Childless Cat Ladies and My Fantasy Adventure

How did my apolitical novel suddenly become political?

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Like most reasonable people, I was appalled to hear vice-presidential candidate JD Vance assert that “childless cat ladies” were the root cause of our nation’s problems. But I also felt a sense of amused irony because I had recently published a fantasy-adventure novel in which my heroes are women who fight to protect a group of extraordinary cats from harm. I was surprised to learn that what I thought was an apolitical fantasy has suddenly gained political relevance (more about my novel later in this essay). 

My wife and I have no children (no, I will not make excuses) and own cats (ditto on the no excuses bit), so I find Mr. Vance’s insults deeply personal. I am also angry because this “cat lady” stereotype has been around too long and has done too much harm to let me sit silently and watch this fool repeat it. This derision of cats and the people (often women) who love them was not always the case. Stone-Age excavations show that cats had been domesticated at least 10,000 years ago to exploit their skills at eradicating vermin that threatened the food supply and to serve as companion animals along with dogs. In ancient times, the Egyptians recognized their intelligence and resourcefulness and revered them as gods. 

Unfortunately, in the Middle Ages (a time when Mr. Vance would have undoubtedly felt at home), single, childless women and their cats became the targets of persecution by superstitious people who blamed every problem on the local witch—generally, a childless woman who lived alone with her cat. These ignorant fanatics slaughtered cats and women alike by the thousands. (The subsequent increase in the rat population that led to the spread of bubonic plague in Europe, which could be regarded as a form of sad justice.) This superstition continued into the birth of America and the Salem Witch Trials and persists today in the stereotype of childless women and their cats as defective, lesser members of society, ridiculed by the contemporary heirs of the medieval witch-hunters (JD Vance, if you’re listening . . .).  

My wife is a living refutation of Mr. Vance’s stereotype. She has a master’s degree in computer science and has also graduated from Law School. She belongs to the bar in New Mexico, Colorado, and the District of Columbia, and currently runs a charity (an animal rescue) she founded. Through her, I have met dozens of “cat ladies,” childless and otherwise, none of whom fit Mr. Vance’s stereotype. My cat ladies include business executives, doctors, lawyers, engineers, skilled workers, artists, mothers, and homemakers. In my experience, these women and their love of cats are a source of great strength and kindness in our society. Challenging this stereotype was one of my goals when I wrote my novel, Swarm Metamorphosis: Circe and the Great Cat (even though I wrote it long before Mr. Vance’s remarks).

I wanted to challenge the Medieval stereotype by creating female characters who exemplify the virtues I have found in these women. I also wanted to create feline characters who demonstrate the intelligence, persistence, and loyalty I have seen in my own cats. 

Set in the Bronze Age of Homer, Swarm Metamorphosis tells the story of five cats whose single extraordinary ability makes them the prize in a three-thousand-year-old blood feud between Circe, Homer’s powerful enchantress, and her insane half-brother. My heroines include Astrid Lund, a modern, recently divorced woman who owns and loves the five cats; Circe, whose enchantments inadvertently gave the animals their abilities and have transported Astrid and the cats to the Bronze Age; Myia, a teenage girl who killed the man who tried to rape her and fled to the wilderness to live by her wits and her bow; and Athena, the goddess of wisdom who reluctantly assists Circe in protecting the cats while keeping knowledge of their extraordinary nature from Zeus, her father and king of the gods. My heroines are assisted by Odysseus, Nestor and other characters from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Although I wrote my novel long before Mr. Vance’s remarks, I am amazed at how much its deeper meanings challenge the ignorance exhibited by Mr. Vance, his enablers, and their medieval antecedents. I hope my writing will provide a more realistic perspective on this unfortunate stereotype.

Also, I hope you will read my novel (you can find it on Amazon in paper and Kindle formats). After all, my main goal in writing Swarm Metamorphosis: Circe and the Great Cat was to tell a story that would entertain people who love strong female protagonists, animals, and the characters and situations of Homer’s great epics, the Iliad and Odyssey.

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The Dark Lady

I am 75 years old, healthy, and have never spent much time worrying about death. When I’ve thought about it at all, it was either as an impenetrable mystery or the void of non-existence—neither of which seem particularly terrifying, interesting, nor worthy of much attention. But, as I age, the passing of friends, family, and cultural figures who have shaped my mind and the emergence of age-related infirmities make it impossible for me to avoid death’s encroachment. 

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I am a scientist and a humanist. Although this deprives me of religion’s ready-to-wear consolations, it has given me a lifelong involvement with philosophy, science, literature, art, and music to draw upon. I’ve even borrowed ideas from spiritual thinkers such as Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus while avoiding the dogmas that exploit their teachings. These secular and spiritual thinkers offer a remarkably consistent and compelling set of principles for understanding life and its ending. However, I still long for some personal, emotional complement to the abstractions of logic and philosophy. I feel like a musician who works to transform notes written on paper into sounds etched in the soul.

