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    Cat Lady Chronicles

    Portrait of a Cat Lady: Author Diane Lovejoy chronicles a life of art and furryfelines

    Tarra Gaines
    Nov 12, 2012 | 10:30 am
    • Author Diane Lovejoy and one of her precious cats
      Pinterest.com
    • Diane Lovejoy's Cat Lady Chronicles combines her two passions: art and furryfelines.
      Courtesy Photo
    • Diane Lovejoy and her father in Jackson Square in 1957. Even as a youngster, sheloved cats.
      Courtesy Photo

    Worshiped in ancient societies and now the demigods of the Internet, cats have always fascinated us. Yet being a woman who owns multiple cats can sometimes invite the occasional joke or insult that she has become a "cat lady." In the new book Cat Lady Chronicles, Houston writer Diane Lovejoy sets out to paint a new portrait of who a cat lady really is.

    Lovejoy, the director of publications at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has been part of the art world longer than the cat world. In the book, she combines those worlds, just as she has in life.

    In the new book Cat Lady Chronicles, Houston writer Diane Lovejoy sets out to paint a new portrait of who a cat lady really is.

    It is a memoir of how Lovejoy and her husband Michael rescued one cat and after several years of these stray "little creatures" pressing their faces to the glass of their back door, found themselves the happy cat lady and cat gentleman who head a 10-cat household.

    It is illustrated with images of cats rendered by artists from Renoir to Kahlo to Chagall. Seventeen of the works in the book are from the MFAH’s own collection and are seldom on view.

    CultureMap recently sat down with Lovejoy to talk cats, art, and the art of being a cat lady.

    CultureMap: Throughout the book you use the term cat lady almost as if it were a calling or title. Is it?

    Diane Lovejoy: I think that it’s both. I call myself "cat lady" and that’s a nickname I gave myself when we started on this process of rescuing all these cats. But I think it is a calling to serve others whether they be cats, or whether it’s my case, at work, the museum curators, or whether it’s volunteering. The people who feel there’s a need to serve others, in whatever capacity that might be, see it as a calling.

    It’s a term that has typically had a bad rap, but what is so bad about being passionate about animals and being committed to caring for them?

    It’s a term that has typically had a bad rap, but what is so bad about being passionate about animals and being committed to caring for them? Typically people think of cat lady as someone who may be hoarding and with all those reality shows about hoarding what is that line of demarcation between acquiring cats and hoarding them? But I am proud to wear the badge and if it’s a title, I’m OK with that.

    CM: What are the responsibilities and rewards of being a cat lady or cat gentleman?

    DL: I think the responsibilities are to make sure the cat is healthy. You’ve got to be very attentive to their care. Scooping the litter boxes is one of the fatiguing responsibilities. Spending time and caring for them.

    In terms of the rewards, it sounds like a cliche but they really are infinite. The cats give unconditional love. I love getting home especially if I’ve had a tough day and there they are with no judgments, just waiting for me to come home.

    CM: People sometimes say that it’s dogs that provide unconditional love with no judgment, and cats are more aloof, but you think that’s true about cats as well?

    DL: I think that it is. Cats have more of that silent, looking you up and down, way about them. I think when you are interactive with them it becomes a completely different story. With ours we socialize them to the extent that they really are our fur kids.

    CM: What was your objective in writing the book? Did you want to change perceptions of what a cat lady is?

    DL: If I had to define the publishing rational, I wouldn’t say I was out to champion the brand of the cat lady, but I hope I do do that so people might think: "I, too, am a cat lady," and it’s not an embarrassment anymore. It was really to tell a feel-good story about unconditional love.

    I thought that my perspective on being a cat lady might be a little bit different in terms of trying to bring in my working life in the art world. Herding cats is easy; herding museum curators maybe not so much. But the two worlds began to compliment each other.

    CM: Why was it important to weave art into your story?

    DL: I thought really this explosion of cats in my life could be paralleled by opening the book and all of a sudden there are these colored plates of images of cats. I had so much fun doing the photo research for the cats because it was like bringing together cats again from different streets in the Montrose area, cats from all over the art world from different collections coming to life together.

    CM: Why have some artists been so fascinated by cats?

    DL: Cats are who they are, sort of like artists are. They’re soulful creatures. They’re beautiful. It’s true since ancient times artists have always depicted cats. They were way ahead of the Internet in championing their cause.

    CM: There are times in the book where you make the comparison between being a collector of art and being a collector of cats. Is the desire to collect art similar to the need to help, and perhaps even collect, cats?

    DL: I try to be careful and explain that I do understand the distinction that the world in which I work is about collecting inanimate objects. Of course the artist’s hand is evident, and the works are informed by the artist’s spirit and so forth, but ultimately these are objects that can be picked up and hung, but with a cat it’s sustained care.

    I had begun to wonder by collecting—so to speak—cats, was it because I’m surrounded by this acquisitive environment, and could I justify this process by thinking I’m a collector? But really, I know that collecting art and collecting cats are two different things. I’m collecting living creatures and bringing them into an environment where they not hung on walls; they’re a part of our life and they’ve become vital to our existence.

