Volume 1, Issue 2 – December 1998
The Nine+ Lives of Carole Nelson Douglas
Not many people find their calling at four years of age. Of course, the very young Carole Nelson Douglas never guessed providing food and overnight shelter to stray animals would prove a necessary step towards writing bestsellers in mystery, fantasy and romance. She just wanted a cat.
Eventually, she got her cat and much more. Talking to Crescent Blues, Douglas reflects on her many writing lives, her series, her satire, and a four-legged shamus named Louie.
Crescent Blues: When you first started writing fiction, did you ever dream you’d be writing so much about a big, black tomcat?
Carole Nelson Douglas: From my first novels, I made sure that animals were in my books because they play a large part in my life, and always have, and because I thought their presence, even if just as background figures, made fiction more realistic.
In my very first novel, Amberleigh, a post-feminist gothic set in late 19th century Ireland, an Irish wolfhound became more than an ongoing background player, and actually helped nail a murderer at the end, through purely canine behavior. A King Charles spaniel in my second historical novel came to a sad end symbolic of his Cavalier master’s death. In my third novel, a bestselling fantasy called Six of Swords, I introduced a talking white cat named Felabba who had 99 lives and magical powers as well as a sharp tongue. So it isn’t odd that my current collaborator is a big, black tomcat.
Cat in a Golden Garland (scheduled to be re-released in paperback this month) finds Midnight Louie, your feline sleuth, in New York competing for the post of “spokescat” for a major cat food. This is the first time in the series the fictional Louie has left Nevada. Do you plan more out of town adventures for him and his human companions, Temple Barr, Max Kinsella, Matt Devine and Lieutenant C. R. Molina?
Taking Midnight Louie out of his Las Vegas setting is like removing the plums from plum pudding. So his “getaway” city had to be something special, hence Manhattan at Christmas time. The change of locale was fun, but Las Vegas is tailor-made for a cat detective: it’s all just one big sandbox with lots of tinker-toy fantasy worlds, isn’t it? Although Louie moves around in space (and now time) in his short story outings, Las Vegas is his best backdrop for the novels.
Why do you think the holidays are such a good season for murder?
The holidays pull together people who haven’t seen each other in some time, and often allow underlying tensions to rise to the surface. Then, too, the murder amid festivities provides a piquant sense of contrast that writers often like to exploit.
As invariably happens in a “Louie” mystery, Louie discovers the body in Cat in a Golden Garland and gives the alarm. Is this something you’ve encountered in real life with cats and other animals? What were the circumstances?
Animals, with their superior sense of smell, are natural finders of unnatural conditions, such as sudden death — much better than odor-indifferent humans. Nose E., the ace bomb and-drug-sniffing Maltese dog I introduced in a Louie short story, shows up in Cat in an Indigo Mood, the new March ’99 hardcover. This is one area where dogs clearly outdo cats: smell. Even Louie, a formerly homeless cat who has no fondness for dogs, has to admit that a three-pound lapdog is a primo perp-tracer.
Dogs have often accidentally unearthed dead bodies in real life and are trained as cadaver dogs to find the dead. Cats, I fear, are great hunters (bugs if indoors; mice, etc., if outdoors), but not great skip tracers. The only dead bodies I’ve found, thanks to the intervention of my seven cats, are the occasional cricket or waterbug. The pet sitter came in once to find Longfellow playing with a “rubber” snake that wasn’t rubber.
Midnight Louie was based on a real cat. Could you tell us something about that cat, and how you happened to meet?
Many readers think Midnight Louie, the original, was my cat, but he wasn’t. He was a particularly savvy survivor, being abandoned as a kitten in a motel room (an all-too-common fate for unwanted litters).
Despite the short, unhappy, unhealthy lives granted such strays, Midnight Louie grew up big and strong by eating the decorative goldfish in the California motel pond. His successful scavenging almost cost him his life: the motel management was going to deport him to the animal pound. But a traveling softie flew him back to her home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I was a feature writer for the daily newspaper.
