The Big Cat Nap

Mary Minor Haristeen
—Harry, at forty, has just faced down breast cancer. She’s making a go at farming; some days are easy, some days less so. She’s a good-natured soul, but her flaming flaw is she’s much too curious.

Pharamond Haristeen, D.V.M
.—“Fair” specializes in equine reproduction. Married to his high school sweetheart, Harry, he’s a powerfully built man. He reads people’s emotions much better than his wife does.

Susan Tucker
—She’s a friend of Harry’s since they were in the cradle together. Much as she loves Harry, her nosy friend can drive her right up the wall.

Miranda Hogendobber
—A woman in her late sixties who worked with Harry when Harry was postmistress of Crozet, she has good sense. She’s a good gardener, is very religious, and possesses a pure soprano voice.

Olivia Craycroft
—“BoomBoom” has known Harry and Susan since kindergarten. She’s tall, blonde, beautiful, and has blue eyes. She runs her late husband’s concrete business; although we usually don’t encounter her there, we do just about everywhere else.

Alicia Palmer
—A gorgeous woman in her fifties, she was a major-motion-picture star in the 1970s. Like most people in the biz, she whipped through a few husbands, affairs, etc., but then wisely walked
away from all of that to return to a farm in Crozet she inherited from her first lover. She’s blissfully happy.

Deputy Cynthia
Cooper—This lean woman lives next door to Harry, on the farm she rents. The two enjoy a strong relationship, even though Harry meddles in Cynthia’s business from time to time.

Sheriff Rick Shaw
—He’s a decent man, wise, overburdened, and underfunded, as are most county sheriffs in America.

The Very Reverend Herbert Jones
—A Vietnam veteran, he’s the pastor of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, which is over two hundred years old, and a graceful, peaceful sanctuary. He is a man of deep conviction and deep feeling.

Victor Gatzembizi
—Although only in his early forties, he’s built ReNu, a lucrative collision-repair business, with shops in various Virginia cities. Attractive, good with people, he has the typical trophy wife but he takes good care of her, as he does his employees. He’s been generous to the breast cancer fund.

Latigo Bly
—Also in his early forties, he’s even more successful than Victor is, as he’s built a highly profitable auto-insurance business, Safe & Sound, that’s currently powerful in the mid-Atlantic. Many people think he’ll take the company national.

Yancy Hampton
—Basically he’s a greengrocer who owns and operates Fresh! Fresh! Fresh!, an upscale food emporium. He considers himself green in all things.

Marilyn Sanburne
, Sr.—“Big Mim” runs Crozet. She’s not much in evidence in this volume, but you can be sure she will reassert herself in the future.

Marilyn Sanburne
, Jr.—“Little Mim” is often in her mother’s shadow and resents it. She’s vice-mayor of Crozet to her father’s mayor. As they
both represent different political parties, this can be interesting. She’s slowed down on the politics for a bit, as she is expecting her first child.

Blair Bainbridge
—Little Mim’s husband is beside himself with joy at the prospect of being a father.

Aunt Tally Urquhart
—She’s one hundred, and Big Mim is her niece.

Inez Carpenter, D.V.M
.—Aunt Tally’s classmate at William Woods University, she’s ninety-eight and has shepherded Fair Haristeen’s career.

Mildred Haldane
—Now widowed, she still runs the salvage yard she operated with her late husband. She knows more about cars than many mechanics and body-shop workers do. She is passionate about old cars.

The ReNu Mechanics

Walt Richardson, Nick Ashby, Jason Brundige, Sammy Collona, Lodi Pingrey, and Bobby Foltz.

Mrs. Murphy
—She’s a tiger cat who is usually cool, calm, and collected. She loves her humans, Tucker the dog, and even Pewter, the other cat, who can be a pill.

Pewter
—She’s self-centered, rotund, intelligent when she wants to be. Selfish as she is, she often comes through at the last minute to help and then wants all the credit.

Tee Tucker
—This corgi could take your college boards. She is devoted to Harry, Fair, and Mrs. Murphy. She is less devoted to Pewter.

Simon
—He’s an opossum who lives in the hayloft of the Haristeens’ barn.

Matilda
—She’s a large blacksnake with a large sense of humor. She also lives in the hayloft.

Flatface
—This great horned owl lives in the barn cupola. She irritates Pewter, but the cat realizes the bird could easily pick her up and carry her off.

The Lutheran Cats

Elocution
—She’s the oldest of the St. Luke’s cats and cares a lot about the “Rev,” as his friends sometimes call the Very Reverend Herbert Jones.

Cazenovia
—This cat watches everybody and everything.

Lucy Fur
—She’s the youngest of the kitties. While ever playful, she obeys her elders.

A
red-shouldered hawk, tiny mouse in her talons, swooped in front of the 2007 Outback rolling along the wet country road. She landed in an old cherry tree covered in pink blossoms, which fluttered to the ground from the hawk’s light impact.

“Will you look at that?” Miranda Hogendobber exclaimed from behind the Outback’s wheel, as she drove to the garden center over in Waynesboro.

“Raptors fascinate me, but they scare me, too,” Harry Haristeen remarked. “Poor little mouse.”

“There is that.” Miranda slowed for a sharp curve.

Central Virginia, celebrating high spring, was also digging out from torrential rains over the weekend.

Harry, forty and fit, and Miranda, late sixties and not advertising, had worked together for years at the old Crozet post office.

When Miranda’s husband, George, died, Harry, fresh from Smith College, took his position as head of the P.O., never thinking the job would last nearly two decades. Miranda, despite her loss, showed up every day to help orient the young woman whom she’d known as a baby. Harry’s youth raised Miranda’s spirits. In mourning, it’s especially good to have a task. Over the years they became extremely close, almost a mother–daughter bond. Harry’s mother had died when Harry was in her early twenties.

Noticing fields filled with the debris of the now-subsiding waters, Harry observed, “What a mess. Can’t turn out stock in that. You just don’t know what else is wrapped up in all those branches and twigs.”

“Hey, there’s a plastic chair. Might look good in your yard.” Miranda smiled.

“Well,” Harry drawled the word out, like the native Southerner she was.

The younger woman, generous with her time and happy to feed anyone, could be tight with the buck. Miranda couldn’t resist teasing Harry about a free if ugly chair.

“This is sure better than my 1961 Falcon,” the older woman said. “Initially I resisted the Outback’s fancy radio. I mean, this is a used car and had the Sirius capabilities, but I didn’t want to pay extra. How did I live without it?” Miranda mused, now a Subaru convert.