Itchmo: News For Dogs & Cats

Patty Richard is a native of Rhode Island and currently lives on Prudence Island, where she waits anxiously for tourist season to be over, then waits anxiously for hunting season to be over. Although most of her professional life has been geared to printing and publishing, she has a shockingly short attention span and has performed all manner of unrelated tasks ranging from peeling potatoes to monitoring seawater quality parameters for NOAA. Somehow she always ends up back in the publishing business.

She telecommutes to her current job as copy editor and layout artist for “Manufacturers’ Mart”, a regional industrial trade publication. She has written many natural science features and travelogues for local newspapers, and edited a regional recreation guide, “The Sundial” for two years.

In her spare time, she tries unsuccessfully to avoid volunteering for community organizations, including but not limited to the Prudence Conservancy, the Prudence Island Historical & Preservation Society, the Homestead Plat Improvement Association, the Prudence Island Water District and the Friends of Prudence Island School.

Patty refuses to leave the island except to buy cigarettes, which are much cheaper on the mainland. She has always shared her home with pets. Her current pet family consists of two cats: a 20-year-old tiger tabby named Rochester (alias “King of Beasts”) and an adopted feral, approximately 7 years old, named Nermal. She is also the de facto guardian of 6 chickens: Bertha, Gimpy, Big Red, Little Red, Little Blackie and Psycho-Chicken. Her writing for Itchmo will focus largely on geriatric pets.

Patty’s ambition is to win Powerball, buy a small island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and retire into obscurity. She’s already accomplished the obscurity part.