I spotted the ad seeking the right home for this character for a mere dollar, and was intrigued into writing a feature on Louie. That was back in the Seventies, and that was as far as I thought it would go… until he popped into my mind as the perfect narrator for a quartet of romances-cum-mystery (Love Boat in Las Vegas) in 1985. (By the way, the romance quartet will be coming out in hardcover versions from Thorndike, beginning next fall with The Cat and the King of Clubs.)
How do the fictional Midnight Louie’s origins differ from those of his real life counterpart?
Hardly at all. I just moved Louie and his carp pond to the abandoned (fictional) Joshua Tree hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, which was remodeled into the (fictional) Crystal Phoenix, the classiest hotel in Vegas, with Midnight Louie in place as “unofficial house dick.”
What made you choose to tell part of the Midnight Louie mysteries from Louie’s perspective?
I had “interviewed” Louie and let him speak for himself in first-furperson feline for that newspaper feature.
Somehow Louie’s narrative voice occurred to me and was introduced in the romance quartet. I even wrote it so the reader didn’t know the narrator named Midnight Louie was not one of the Las Vegas characters hanging around the hotel, but the cat who had been seen coming and going, until the very end — literally the last few words — of the first book. Because I had used that device in the romance series, I couldn’t repeat it in the mystery series.
At that time, little by way of secondary characters and a strong background were allowed in romance novels, so I had to keep Louie’s narrative interludes short and occasional. In the mysteries, his sections run longer, although mystery readers had never encountered a first-purrson feline narrator until Louie arrived on the scene. But mystery, especially noir mystery, is famous for the first-person narration, and that’s actually what inspired Midnight Louie’s voice way back when.
How did you develop his voice? Did the character just start “talking” to you in your imagination? Or did you consciously model his voice and tough guy attitude on an actor, a fictional character like Sam Spade, or someone you know?
Fashions in writers come and go; only a few readers, and even fewer reviewers, have realized that Louie’s voice is inspired by the Depression tales of Damon Runyon, whose work Hollywood mined for decades, most famously in Guys and Dolls and A Pocketful of Miracles. Louie’s literary antecedents are Runyon, with a bit of generic gumshoe and Mrs. Malaprop thrown in. An alley cat is a lot like the displaced people of the Depression days, surviving as best they can and “conning” those with more means into “contributing” to their welfare.
While you’re reading the Midnight Louie mysteries, reading the cat’s take on things feels perfectly natural. However, take a day or two to step back from Louie’s fictional world, and you can suddenly feel like you’ve been transported to a fantasy unawares. How do you achieve this suspension of disbelief?
I think it’s because Louie is a satire on a human model, the hard-nosed, hard-drinking, heavy womanizing rogue male who defined the P. I. genre — and most American adventure heroes for decades (and for far too long, in my opinion). So Louie is very much in the traditional hard-boiled mystery mode, even if he is a cat. Midnight Louie is Sam Spade with hairballs.
I coined the descriptive name “cozy-noir” for the Midnight Louie mysteries, because they blend amateur and professional human sleuths. And Louie himself is the epitome of the mean-street stalker of the Twenties and Thirties — the lone guy with his own code and a string of dames behind him. His being a cat allows for satire of both Depression-era and Nineties-era mores.
But Louie, aside from his narrations and the intent to solve the crime he reveals in them, behaves otherwise like an ordinary cat (who happens to have an extraordinary agenda). I do give him a touch of psychic talent, but most cat owners don’t find that a stretch.
And Louie often identifies himself with the homeless, the transient, the individual persecuted and discriminated against for the mere color of his coat, the breed subjected to genocide at times, even as — dare I say — the underdog?
How do you see the Louie mysteries, as “straight mystery” or as a blend of mystery and fantasy?
I see Louie as a “fantasy construct” in a straight mystery milieu.
