He was such a little thing, half Labrador and half hound dog. He spent most of the visit curled up on Cheryl’s chest, sleeping.

They wanted to adopt him, so they called home to ask my opinion.

“It’s fine with me,” I said, “but what do you think Whiskers and Kabella will think?”

Whiskers was our four-year-old blue-eyed gray and white tom cat. Kabella was our black Labrador, nine years old at the time.

“Whiskers will have to adjust,” Cheryl said, knowing that the cat didn’t care for dogs, barely tolerated the one we had. “Kabella has never had puppies. Maybe she’ll be a good mother.”

We had to wait a month before the puppy was old enough to leave his mother. During that time we debated possible names.

Cheryl suggested “Cuddles” because he liked to snuggle.

“With a name like Cuddles,” I said, “every dog in the neighborhood will beat him up. He’s already the runt. We don’t want to add to his troubles.”

We searched for a more masculine name. “Skippy” was proposed and just as quickly discarded.

I don’t remember how we settled on “Scooter,” but we agreed that it sounded butch enough so that the neighborhood bully dogs probably wouldn’t tease him.

Finally, we brought Scooter home. He spent the hour-long drive curled up on Sean’s lap.

Cheryl had over-estimated Kabella’s maternal instinct. Mostly, Kabella ignored Scooter, but if he pestered her too much she quickly put him in his place. And if he dared to eat from her bowl, she sent him yipping away to the living room where he cowered behind the couch.

Whiskers was indifferent to the puppy, but Scooter already had a fully developed bark-at-the-cat instinct. He would bounce around yapping at Whiskers, who was more than twice his size. Whiskers would sit serenely and watch this macho display. Finally, bored, he’d lift his paw and cuff Scooter on the side of his head. The puppy would fall over, and Whiskers would stroll quietly away.

Scooter didn’t stay tiny for long. Soon he was bigger than Whiskers, but he’d long since learned to get along with his adopted brother. Although Scooter thought of the cat as his buddy, Whiskers interacted with the dog only when he had no other choice.

Cheryl and I would sit on the couch and watch Scooter chase Whiskers down into the basement. After a moment of silence we’d hear thumping on the stairs, and Scooter would charge across the room and down the hall with Whiskers in hot pursuit. Scooter was playing, but Whiskers was serious; like Kabella, he was establishing boundaries. 

Kabella never got in touch with her maternal side. She was top dog in this house, and she never let this scrawny intruder forget it. They got along fine, but Kabella continued in her role as dominant dog even after Scooter had grown larger than her.

Whiskers also came to accept Scooter. As long as the new dog didn’t violate his space too aggressively, he was cool with it. Whiskers even tolerated an occasional rear-end sniff when he came in from outdoors; he understood that Scooter was just making sure he was the cat who belonged in this household, not an imposter.

Later, when Scooter was full-grown, we visited Cheryl’s family and met two of Scooter’s brothers. Cheryl’s sister had adopted them when they were puppies. We were surprised that both dogs had short legs and were a little chunky. They were closer to Kabella’s size than to Scooter’s.

The runt of the litter had grown into a lean, long-legged powerhouse who dwarfed his siblings. And Although Kabella and Whiskers challenged him from time to time, he had managed to fit in with his adopted family. 

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Among the rejection slips I’ve  received, my favorite was from a science fiction anthology: a full-page drawing of a dragon dabbing at his eyes with a kleenex as its tears flowed down.  It was much funnier than these meager words can describe. I once showed it to a friend, also a science fiction writer, who didn’t find it quite as amusing. It’s a matter of attitude; I couldn’t do anything about the rejection, and it was a change of pace from the usual, uninspired  form letter.

If you have trouble staying motivated in the face of an expanding  file of rejections, perhaps this list of the receptions of some famous authors and their work will help.

• Crash by J.G. Ballard: “The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.”
• Dr. Seuss: “Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”
• Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway: “It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish this.”
• The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting Rudyard Kipling: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.”
• Lust for Life, Irving Stone’s historical novel about Vincent Van Gogh: “A long, dull novel about an artist.” Sixteen publishers rejected the novel. When it finally saw print it sold more than 25 million copies.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach: “Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback.” The novel eventually sold to Avon Books and racked up sales of more than 7.25 million copies.
• Tony Hillerman, best known for his Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels was advised by publishers to “Get rid of all that Indian stuff.”
• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: “An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would ‘take’ … I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.’”
• Although Emily Dickinson published only seven poems in her lifetime, an early rejection advised her: “(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.”
• Animal Farm by George Orwell: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”
• So many publishers rejected The Tale of Peter Rabbit that Beatrix Potter published it herself.
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding: “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”
• One publisher to another  on John le  Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: “You’re welcome to le Carre–he hasn’t got any future.”
• The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel: “We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless … we don’t think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves.”
• The Deer Park by Norman Mailer: “This will set publishing back 25 years.”
• Carrie by Stephen King: “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.”

And my favorite:

• Sanctuary by William Faulkner: “Good God, I can’t publish this!”

Fiction editing is a subjective process. There will always be editors who think your writing is crap, but there are also editors who will be enthusiastic about it. You just have to find them. And the only way to find them is to keep sending out your work.

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