Many of you know my cats in a vague, general sort of way. You know from this weekly chronicle that the five of them are inveterate losers in the great game of cat and mouse: The mice must all be named Jerry here because the mice always win at our house in the center of Lincoln. You know the cats play turd hockey when they are bored. And you know they are capable of spraying hairballs with fire hose-like intensity.

But you don't know them individually; you don't know their quirks. You don't know why we keep them around.

Last week we lost one to old age. Dorset. We had had Dorset for 19 years -- which is two years longer than I have been writing this column. She was a slender gray cat who looked a bit like a Russian Blue. Her fur was lustrous and soft, and her carriage could only have been called regal. Still, she was affectionate and gentle, and she was the only one of our cats who would stand up -- fur prickling, back arched -- to the interloping cats who appear on occasion on our front porch because they have heard the humans here have hearts as soft as butter by the woodstove and absolutely no spines when it comes to a stray. Dorset arrived at our house as a 6-week-old kitten in early 1989, and died nearly two decades later in the very same room where she first emerged from the blanket in which she had traveled from Franklin to Addison County. When she died, she didn't weigh a whole lot more than she had as a 6-week-old.

In between, she gently kneaded my back on the floor of the den when I would read there, devoured dozens of beanbag-sized sacks of catnip, and slept often on my lap in my library when I would write. Perhaps as many as one in seven of the columns you have read over the years was penned with her in my lap.

Gary Kowalski, the minister at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Burlington, has taught me much about the souls of animals. He has done this through his books and over lunches on Church Street. And one of the things that I have come to suspect is that not only do animals have souls, sometimes an animal is the corporeal manifestation of something a human soul needs. They come into our lives on occasion when we need them most. Dorset is the perfect example of this.

In early 1989, we had lost a cat named Cassandra to cancer. Cassandra was 5 when she died, and my wife was devastated. At the time this left us with three other cats, but Cassandra had been our only female, and she and my wife had a particularly tight bond. Consequently, my wife remarked a month after Cassandra had died that she would only want another cat if it were female, gray, and came from an animal shelter or a barn. The very next day a friend of ours, Sue Gilfillan, mentioned that she had acquaintances in Fairfax, and a cat in their barn had just had a litter of kittens. Gray kittens. Might we be interested? The rest, as they say, is history.

Lately, however, Dorset had reached that stage where life had become a burden for her. She was deaf, largely blind, and could barely navigate stairs. My wife and I hydrated her intravenously every day, and some mornings there would be seven jars of baby food open as we tried to find one she might nibble. She was a skeleton draped with a pelt.

And so Julie Moenter, who is both our friend and Dorset's veterinarian, came to our house. It was time for Dorset to join her older siblings in that lovely, carpeted cat condo in the sky where the chairs and the couches are scratching posts and the grounds grow nothing but catnip. She was in my arms when Julie administered the shot that would send her there, and so I asked the veterinarian to be sure with her aim. She was. A moment later Dorset died peacefully in one of the places in this world where she was happiest: My lap.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on February 3, 2008.)

Over a quarter century ago, when my wife and I were merely boyfriend and girlfriend, she gave me a vertical tin the size of a shoebox filled with candy. I still have it. The outside is red, gold and black, and features a regal (and uncharacteristically pacific) tiger. It is a vintage facsimile of an old Bright Tiger brand chewing tobacco tin, though the container my wife gave me held only chocolates. She brought it to me the morning my grandmother died, when we were still in college. She surprised me at the bus station, where I was awaiting a bus home. It was comfort food for the ride.

I still have the tin, though the lid no longer fits. I keep the container because I use it to store my wife's love letters to me, and I am very fortunate: Over the years she has written me a lot of love letters. The lid rests about a half-inch over the top, and the tin seams are stretched like the waistband on a pair of maternity pants in week 36.

I am telling you about my tiger tin because Valentine's Day is fast approaching and one of the casualties of the digital age is the handwritten love letter. Now, make no mistake: I love the digital age. If it weren't for Facebook.com, I can't imagine how I would keep up with the status and incomprehensible ramblings of friends and acquaintances ("Alessa feels like the inside of an Absolut bottle -- blueberry, thank you very much"). If it weren't for Youtube.com, I have no idea how I would get my fix of "F Troop" bloopers. Worse, if it weren't for the digital age, I might actually have to spend my days trying to write, racking my brains for the perfect synonym for "claret." Oh, wait: I can do that online, too.

But pulp and ink have become dinosaurs when it comes to romance. I'm a pretty romantic guy -- to wit, I don't give my wife replica team sports jerseys for Valentine's Day -- but still I have grown lazy when it comes to the pen and ink love letter. These days, I am far more likely to send it via e-mail or (shameless, I know) via Facebook.

And that means two things: First, I spend less time searching for the perfect metaphor or simile -- or even making sure that my spelling has surpassed that of the average Civil War private -- because, alas, e-mail is where grammar and style points go to die. Second, the sentiments, regardless of how poignant and profound they might be, will not in all likelihood be preserved. When was the last time anyone bothered to print out an e-mail that wasn't subpoenaed? And a mere love letter? Oh, please.

