About the cat

by Kris Neri

When my Tracy Eaton mysteries, which featured the daughter of eccentric Hollywood stars, first debuted, readers kept asking me who my parents were. They assumed I had based those novels on my own life, and assumed my parents were also celebrities. Not so—I write fiction. 

I suppose all writers draw a bit on themselves in creating characters, but we add and subtract traits and backgrounds and circumstances, and the end result is always someone else. I’m also not an amateur sleuth, so I don’t hunt murderers. 

Yet while I don’t write about a thinly disguised version of myself and my circumstances in fiction, I do sometimes write real pets into my novels.

The dog who became known as Buddy in my Tracy Eaton mystery, Revenge for Old Times’ Sake, was based on my dog Jake. Though Jake had passed over the Rainbow Bridge long ago, I love that I got to immortalize him in that way.

Now, in my latest novel, Hopscotch Life, readers are asking me whether the cat that appears in the story, whom the protagonist Plum calls Scrappy, was based on my real cat. The cat in the storyline was based on a real cat, but she wasn’t actually mine.

When we lived in Arizona, a young couple with a child and three cats moved in next-door to us. All of their cats were outdoor cats,
free to roam. That concerned me since we lived in coyote alley. We’d hear the coyote packs’ peculiar yipping sounds when they celebrated their kills every night. Our own cat was only allowed on our back patio when we were there to watch him. He was too naive and sweet to make his way in the wild. 

Apparently, so were some of theirs. It didn’t surprise me that some of their cats quickly vanished. All that surprised me was that they still had one left. A little  charmer who loved people and hunting through all the open space around us in equal amounts. Her long-haired coat was rough and her tail only extended in about a four inch stump, the result no doubt of some encounter in the wild.

I guess my neighbors’ marriage wasn’t a good one either—we heard them screaming at each other quite frequently. Soon the wife left with their child, but without the cat, whose real name I never learned.

The husband and his rowdy friends stayed in the house, along with the cat, until the bank foreclosed them for non-payment of the mortgage. When the husband finally moved out, the lousy so-and-so left the cat behind.

Joe and I had long been feeding her, since even before the man moved out, we weren’t sure he was taking care of her. Our personal name for her was Scrappy, because she was such a scrappy survivor. Another neighbor, who also fed her, called her Stumpy because of her stumpy tail. Yet a third neighbor—again, a feeder—called her Priscilla. And there were other neighbors who fed her and gave her their own personal names. 

We thought about adopting her. Scrappy/Stumpy/Priscilla needed a home, and she really was such a little lover. But I wasn’t sure how to coordinate a house with a indoor cat who had to remain one, and another cat who had to be free to roam whenever she chose. 

After the husband left, Scrappy/Stumpy/Priscilla continued to use the cat door in what had been her house, where she lived for the two years it took for the bank to fully foreclose that house. She also continued to hunt for critters out in the open space, and she made the rounds to all the houses where people fed her. Many let her in their homes, and she’d take naps on their beds, until she went off somewhere again. 

When new people eventually bought the house, they closed off the cat door. With that Scrappy/Stumpy/Priscilla was officially homeless. One of the neighbors who'd fed her adopted her. While she seemed to love her new home, she continued to visit all her friends, and also went off to hunt in the open space. 

One day, sadly, she simply didn’t come home. All the people who’d loved that cat continued to hope she'd return, and when we could no longer hold onto that hope, we all grieved for her. 

Scrappy/Stumpy/Priscilla was truly one of the most loving, adventurous little creatures I’ve ever met, and I’m glad I’ve been able to immortalize her in Hopscotch Life. That I get to let her live out her wild and free life a little longer.

Has a wild cat ever touched your life? Writers, have you ever recreate someone real in your writing?