Lately, as I’ve contemplated these questions, I’ve become aware of a presence at the edge of my consciousness. Although a product of my mind, this presence remains apart from logic and the intellect: unseen but pervasive, mysterious but reassuring, alien but intimate and, above all, feminine. I have come to think of this presence as the Dark Lady, and she has become the fixed point in my efforts to face my mortality. She is not a spirit, angel, ghost, messenger from God, or other transcendent entity. She is a metaphor, a personification of the ideas, narratives, and longings surrounding my thoughts about life and death. She is no less meaningful for that. The Dark Lady is the emotional resonance of philosophy’s abstract constructions, situating them in flesh, blood, nerve, and bone.

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Haiku

What a curious
stand of blackberries, that no
spirits inhabit.
Image by Siala. Pixaby, under Pixabay License
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Author/Auteur

Thoughts on writing, publishing, and the creative life

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, Rembrandt 1653

I recently self-published two works of fiction: a fantasy for kids (and adults with active imaginations) entitled How Mother Rat Invented the World and a fantasy adventure novel set in the Homeric Bronze Age entitled Swarm Metamorphosis. Although the process of editing, book design, cover creation, printing, distribution, and marketing proved to be a fascinating experience, it also revealed an unexpected tension between my roles as a writer and a publisher.

In entitling this article Author/Auteur, I’m borrowing a term from film-making. An auteur has artistic control over all aspects of a film’s production: writing, directing, casting, producing, and promotion. This contrasts with the division of labor generally involved in studio productions. (For a humorous yet loving take on the joys and trials of being an auteur, watch the film Day For Night by one of the original auteurs, the wonderful Francois Truffaut). The analogy with self-publishing is clear. As a literary auteur, I could not draw on the resources of a “studio,” i.e., a publishing house—I had to do almost everything myself. Although I found self-publishing rewarding (I even became something of a font geek), I did not anticipate how the experience would transform my relationship with my novels—and change me as a person.

While I was writing, my involvement with my books was detailed, prolonged, and intimate: I took Swarm through 21 major drafts and at least a hundred minor editing passes. But, as I moved through the publishing process, the sense of deep connection with the text that accompanies such intensive writing and editing diminished. Although this is a normal consequence of publication and the need to finalize the text, self-publishing only accentuates it. Each phase of book design, printing, distribution, and marketing seemed to take me farther from my intimate relationship with my text. Now, when I read through my published books, I experience them as having been created by someone simultaneously myself and not myself, a doppelganger whose strangeness is only intensified by his familiarity.

How can I explain this? What does it mean for me as a writer and a person?

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Tara

Image by William Stubblefield

It snowed heavily last night, and
I found myself waking to the task of
Shoveling a hundred feet of driveway.

“Hire someone with a snowplow;
You’re too old to be doing this,”
My wife said in her female wisdom.

“I’m OK,” I insisted.

“You’re seventy-four,” she said,
Punctuating her argument.
“You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I shovel my own driveway,” I grumped
As she retreated to her morning rituals.

I walked out into the cold—
Twelve degrees should feel colder,
I thought as I paused, shovel in hand
And remembered the deeper reason
I chose this chore for myself—
A reason beyond masculine vanity.

Surrounded by trees heavy with snow,
The constant hum of traffic muffled
By jeweled powder, I felt the silence
Enfold me. Dog walkers and joggers
Comfortable inside their homes,
I imagined myself the sole possessor of
The beauty the storm had left behind.

I began the ritual of clearing the drive:
Push the shovel through the powder;
Tap the shovel’s edge on the ground
To free the snow that stuck to it;
Watch it fall among the piles
Accumulating beside the driveway;
Pause; repeat—a solitary
Meditation on the ache
Of muscles in a body grown old.

We live in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains,
Near the National Forest. A small
Herd of deer—refugees
Adapted to human encroachment—
Moves regularly through our neighborhood,
Browsing its way from yard to yard.
I saw hoof prints in the snow
And felt compassion for their suffering,
Stranded in the bitter reality
That created the beauty around me.

Pausing to rest and catch my breath,
I looked up and saw the source
Of the hoof prints: A young doe
Stared at me from among the trees,
Her eyes clear, dark, serene.
An adolescent fawn stood behind her.
I returned her stare, stricken by her beauty,
The pure, abstract femininity
Unique to wild creatures, the curves
Of her face, her neck, her joints
So unlike the muscularity
Of the bucks that lingered nearby.

Transfixed, I thought of Green Tara,
The Bodhisattva of compassion,
Often portrayed as a nature goddess,
Surrounded by plants and wild beasts,
Vital, nurturing, patient, playful.
Legend has it that when her
Fellow monks suggested she
Re-incarnate as male to broaden
Her perspective (Or to validate
Their own?) Tara declined, choosing
Always to return as female.
Now, I sensed her presence in the
Artless femininity of an animal’s gaze.

I thought of the shovel and the yards
Of uncleared snow, and felt my muscles
And joints complain once more, but also
I felt their strength persisting—life
Burning against encroaching cold.
Are the aches and pains of age
Signs of an inevitable ending?
Or could they be a call to something
Unknowable, beyond time,
Without form or boundary—
The liquid non-being beneath
An animal’s inhuman stare?

Just as wisdom is born of paradox,
Transience implies continuity.
I watched the doe walk away,
Deliberate, unafraid.
She disappeared into the trees
As I resumed clearing the drive,
Removing her hoof prints along with
The snow that had contained them.

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