Yet it's wonderful to have that tin of love letters. I know my wife has the ones I wrote her, too. They are a trove of memories that surpasses old photos, old videos and old yearbooks. I study the dates. I savor the penmanship. I appreciate, even decades later, the idiosyncratic, inside joke.

When my friend, Adam Turteltaub, had been married nearly six months, his wife wondered aloud what the symbolic gift was for a half-year anniversary, and decided it must be pebbles. Consequently, on their six-month anniversary Adam bought his wife a box of Cocoa Pebbles cereal, which he gift-wrapped and gave to her with a card. This was 13 years ago, and she still has that card ... and the cereal. (Adam admits he's terrified his two young sons will now try to eat some very stale Pebbles, but that's another issue.)

Today, in our world of digital video greetings, might Adam have sent her some electronic Pebbles instead? An image and an e-card? Perhaps. And that wouldn't have been nearly as powerful a gift -- though it might have been safer if you have growing boys in the house.

In any case, this year I am taking the time to write my wife a love letter for Valentine's Day. By hand. With a pen. I can't stem the electronic tide, (and, in fact, I wouldn't want to). But I can add a drop or two of ink to the sea.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on February 10, 2008.)

Not long after The Double Bind was published in hardcover last year, I had dinner with a book group that had just read the novel. I was there in part because their invitation was gracious and funny. . .and in part because they promised me a spectacular potluck antipasto bar if I joined them. Also, they said the wine would be really good.

So I went.

Not long into an extremely animated conversation about the novel, one of the readers asked me what I thought The Double Bind was really about. I answered sincerely – but not especially creatively – that I thought it was a thriller about a young social worker, an elderly photographer, and the mystery of the photos he leaves behind when he dies. I said I viewed it as more of a page-turner than my earlier work.

This reader shook her head. “No,” she said adamantly, “that’s not it at all. It’s really a story about stories – it’s a novel about novels.”

Immediately the other readers jumped in, expanding eloquently upon this notion:

• “You wove The Great Gatsby into the story because The Double Bind is about reinvention.”

• “Your book is about the lies we tell ourselves – all of us, not just the homeless or the mentally ill – so we can put one foot in front of the other day after day.”

• “It’s a thriller, but it’s a thriller that makes us question all those personal parts of our lives that we bring to a book – all books, fiction as well as non-fiction.”

I loved these responses, and even if the antipasto bar or the wine hadn’t been spectacular (oh, but they were), this exchange would have made my visit to the book group worthwhile. I had learned something important both about this one novel and about how my work is read – and why.

The truth is, a lot of what novelists do is mere muscle memory. Rarely are we consciously deconstructing what we write as we work. Moreover, when it isn’t muscle memory, it’s frequently unplanned. Often I am depending upon my characters to take me by the hand and lead me through the dark of the story. Why? Because chances are, I haven’t the slightest idea where it’s going myself.

This is one of the reasons why I cherish reading groups – why I have such enormous respect for all of you. It’s not simply that you are the medieval monks of the digital age, keeping literary fiction vibrant and vital and alive into the twenty-first century. It’s that you help me understand my own work a little better.

The Double Bind is a departure for me in ways that I understood when I was writing it and in ways that I have only come to understand since it was published. The novel includes actual photos left behind a talented, once-homeless photographer. (Look for Judy Collins and Flip Wilson and a little girl with her parents who will win an Academy Award decades after the photo was taken.) It has characters you know well – or thought you knew well – and characters you will meet for the first time. It has a mystery at its core.

But it is also a book about how we read – and why. And this is something I have learned from reading groups.

So I thank you. Thank you for your faith in my work – and for championing, even now, what words and reading and books can mean to the soul.

So far, this has been a great season for one of my favorite winter sports: roof shoveling. Though the snowfall was slight in January, December and February gave us plenty of powder and just enough ice and wind to keep it interesting up there.

A lot of folks -- meaning my father in Florida -- think roof shoveling is one step above bull riding on the DAS scale. (DAS, of course, being the official scale for determining "Dangerous and Stupid" activities.) When my father and I are chatting on the phone and I mention that I have just spent an invigorating hour on the roof, it's pretty clear that he would prefer I was about to go base jumping. Base jumping, for those of you who do not participate in activities that score high on the DAS scale, is when you leap with a parachute from a tall, fixed object, such as a skyscraper or Shaquille O'Neal.

Now, I should note that although I am an avid roof shoveler, I am not a suicidal one. There are two kinds of roofs on my house, and I climb atop only one set: the roofs above the porches. Our house here in Lincoln is an old Victorian with slate roofs and a 12-by-12 pitch. I use a roof rake to take the snow off those higher parts of the house. But I do climb out the second story windows to shovel the snow off the roof on the screened porch and the glass porch. I do this because it's great cardiovascular exercise and because the porch roofs bend like cooked macaroni if I don't. It would really put a damper on the season if one collapsed under the weight of a winter's worth of snow.