You’ve written in many other genres romance, historical mystery, science fiction and fantasy: Do you prefer one genre to another or do you feel at home in all of them?
Although I’ve written in all those genres and enjoy using different voices and unusual backgrounds in all of them, I’ve never felt completely at home in any of them, which is why I’ve always blended genre elements. To me, as a reader who began to write in the late Seventies, science fiction and fantasy traditionally skimped on realistic character development, particularly of substantial women. Romance lacked detailed background, social issues and secondary characters. Mainstream/literary fiction stinted on positive outcomes and imagination. Some of this has changed now, but not a lot. I still prefer to bridge many types of fiction, rather than to drop my anchor and harbor in one genre.
From a writer’s standpoint, how do the genres differ from each other? What are their similarities?
In one sense, all novels are fantasies and mysteries. They take place in made-up worlds populated by created characters. They unravel the meaning of these characters’ lives and actions through invented plotlines and resolutions. Almost all genres have neglected strong women characters, though, until more recently. They’ve also have been missing characters of color — another lack that is now receiving more attention.
What does it take to succeed in so many different arenas?
You need to unleash your imagination. You must avoid letting others tether it because they espouse one “right” way of doing anything. You need to practice writing in a variety of styles, untainted by what’s fashionable or salable or likely to win awards. You gain confidence from doing this, so that you sense when you are “right,” even if all around you are saying you’re wrong. (See the Kipling poem “If.”)
Creative people, whether they are writers or artists or musicians, are often at odds with the arbiters around them: teachers, critics, scholars. Work for the arbiters, and you have cheated your own potential. Learn to follow your star, and you will never be ashamed of what you have written, although you may not be rewarded for it in a traditional way (money, fame, praise).
Vincent Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. But if you read his letters to his brother Theo, the only one who supported him, you see Vincent knew he had a unique vision and was learning to express it. The man in him would be shocked by the exorbitant prices his works command after his death, but the artist in him always believed, and that belief was worth millions to his ability to paint, despite all the discouragement.
Recently, you branched into editing with Marilyn: Shades of Blonde, a 1997 anthology of stories exploring the myth and reality of Marilyn Monroe, and Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives, a collection of mysteries released this fall. What were your goals for these books and how well do you feel your goals were met?
Marilyn Monroe is not a subject I would have chosen, and I wasn’t particularly keen to be an editor, although I’d been a copy and layout editor of a newspaper’s feature and opinion pages. In both the Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives and Marilyn: Shades of Blonde anthologies, I wanted to invite writers who weren’t typically expected to write to this subject. In both anthologies, I leaned on mystery writers, but also included fantasy writers.
For Marilyn, I also got pieces from literary and mainstream writers. I wanted stories that were fresh and varied, and I’m very pleased with the Marilyn anthology. It was not identified as a mystery collection, and thus its outstanding stories were overlooked by a lot of readers who nominate for awards in the field. But nonetheless it included a Shamus-award winning story by Carolyn Wheat and a Nancy Pickard story that surprised both the author and myself by being selected for the respected literary/fantasy annual collection, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
And Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives, which features both domestic and wild animals, from an owl to a hamster to a Tasmanian devil to an opossum to an elephant (as well as the usual dogs and cats), is also being well received.
What inspired you to take up the challenge of “rewriting” the death and times of Marilyn Monroe? What is it about her life (or death) that speaks most vividly to you?
I was a theater major in college, and had wanted to be an actress since I was six or seven years old. Running into the tyranny of type casting, I had decided by college that I like playing against type too well to go into a profession that depends on type.
One of my favorite roles was the “dumb blonde” in Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn, which I only got because the (dumb, blonde) actress they really wanted wasn’t available. I loved doing that part, which is where I discovered that “dumb blondes” in theater are neither dumb nor naturally blonde.