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    A refreshing difference

    Forever hot: New book explores why Ann Richards continues to fascinate andendure

    Tarra Gaines
    Nov 11, 2012 | 5:00 pm
    • Ann Richards was a born entertainer, author Jan Reid says.
      Photos courtesy of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. From Let thePeople In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards by Jan Reid, © 2012, TheUniversity of Texas Press
    • Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards
      Courtesy photo
    • Author Jan Reid believes Richards lives on so vividly in our memories becauseshe was “such a refreshing difference from what we see now.”
      Courtesy photo
    • Photo of a young Ann Richards.
      Photos courtesy of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. From Let thePeople In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards by Jan Reid, © 2012, TheUniversity of Texas Press
    • Richards in her later years.

    Though Texas remains very much a Republican state, one Texas Democrat still holds a high approval rating throughout the country. With a documentary making the film festival rounds, the play Ann headed for Broadway and now a biography on her life hitting the bookstores, Texas’ own white hot mama, Ann Richards, still blazes in our imagination six years after her death.

    Why does her life, personality and politics still fascinate us? This is the question I posed to Jan Reid the author of Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards, when I spoke to him before his visit to Houston and Brazos Bookstore on Monday night.

    Why does her life, personality and politics still fascinate us?

    In this political world of scripted politicians and 30-second sound bites, Reid believes Richards lives on so vividly in our memories because she was “such a refreshing difference from what we see now.”

    Reid, a journalist and novelist, first met Richards in 1980 and would later serve as an advisor on environmental policy during her 1990 race for governor. During her governorship, he was sometimes a speech writer for her appointee John Hall, who served as chair of the Texas Natural Resource Commission. (Reid’s wife, Dorothy Brown, was a friend of Ann’s who served as a chief aide on her staff.)

    In the prologue to the book, Reid is upfront about his connection with Richards.

    “I knew people would know who was I was and who my wife was, so if I wrote a puff piece about Ann Richards, I’d just get beat to hell. I was really taking pains to give the warts in addition to the smiles. I was really careful about that. But I also thought I had to be upfront about it. I couldn’t pretend that I was never in the picture and that I didn’t have a personal relationship with her. [But] I didn’t want that to intrude,” he said.

    The real Ann?

    During the book’s recounting of her run for Texas governor, Reid references an October 1990 Texas Monthly profile of Richards where she says, “Everybody wanted to let Ann be Ann. And they all had different Ann's.” I asked Reid if this was also a problem he had to confront when writing the book.

    “Well yeah, particularly the more I found about her other periods. I had the picture of her when she was 47-years-old, when her political career was just taking off. But I kept finding layers and layers of Ann both from what people told me and that wealth from the archive,” he says.

    Reid found an Ann who “had a lot of fear. She was fragile in a lot of ways. That was the biggest surprise to find how human she was. It was good to discover that.”

    Reid says that researching and speaking with her friends and family that knew her before she began running for political offices led him to understand that the woman we remember striding that motorcycle with white hair piled high as the Texas skies was one of many Ann's.

    “When she decided to become Ann the public person, she created the persona that worked pretty well for her. Not to say this was a dishonest strategy on her part. She was a born entertainer,” he explained, adding that she understood style and show business and used them to accomplish her goals in government.

    Yet by delving into some of Richards' correspondences, especially those between Richards and Edwin “Bud” Shrake, who in the prologue of the book Reid describes as the “second great love of her life,” Reid found a Richards who “had a lot of fear. She was fragile in a lot of ways. That was the biggest surprise to find how human she was. It was good to discover that.”

    Though deeply focused on mapping the “amazing narrative arc” of her life, Reid pauses throughout the book to provide historical and cultural context for the reader. All this background information helps us understand how Texas created Richards and how Richards changed Texas.

    The many photographs of Richards with political and media celebrities included in the book also help give the impression that Richards knew everybody and was always in the center of the action. When I made this observation to Reid he agreed.

    “Oh she did. Her family was way too close for comfort near the Kennedy assassination. She had these very unpleasant face-to-face encounters with LBJ and Carter. She was in New York during 9/11. There was big earthquake in San Francisco in the '80s and she happened to be in San Francisco. It seemed like she was just everywhere all the time.”

    Ann's Legacy

    Though Texas might remember Richards with great fondness, I wondered if Reid still saw her presence in the current political landscape. Reid said he continues to see Richards' influence, even in Gov. Rick Perry’s administration when it comes to diversity in political appointments. Thanks to Richards, we can never go back “to the old, white boys club."

    “She was also the first ardent feminist elected to a major office in the United States. You hear a lot about the cracks in the glass ceiling. Well, she put some of them up there. Hillary Clinton considered Ann her mentor when she was first lady and then Senator of New York,” he said.

    Reid continues to see Richards' influence, even in Gov. Perry’s administration when it comes to diversity in political appointments. Thanks to Richards, we can never go back “to the old, white boys club."

    As we finished our conversation, I had to ask Reid if he felt a sense of deja vu when watching Richards' daughter, Cecile Richards, the current president of Planned Parenthood, speak at the Democratic Convention.

    “Of course. Cecile is a star--just in a different way — just like her mother was. She’s just blossomed, as all her children have. . .But Cecile’s a politician. She can’t come back to Texas and run for office, it doesn’t seem, but she’s probably accomplishing more now than she would if she had an office. The last many weeks of the presidential campaign she was on the road with Obama. He was seeking her council all the time.”

    And how would Ann feel about that campaign and it’s outcome? Reid believes, “To have been able to see that in her lifetime would have just been amazing to her.”

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