http://writersguildinitiative.org/interview-with-wgi-mentor-winter-miller-on-her-book-not-a-cat/
By Chiara Montalto-Giannini
Tell us about your children’s book, Not a Cat.
First of all, I think it’s important to tell you this children’s picture book is a memoir; it’s told to me by Gato. The adventures in the book were things that Gato truly did. I have photographic evidence of them. Except for the one where he drives a taxi cab in San Francisco, that was artistic license, he merely was in the taxi, acting like a backseat driver. But, if you look on the inside covers of the book, you can see he’s holding selfies, one where he’s canoeing with me in the Adirondacks, another where he’s visiting Lincoln in D.C. And I would take Gato out on a leash, sometimes he’d be wearing a sweater, or dressed as a dinosaur, or a lobster–he had a lot of lewks–and people would say, oh no way, is that a cat on a leash? Obviously it was. Once he sat so still at an art exhibit that people thought he was a fake cat, until I called his name and then of course, he moved his head and someone screamed. Always a prankster. Gato, not me. Point is, he would go camping or hiking with me, he sometimes taught playwriting classes with me (he was always more popular, his insights were better, his narrative instincts stronger). When I worked on plays whether in San Francisco or NYC, he’d come to rehearsals and to the theater with me. He was a very likable, very chill, very friendly cat. I used to call him the Mayor, for obvious reasons. Not because of the NYC Mayors we’ve had, they are disappointments mainly, but the mayor of Brooklyn. But because people would always comment that he acts just like a dog, or just like a person, that I thought, who are we to box this little creature in, let’s not label him as anything, because he’s just being himself, or, as the book points out, he’s that kind of a cat.
2. What was the inspiration for the book?
As a queer person, and as someone who has spent time with a lot of people who are interested in being beyond binaries, I feel like, we have an opportunity to let people tell us how they want to identify, and that doesn’t have to be a fixed identity, it can change, no one has to be boxed into an identity that doesn’t fit them. And we’re constantly changing, so why shouldn’t there be some fluidity? I mean, there is, if we allow it. When I worked with NYC public school kids in an after school theater program, I was teaching them how to watch plays critically, how to write reviews, and how to write their own monologues and I said to the kids, you can tell the rest of us, what pronoun you want, and it doesn’t have to be fixed. There was a kid who would come in and say, today, I feel like a he. Or today, I’ll use she. I wish I could remember their name because that teenager was an inspiration to me on how to let go of frozen identities. So the book came out of that idea of wanting to live in a world where kids–where any of us are allowed to say, today I feel like I am this…, and for the rest of us not to be so hung up on defining anyone.
3. What was the writing process like for this book?
I had been wanting to write a book about Gato for some time, and it had rattled in my brain but I had never written a kid’s book so I just kept thinking of it as a fantasy. Then this cool thing happened: a woman named Tara Parker-Pope who is a reporter at the New York Times where I used to work some years back, invited me out for a drink because she thought it would be fun and we knew so many folks in common. It was fun, we had a great time, and I was telling her about Gato and how I wanted to write this book and she was very encouraging. I’d had a couple cocktails and no dinner and on my way home I stopped to buy some cheetos. This is only relevant because it lets you know what state of mind I was in when I got home. I opened up a notebook and started writing and illustrating the book–very freehand, very free, actually. And I texted her each page as it came into being. It was probably a rate of one every 3-5 minutes, about 30 pages, and I don’t know, I’m bad at math, however long that took and there was the first draft of the book. She thought it was great! I shared it with some other folks I trusted and people were instantly supportive. I’m not an illustrator so I typed the books pages out. Then, I made collage drawings of what I envisioned would be on the page. I figured that once a publisher was involved, someone qualified would do the illustrations. My publisher had a couple of small word order changes and it basically went as it was, which I’ve heard is sort of unusual, but it was a very easy process. We talked about illustrators and I again lucked out, because one of my dearest friends is an incredible illustrator, Danica Novgorodoff, and she was also a friend of Gato’s so she was on board to do it. I think that when a process is right, then things align and it works really smoothly and everyone involved just makes the book better. Danica and I riffed on a lot of the humor of the illustrations in the book and sometimes she would surprise me by adding something unanticipated like there’s a page where Gato’s reading James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Meowntain and she drew the book collapsed across his chest, he’s sprawled out with a little bit of drool coming out of his mouth and a flashlight by his side. Danica’s incredible illustrations are what make this book so precious to me. She would ask me for photos of Gato doing various things, and I would text her, so he was very active in the illustrations as well. The bittersweet side of all of this is that Gato had a severe heart issue for the last three years of his life–he’d been given a prognosis of less than six months,but somehow, with medication and tenderness, he hung around a lot longer and lived as full a life as he was prior to diagnosis. Last October, he was ready to go, and, hardest and best decision, I let him go while he was still a happy cat. I’m tearing up as I type this because he truly was my best friend. We were together 13 years, and because he was on medication twice a day, I had to always be with him, so we were almost never apart that entire time. He was a great companion. This book is absolutely my love letter to the best cat a person could wish to know.
3. Where can people purchase the book?
You can purchase this book absolutely anywhere books are sold. You can order the book at Indiebound which leads you to local indie bookstores, or Barnes + Noble, or Amazon or Goodreads. If you love it, write a review so other people know to look for it. It should come as no surprise that for a small press, word of mouth means everything.
4. What are you working on next?
This post will come out about maybe six weeks from now, but what I’m working on right now is ushering a new play into the world, When Monica Met Hillary at Miami New Drama, directed by Margot Bordelon. Leaving New England in February to premiere a new play in Miami is incredibly fortunate, given that I prefer any season to the one with which I share a name. After WMMH, working on various creative projects, a radio opera of my play No One Is Forgotten, and I’m forcing myself to finish a new pilot–I figure if I say that here, I’m more apt to do it because I’ll have spoken it aloud. And I’m teaching; I’m generally leading a workshop somewhere at any given time, which I consider myself very lucky to get to offer. Thanks for letting me talk about Gato, I feel like getting to talk about him keeps him alive, and I love the idea that while he probably met a few thousand people in his travels, now more people will meet him through his memoir.
