Adie Weston is one such friend I've made on the tweety, and today, her first book is published!
Terrific Tails: Stories From A Pet Guardian is a series of hilarious and heart-warming stories about family pets and the guardians who love them. Follow the author from her childhood pets to her current household of furry family. Laugh out loud at the filthy runaway adventures of Winston the dog. Hold your breath while you wait to find out where Hiccup the kitten was hiding all along. Discover that sometimes our pets find us, instead of us finding them. Welcome yourselves into this forever home.
You can order it on Amazon today. And profits go to the Humane Society, so everyone wins!
Adie was kind enough to answer a few interview questions with me (and my cat, Chloe).
You've mentioned this book being your Grandma's idea. Can you tell me more about her?
This book was, without a doubt, all my Grandma Ava’s idea. She demanded I write it for her. And though she passed away before it was finished, I continued on with the book. For Grandma. The thing about Grandma was that she never held back on her thoughts – whether that was demanding I write a book for her or demanding I point out all my cute doctors to her. Yes, you read that last part right. I grew up as a disabled child and let me tell you, doctors were my less than favorite people in the world, for obvious reasons. But Grandma, well, she’d always tell me, "You keep an eye out for a cute doctor for me!" Often she’d say this with Grandpa sitting right there next to her. He never seemed to mind. Now I was young and wasn’t the kind of child to exclaim to a doctor, "My, you’re cute!" But one day, as my mother told it, when I was about seven years old, a young good-looking doctor came into the exam room and introduced himself, offering out his hand for me to shake. I shook it, looked him in the eye and very boldly said, "My grandma wants to meet you." Apparently this was how seven-year-old me told doctors they were cute.
What's your first pet memory?
My first memory of having a pet goes all the way back to when I was about four years old. We had a big black lab named Barney. I talk a little about Barney in the first chapter of this book – where I talk about those childhood pets that were so long ago my memory can barely hold on to them. Barney was warm and friendly and protective. I was so little then - and he seemed so big to me - that sometimes I was nervous of being knocked over when he got too affectionate. But I shouldn’t have been. As my mother told it, Barney acted like a bounding puppy with my older siblings, but was always careful and tender with me, as if he was aware of my young, delicate size. What I remember more than anything about Barney is his large, warm body pressed against me as I sat on the back steps of our home on a cold fall afternoon. It’s a lovely memory, for sure.
And Chloe would like to know: What is Hiccup's favorite toy?
Hiccup is a very playful cat, with a whole collection of store bought toys. But his favorite thing to play with? Bottle caps. He especially likes ones off of soda bottles. Drink a 16oz soda, give the lid to Hiccup. He has a collection of about ten bottle lids – and a random ink pen he seems very attached to – behind my bedroom door. We play a game we simply call ‘hockey’. I pull out about six of them and he gets behind the door and waits. I kick one under the door, sliding it between the bottom of the door and the floor. Hiccup pounces on it, scrambles around, and then pushes it back out to me on the other side. I kick another one under the door. Sometimes he slides the lid back under. Sometimes he gets distracted. But we keep playing - me kicking them under one way, him sometimes pushing them back - until I have no bottlecaps left. Throughout the game, I get him all excited by yelling things like, "On the goal, stay on the goal!" and "Watch your mark, coming at you!" When the game is done - and Hiccup is laying on his side in a pile of lids behind my bedroom door - I proclaim, "Good game, good game. Hit the showers." Hiccup will go bounding out of my room then, presumably to hit the showers.
About the author:
Adie Weston is a 40-ish something woman who currently lives in a house in Michigan with her sister, four cats, and sometimes a dog. She wrote her very first story at age six. It was about a seal and mainly consisted of the words, "See the seal." Luckily, she has learned a few more words than that now. This is her first published book.
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