In 1990 I was asked to be Guest of Honor at Necronomicon, an annual science fiction convention held in Tampa, Florida. I enjoy the convention and the people who put it on, so I was pleased they asked me. I wanted to do something special for them.

Necronomicon, like many Florida conventions, supports a local charitable cause. Their group is Wildlife Rescue, an organization devoted to the preservation of the Florida Panther. I've supported panther research for many years through donations and auctions. My car has one of the panther specialty tags.

During a period of my life a good many years ago, I wrote a lot of poetry. I dug through my files and pulled out poems with cats in them. Then I contacted my friend Jeanette Spencer, a Florida artist who lives with what seems to be about a thousand cats, and asked her if she would illustrate them. Jeanette is also a big supporter of Wildlife Rescue and she agreed to do it.

Necronomicon gathered them together into a limited (100 copies) edition of a small pamphlet, which they sold at the convention, with all proceeds going to Wildlife Rescue. I'm pleased to say they sold out, and Jeanette donated most of the original illustrations for their auction, bringing in even more money for the charity.

They are a period piece of sorts. The poems, with the exception of the last one, were written almost twenty years ago when I was a different person in a different place. I couldn't write them now. I lifted the illustrations from the chapbook, since the originals are scattered. The quality suffers, but the spirit doesn't.

Jeanette can be contacted via email by clicking here.

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