Picture Imperfect

There's a bit by the comedian Stephen Wright. A friend asks if Wright would like to see a picture of the friend when he was younger, and Wright replies "Every picture of you is a picture of you when you were younger."

Which I would paraphrase this way: Time is a bastard.

I hate having my picture taken. Always have. I've never seen a photo of myself that I like. There are probably lots of deep psychological reasons we don't need to get into. Most of the time, this isn't a problem. It's not like there are people clamoring to take my picture on a daily basis.

But there's a part of being an author I didn't anticipate: people do want your picture. Specifically, they want a headshot, usually for promotional purposes--to accompany an interview or publication announcement, for example. This presented me with a dilemma. I certainly wasn't going somebody to take a professional headshot that I wouldn't like any more than what I could do with my own phone. So at the start of my career I just used selfies, of varying quality, when asked for a headshot.

Then, a few years ago, I started using this.

That's our cat, Imogene. Her original name, when we got her from the shelter eleven years ago, was Smudge, but my wife renamed her for a character in a movie she was fond of. She also had a persistent habit of sneaking up behind people (the cat, not my wife), so her full name, thank you very much, became Imogene Smudge Underfoot.

For the first time, I had a headshot I didn't mind using. Imogene blocks enough of my face to make me enigmatic, as opposed to flatly unappealing, but that hardly mattered since everybody would be looking at her anyway, what with her being so darn cute and all. Plus, it seemed appropriate to give her a little credit for my work, since one of her favorite things to do was jump into my lap while I was writing and insist that hands were for petting, not typing. It was part of her basically sociable nature. If she wasn't asleep, she wanted to be where the people were, which is a nice attribute in a pet for a guy who works at home.

Here's what I didn't think about, and, yeah, you probably see where this is going, so this is your chance to jump off while this is still a happy post. 

Imogene had a lot of health issues last year. With the help of a couple of determined and compassionate vets, we got her through that, and she had a great year of being, I believe, happy, comfortable, and very loved. Then, because time is a bastard, the issues came back, and a couple of weeks ago we had to make that most difficult of decisions that every pet owner has to make, sooner or later.

I do wish it had been later. It's an inevitable part of having a pet, of course, and I'll remember the eleven good years we had with her after I've forgotten, or at least dulled, the memory of the stressful final days. I'm sad, but I'll be okay.

But there's that damn picture. And what I never thought about was how I'd feel every time I see it, once she was gone. That photo shows up in a lot of places. It's in the back of my collection Crime Scenes. It's in convention programs and on websites. I'm likely to keep running across it for years.

Sigh. Every picture is of you when you were younger. When you had the best cat ever as your writing partner (a lot of you reading this probably think you have the best cat ever, to which I sez, everybody's wrong sometimes).

So, just a small tribute this month to Imogene Smudge Underfoot. Thanks for indulging me--and if you happen to run across that headshot, raise a glass to her, wouldja?