime snacks, how she always wanted fresh "fizzy" water from the aerated tap, even if I'd just poured her some, how she loved her lunchtime treats while she lunched with us, how she always snooped around and found new spots around the house to call her own, how she so often curled in my lap while I was writing my turkey journal, how she used to come into our bed and cuddle as we all drifted off to sleep, how she always loved us back and how, in all her fifteen plus years, she was always perfectly behaved, the only animal friend I ever had that never caused any kind of trouble whatsoever.  Po, a kitty that recently adopted us, will probably miss her, too.  Between Lucy and Ethel, it was only Ethel who accepted Po.  Ethel's death may be hardest on him, losing his only kitty friend.  Dear Ethel, I love you and will always cherish the wonderful, beautiful life you shared with us.  I'll see you again on the other side.

Again a sad note.
From Vi:
Our sweet little Lucy passed away on March 3, 2020, just a month shy of her 19th birthday.  She was what most little girls and some women want most, a living teddy bear...someone to cuddle against their hearts.  She especially liked to cuddle inside my large cardigan sweater, even more so as she became older.  She hugged herself against me, her soul in touch with mine.  So many times over the years I held her to my heart, and she eased my heartaches.

As a young cat she was quite the acrobat.  She could jump high after toys and up to the top of tall furniture.  She also liked to explore the yard, though she was never a mouser.  Once she became an old cat she liked to sit on the deck under one of the chairs at the corners and inside the sliding glass door and survey her world.  At night while I watched TV she would sit beside me in my easy chair or on my lap.  She also shared herself with Phil in his chair.  We were privileged to hold and pet her as she took her final breaths, so she knew she was not facing it alone.  We hoped to ease her passing.  We love her so.  Our chairs and our lives are empty of her now.  She is sorely missed.  We look forward to being reunited with her and her sister when we also enter the Eeternal bliss.

From Phil:
Lucy, our nineteen-year-old kitty passed away last night.  She died peacefully in Vi's lap at 10:03 PM.  Lucy, you've made the universe a better place and added immeasurably to our lives.  We thank you for sharing with us the wonderful person you have always been.  There are no words to say how much you will be missed.  We love you little Lucy, and always will.  May you always know Eternal Bliss.  Hopefully, you're now frolicking with your sister, Ethel, in Kitty Heaven.  Maybe your mom and siblings are also with you.  Until we meet again, dear little friend . . . until we meet again . . . .