As I read about Marilyn’s life, and the stories from various writers contributing to the anthology, I came to a new appreciation of how she made herself and made herself last amazingly long despite an industry that used and trivialized women. Elvis Presley (and his legion of imitators) is the subject of the Midnight Louie novel I’m writing now, and I’m struck by the similarities between these two blue-collar icons who defied their times and the expectations of their modest births to live the American Dream, and die it.
How did it feel to be on the “other side” of the editor’s desk? Are you planning to take up the blue pencil challenge again?
Editing is like gambling. You pick your games, your players, and hope they pan out. I was thrilled by the work I got from the writers who accepted the challenge. I like it; it’s hard work. I probably won’t have time to try it again for a while.
In 1997, you wrote and staged a one woman show called Sunset Strip: A Monologue in One Act, in which you played Marilyn Monroe on the eve of her Broadway comeback, 35 years after her supposed death. Was this an outgrowth of the anthology, or vice versa?
Definitely an outgrowth of the anthology, and of the encouragement of my husband, Sam Douglas, whom I met when we were in a play years ago, and who suggested I read/perform the Marilyn Monroe point-of-view monologue I wrote as my story for the anthology.
After I wrote it, I wondered if any practicing actor would ever request to perform it. I never expected to perform it myself. However, once I realized that no director would have ever selected me to do so, but that I could be writer/director/actor in this case, I had to try it.
Moonlighting as Marilyn was fascinating. I had a couple of occasions to don her persona offstage, giving me even more insight in her life. This experience certainly has enriched my background in writing the book about Elvis imitators. It is truly eerie to impersonate a persona that has so many resonances with the public.
Are you still appearing in the show, or are you working on another stage show?
Mostly I just read from my work, which I enjoy tremendously. I don’t foresee more full-blown impersonations, although women do impersonate Elvis. But I was unable to resist buying a Seventies-vintage white polyester ladies’ jumpsuit, which will be perfect for signings for Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit, the Elvis book out in hardcover in fall ’99. But I can’t sing on key, so there’s no danger of my bursting into “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog.” If I get some time (unlikely) and the technical assistance, I might someday put part of my Marilyn Monroe tape on my home page.
What impact do adventures “out of the box” of writing have on your novels? What other methods do you use to break the routine?
I very seldom get out of the box of writing, traveling to conventions and going on book tours these days. In fact, I had sacrificed so many pastimes (playing the piano, going to estate sales, local writers’ group meetings, the health club and a tap dancing class) over the past few years as my schedule has gone nova, that I’ve made it a goal to get out and about more. I’ve found a nearby dance class — clogging, not tap — and meet with local “book ladies” once a month, when I can make it. I have visions of beading in my spare time someday, but more realistically should use any spare time to update my web page.
How has the Midnight Louie series changed since Catnap? Has the series progressed according to some master “game plan” or have the characters surprised you?
These books really aren’t “cat mysteries,” although the cat is a major character, viewpoint and actor in the storyline. These books are really about the interactions of the four human characters who alternatively compete and cooperate in the arena of crime-solving while evolving in their own lives, as Louie is evolving in his own nine (or whatever number) of lives.
The Midnight Louie series itself is constructed like a three-year television series, such as The X-Files, with an ongoing back story that involves the main four characters’ private and past lives, and episodic front stories that involve different characters and crime milieus in each book. Because I introduced an internal alphabet with the third book title (Cat on a Blue Monday), the entire series will number 27 books, with three back story arcs of nine books each.
Although my proposal for the series mentions that it will get “deeper and darker” as it progresses, I didn’t plan any structure. But that’s how it developed organically, because I wanted the characters to grow, and I’ve just recently detected the structure that’s evolving, like a sculptor who finally sees the shape hidden in the stone.
A mystery series can be so formulaic: murder, milieu, suspects, solution every book. Life just isn’t that tidy. That’s why the Midnight Louie series has “continuing” crimes that are not solved in the book in which they occur, but over the course of several books.