One of these porches faces Quaker Street, a busy street in the village. Consequently, it is not uncommon for people to pass by when I am shoveling snow off that roof and shout up their greetings. Often they suggest that when I am done with my roof I can take care of theirs. Serious roof shovelers jump at this sort of invitation, especially if it comes from someone who lives in an old house with steep roofs, gables and gingerbread trim. Gables and gingerbread make for challenging territory. A roof shoveler can fall from great heights (ITAL)and (END ITAL) wind up disfigured on the way down.

In any case, if the number of people who will watch me shovel my roof is an indication of the activity's potential as a spectator sport, then NASCAR had better be worried. Roof shoveling and car racing have a lot in common, in that both revolve around hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Certainly when one of my neighbors is shoveling off a roof, I'll watch.

The closest I've come to tumbling off my roof was the time I had an ice jam in the valley just above the screened porch. I was standing on that roof and banging away with an ax at the glacier above me, when I slipped and slid to the edge of the roof. The scary part wasn't that I almost flew like a ski jumper. I had already shoveled so much snow off the roof that I would have fallen a whopping three feet into the giant snow bank below me. The scary part was the ax. I launched it into the air when I slipped, and it conked me on the head on its way back to earth. Fortunately, I was beaned by the blunt side, not the sharp side, and so today I share Frankenstein's high forehead but not his scar.

Nevertheless, roof shoveling is probably not yet ready for its place on the Olympic schedule, even if it does have a very high DAS. What we need to do is combine roof shoveling and base jumping -- or, perhaps, combine roof shoveling and a slippery skyscraper. Then we have ourselves a real sport.

* * *

Special note from Chris's lawyer: "Chris is not seriously advocating or recommending that readers ever climb out on their roofs. In fact, don't do it. I mean it. Stay inside. Or on the ground. But don't even think of actually climbing out a window onto a roof."

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on February 17, 2008.)

One of the reasons why I live in Vermont rather than, say, New Hampshire, is because there's no pressure when the presidential primary finally arrives. I already have way too much pressure in my life, and the last thing I want is for my decision to be meaningful when I am inside the voting booth or to have to make small talk should I run into Clinton, McCain or Obama at Muddy Waters.

Actually, I think it would be fun to run into any of them at Muddy Waters. I'd bring them next-door to Old Gold and ask them for their opinions on the mannequins in the window.

My point? Because the Vermont presidential primary occurs months after the very first primaries in January, and because the whole population of our state could fit inside Fenway Park, presidential aspirants are more likely to send Seamus here than actually come visit themselves.

In case you were wondering, Seamus is the name of Hillary Clinton's chocolate Lab and the name of an Irish setter that former presidential aspirant Mitt Romney owned in the 1980s. I have always found it ironic that Seamus is such a bipartisan moniker. Moreover, both dogs have had their 15 seconds of fame: the Democratic Seamus because he replaced Bill Clinton's beloved dog, Buddy, and the Republican Seamus because the Romneys put him in a box on the top of their car in 1983 when they drove from Boston to Ontario, and the dog pooped so much that it dripped down the rear windshield and terrified the children. (I really, really wish that I was making that up. I'm not.)

Now I know a lot of political scientists and Vermont politicos insist that our 23 Democratic delegates and 17 Republican delegates are critical -- especially with the Democratic race still undecided. After all, our Democratic delegates represent almost three-quarters of 1 percent of the Democratic total (3,060 delegates) and about one-half of 1 percent of the Republican total (3,101 delegates). Actually, not all of our delegates are binding, so we might represent even less of a prize.

Still, there are people out there who will tell you: The road to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. goes through Vermont. Of course, these are also the people who are telling you there are secret codes written on Triscuits. Either that or they haven't looked carefully at a map.

And yet I will vote on March 4, and not simply because it's Town Meeting Day and I have to choose our local Justices of the Peace anyway. The reality is that on occasion single votes here and there have been critical. It was a single electoral vote that sent Rutherford B. Hayes to the White House in 1876 -- after an electoral commission awarded 20 contested delegates from four states to Hayes. And we all recall how much every vote mattered in the presidential election in 2000, especially those Floridian votes for Patrick Buchanan and Ralph Nader and someone named Butterfly Ballot.

Incidentally, among those four contested states in 1876 was Florida. So, perhaps what I really mean is that single votes are critical in Florida.

In any event, voting is a privilege, and with all privilege comes responsibility. And perks. If you actually vote, you can actually complain. Voting gives us the right to speak our minds when we are unhappy with the direction our nation is moving. As New York once said about its lottery, "You've gotta be in it to win it." It's really a sort of two-for-one deal: You speak your mind in the privacy of the voting booth, and you earn the right to speak it in public for the next four years.

So, a week from Tuesday: Vote early. Vote often. And don't put your dog in a box on the roof of your car.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on February 24, 2008.)