The Different Pets I've Used In My Novels

Dashiell Hammett included a pet dog named Asta in his Thin Man novels starring the husband-and-wife detective team of Nick and Nora Charles. Asta was a goofy but clever and lovable female Schnauzer. In the Thin Man movie comedies starring Myrna Loy and William Powell, Asta was a male Wire-Haired Fox Terrier actually named Skippy who now even has his own Wikipedia entry.

The inclusion of Asta gave the popular movies a warmer appeal the 1930s Depression audiences paid for their tickets to come back and see again and again. I've watched the movies, and Asta does often steal the show.

Which is the roundabout way I bring up the topic of my including pets when I'm writing my novels. I grew up with dogs, mostly beagles like Snoopy. When I got married, we took in a couple of cats, the tabby living until age 21. Later after they went to the happy feline hunting grounds, we got another cat. Her name is Frannie, and she rules the roost as I've blogged about in an earlier blog post. In Pelham Fell Here, P.I. Frank Johnson (well, he's not quite a private eye yet) inherits a pet ferret from the neo-Nazis he names Mr. Bojangles.

That was fine, but then I had to make sure Mr. Bojangles appeared in every scene, or else Frank had to foist the little ferret off on somebody to babysit it. Sometimes Mr. Bojangles gets into mischief like getting lost in a display room of caskets much to Frank's chagrin. Mr. Bojangles lends humor to the scenes, and Frank grows fond of the ferret. Actually, I think we both did by the end of the novel.