I did start off in the classical amateur style, only in cozy-noir mode: Louie is the noir, his roommate Temple Barr is the cozy amateur sleuth, a public relations freelancer. Because so many women of mystery were becoming androgynous amazons by the time I started the series in the early Nineties, I went for a petite, ultra-feminine heroine (to contrast to Louie’s macho swagger). But Temple is a terrier: cute but tenacious, and deadly to vermin.
The series’ human cast are: two amateur detectives (Temple and Matt Devine, the hotline counselor) and two pros (female homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina and the magician, Temple’s on-and-off lover, Max Kinsella, who has ties to international terrorism). In the first books, you get Midnight Louie’s first-purrson chapters interspersed with Temple’s third-person chapters.
I always intended to use all four people as point of view characters, but introduced them gradually so as not to confuse readers with too many points of view about whom they knew nothing. Cat in an Indigo Mood is the tenth book in the series, and the first to use all four human viewpoints, plus Louie’s. Gets complicated! I’ll probably go back to a more limited narration for the next couple of books, but will definitively be using all five points of view from here on, so we can find out what the various characters think of each other.
I’ve also been expanding the “animal universe,” another intentional plan. Louie has his expert advisor (Ingram, the mystery bookstore cat — maybe I’ll have to change his name, given recent publishing developments). There’s also the Divine Yvette, the beautiful shaded silver Persian Louie languishes for, and her equally beautiful shaded golden sister, Solange; Karma, the landlady’s reclusive psychic cat; Maurice, the catfood spokescat who’s out for Louie’s hide when Louie competes for his job; and Nose E., the tiny Maltese dope-and-bomb-sniffing dog I introduce to the series in Cat in an Indigo Mood.
I’m so glad you mentioned “master plan.” So many book reviewers see just skin deep into genre fiction and thus review only the plot, which in the case of books like mine that are character-driven is rather like describing an article of clothing by giving a detailed anatomy of the hanger it’s suspended from. What this series is really about, for instance, is sexual responsibility in the Nineties, a concern that I found missing from otherwise realistic mystery and mainstream thriller novels.
What were some of the surprises?
I hadn’t really planned on continuing villains linked to one or more of the human characters. That evolved in the first six or seven books, so when that male antagonist was ready to disappear from the scene, I found a female one taking his place. She is a psychopath! Luckily, I’ve known a couple in real life.
In the earliest books in the series, murder is discovered quickly, sometimes on the first page. In later books, the story develops first, and murder occurs as part of that larger canvas. Why the change? Do you feel it’s an inevitable development in a mystery series? If so, why?
In Catnap, I was moving Louie from his romance quartet to mystery. I wanted to make the demarcation line clear. Hence the body in the first chapter.
A lot of people (and critics) find romances formulaic — and they were in the old days. Mystery is by nature far more formulaic than romance, because romance is based on character, and mystery is based on plot. Or it has been traditionally
Think about it: every book, a dead body. Every dead body, a reasonably large circle of suspects to meet, besides the victim, and all their whys and wherefores. No wonder the classic mystery revealed information about the sleuth and his/her circle very stingily. Now that I’m putting all the factors into position: multiple point of view, continuing villains and character issues that reflect modern social problems, I don’t feel obligated to prove the books involve crime solving by putting the problem in the foreground every time.
A literature professor who interviewed me recently about the Irene Adler series using feminism in historical mysteries became intrigued by the Midnight Louie series as well. She describes them as “retro post-modern” and says that unsolved murders that run over into subsequent books is “very cutting edge” and what “the literary writers who try mystery are doing.” I just know, as a veteran multi-genre writer, that if you want to continue a series for a long time, as I knew I wanted to do with Midnight Louie because he is such a marvelous vehicle for social satire, you require characters and situations that are complicated enough to bear delving into more deeply.
Aside from Louie, which character arouses the most intense feelings from readers? Why?
That’s a big “aside.” Readers adore Louie, politically incorrect rascal that he is. Matt and Max, the two male human leads, draw the most reader comment, because readers are divided on which one they want Temple to end up with. Matt is an innocent with a troubled background who is getting acclimated to the real world, while Max, the magician, seems the ultimate in-control person.
An astute reader noted that Temple is the “medium who presents the message,” and the nexus around which the other human characters and Louie revolve. That’s very true, and may be why my subconscious surrounded Temple with characters whose names begin with “M:” Max, Matt, Lt. Molina, Midnight Louie. Normally, I’m careful not to overuse a letter in names, but I’ve also seen my subconscious throw out names that become far more symbolic than I intended.
Among your principal characters, do you have a favorite? Again, why?
Well, I do love ethically challenged characters, and Matt’s religious background makes him an ideal sounding board. He has so much to learn, and he’s so eager to do it right. He’s the kind of character writers can use and abuse, presenting him with endless challenges that mirror a whole society’s worth of issues.
The cats Louie encounters on his adventures have very distinct “purrsonalities” and frequently raise social issues that counterpoint the personal crises of your human characters. They also puncture more than a few of the humans’ balloons. How do readers respond to this satire of current mores?
Readers love the Louie segments and read them aloud to their cats, and occasionally, their significant others. Readers seem to enjoy the cats’ high-handed dismissal of human foibles. Most cat-lovers prize the species’ independence (no pant-pant, beg-beg from a cat!) and therefore get a kick out of any portrayal of feline disdain for many things human, such as behavior.
What do you think makes mysteries such a good forum for satire?
Setting is important in mystery, if only as an interesting scene of the crime. Also, needing a circle of suspects, writers end up exploring a particular milieu or special interest group. And an environment and events that can lead to murder can also be murderously funny. Then, too, there’s black humor, that refuge of medical examiners and others faced with gory and gruesome death in all its guises. Even noir, taken too far, becomes a satire of itself.
Like John MacDonald’s Travis McGee, the black cat Louie operates in a world of color. Seven of his nine mysteries feature colors in the title, including the most recent: Cat in a Golden Garland and Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt? Which comes first the color or the McGuffin? How hard is the color tie in to sustain?
When the third book of the series was renamed, it was very hard coming up with a “Cat” title sequence that didn’t imitate the two cat series already out at the time. I must have tried 40 different titles, but used Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as a model to avoid starting out “The Cat” or “A Cat,” which were already taken.
I was at my wit’s end when I sent the sheet of proposed titles to Tor/Forge then editor-in-chief Bob Gleason. I had no favorite pattern. I was writing things like “Cat Up a Tree,” “Cat Down a Well,” “Cat on a Blue Tuesday.” Bob’s editor’s eye landed on “Cat on a Blue Tuesday.”
“We’ll use ‘Cat’ and color,” he said, “but make it Cat on a Blue Monday.” That’s when I realized that “Blue” used the second letter of the alphabet and was the third book, and I decided to continue the internal alphabet from there to guide readers to the order. If they didn’t notice the sequence at first, all the better; mystery readers like to figure out puzzles.
Now, however, I’ve hedged myself into a title pattern that must be in alphabetical order, must use a color name in proper sequence, must not be too long a color name because the cover layout limits title space, must be a color against which Midnight Louie’s black silhouette will stand out, must be a color that will look well between the previous and subsequent title colors, must be easy to say, and must lend itself to tying into something in the book. What a corner I have “colored” myself into!
“Blue Monday” has no relation to the book’s events because it was renamed after I wrote it, but the following colors all do tie into the plot line. So I weigh all these factors and come up with the result.
This can force creativity in both packaging and content. Cat in an Indigo Mood was the right title, but Midnight Louie would vanish against an indigo background. The answer was to make the background white, and Louie indigo! This also distinguishes the book from others in the series.
Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit came about when Chris Dao, my publicist, suggested “Jeweled” for “J.” I was worried it wasn’t a real “color,” but then decided now was a good time to do the Elvis …imitator book I had planned. The art department is trying to come up with a “jeweled” background paper that will suit the subject.
In college theater classes we used to argue whether having all the money and resources in the world, or a very limited budget, would result in the best sets and production. My conclusion was that limitations stimulate more creativity. The old necessity-mother-of-invention adage. So while I sometimes tear my hair out over the titles, I enjoy the challenge. And, yes, I never would have gone for the alphabet if I hadn’t had ideas for “U,” “X” and “Z,” for titles at least.
What’s next for Midnight Louie and the humans he shares Las Vegas with?
I’ve mentioned Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit. I think I’ll look at science fiction conventions next. Maybe. Once I get past “K,” I’ll have “L” and “M,” which have lots of color choices, so who knows?
How long have you been active in efforts to find homes for stray animals? How has writing about Louie affected your efforts in this area?
I’ve been trying to find homes for stray cats since I was four. My mother didn’t allow cats in the house, so I worked a deal that I could bring in strays for one night of food and shelter. I always hoped she would fall for a cat and let me keep it, but she was adamant until my senior year in high school, when she allowed me to keep one in the basement. That was a very bad idea. The isolation made the cat wild, and we had to find another home for it.
I really couldn’t have cats until I left home, and now have seven (mostly) strays and an abandoned dog I found. Now with the Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat program, in which we combine bookstore signings with homeless cats brought in by local shelters, I have the joy of seeing both homeless cats and books find permanent placement.
Louie was still true to his unfettered and unfixed, non-fictional past when Forge associate publisher Linda Quinton came up with the Adopt-a-Cat program. Although all our cats are neutered, indoor cats, Louie, being the Sam Spade of cats, has to be able to work the streets. And, of course, he always claimed he was catnip to the ladies, although he had never actually done any irresponsible breeding in the books.
My dilemma was that a neutering would destroy his machismo; you don’t castrate Sam Spade! Yet, if Louie was a spokescat for homeless animals resulting from overpopulation, he had to set a better example. I finally found a way to solve the problem in Cat in a Flamingo Fedora. While readers understood that Louie’s exploits and condition were fictional, everybody appreciates that he is Simon Pure in the parenting department now. And he does warn cats everywhere not to try his wandering around ways at home, as he is a professional, and they are not.
Do you have any advice for folks who’d like to adopt or rescue strays?
There is “Midnight Louie’s Guide to Making Your New Cat Feel at Home,” which can be obtained by writing me at P. O. Box 331555, Fort Worth TX 76163 (the same address for Midnight Louie’s twice-a-year free newsletter). The brochure explains how to introduce a new animal to a new environment and resident animals. I encourage adopting adult cats. They are easier to take care of than kittens, and really blossom once they find a home again after having suffered the trauma of losing one.
All our cats (and dog) get along, because new cats are isolated in a room at first, then allowed out solo to learn the rest of the house and scents of resident animals. Then the newcomer is sequestered and the resident animals trace its scent through the house. Ultimately, when they meet nose to nose, neither is panicked because they recognize the smell, and the newcomer also knows the terrain well enough that it has some place to hide if it feels threatened.
Above all, avoid sudden, unprepared-for confrontations and hissy fits. It’s much harder to get animals to interact well if their first meeting is traumatic.
Black cats, by the way, especially black males, have a reputation among cat people as the most affectionate. Now that I adopted Midnight Louie, Jr., during my first Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour, I can testify to the accuracy of that. Yet black cats are the ones most likely to remain unadopted and the ones put down the most, probably because of lingering superstition. Isn’t it like humans to destroy that which most loves them? Also, tortoiseshell cats are the second-most put-to-sleep; although their coloring can be so interesting, it’s not as regular as other coloring. So if you adopt a black cat or a tortie, you are really saving a life! Also, getting two or more cats allows them to have company when you’re gone.
Anything you’d like to add or emphasize?
Only that I’m considering resuming the Irene Adler historical series that readers want more of, and am trying to finish the Taliswoman fantasy series, whose readers have been waiting (mostly) patiently for a few years.