Who Are the Cat Writers’ Association: Mary Turzillo

By Mollie Hunt

Who are the Cat Writers’ Association? is a series of interviews with CWA members, but not your usual who, what, and where discussion. I like to ask a different set of questions and am always amazed by the answers. I hope you are too.

Our guest today on Who are the Cat Writers’ Association? is Mary Turzillo. Mary won a Nebula award in 1999 for “Mars Is No Place for Children,” an Elgin in 2012 for Lovers & Killers, and another Elgin in 2014 for and Sweet Poison with Marge Simon. These are not predominantly cat-oriented, but she always puts at least one cat in every story. Her novel Mars Girls (Apex) features two Martian girls rescuing themselves from Face-on-Mars crazies. Again, the cat is not a major character, but he’s in there. No spoilers. Her purrfectly delicious story collection Cosmic Cats & Fantastic Furballs (WordFire) appeared in 2022. She is working on a novel, A Mars Cat & his Boy. Mary also publishes cat poetry here and there that she hopes you won’t find too racy. Mary and her husband, author Geoffrey Landis, live in Ohio with two orange goofballs that own everybody’s laps.

Part 1:

About My Craft:

I’m a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer. I write poetry, stories, and novels.  My latest cat-book, Cosmic Cats and Fantastic Furballs, is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories about cats. They include tales of a werecat dating a human woman, chocolate-flavored cats from Mars, a cat’s mind transplanted into a robot, and my Nebula nominee, “Pride,” about a Smilodon grown from prehistoric genetic material.

I’m working on A Mars Cat and his Boy, about (obviously) a Martian boy and his genetically-altered cat, who has genes from naked mole-rats. Also, I am working on a series, starting with Callisto, about Katie Tanner, a high school sabre-fencer who accidentally time-travels to a moon of Jupiter after the sun has swollen and swallowed the inner planets, including Earth. Her time-travel guide is her sarcastic black cat. I’m seeking a traditional house for these, probably as YA, but I might try a hybrid publisher.

What I Enjoy About Belonging to CWA:

a) Lots of new friends with whom I have a surprising amount in common.  b) Finding new books to read. I particularly love your science fiction books, Mollie!  c) Many professional opportunities and resources. Participating in the 2024 Cat Expo was the thrill of a lifetime, with special thanks to Kathy Finley and Lynn Maria Thompson.

Part 2:

Mollie: What is your favorite cat movie and why? 

Mary: I have two: Keanu  (commercial but fun) and Kedi, Turkish, 2016.  Beautiful documentary, spiritual and soul-nourishing, about street cats in Istanbul.  I especially loved the story of a man who found a sick cat and traveled by bus over half the city to take it to a vet. A realistic and happy film about cats and humans.

Mollie: What is your earliest memory of being around cats?

TRIGGER WARNING: The following answer includes the story of a kitten being euthanized for unnatural causes.

Mary: A real estate agent named Ralph Raphinelli gave me (actually, my sister Janey remembers it as a gift to her) a darling black kitten, probably about six weeks old. I called him “Little Lightning.” However, unbeknownst to me, my sister Janey named him Midnight.

Janey and I knew absolutely nothing about how to care for cats. I don’t even remember a litter box, although since he lived mostly in my granny’s apartment, upstairs from my family, she might have given him one. We had no idea what to feed him, and I’m not even sure he was male. 

One day, thinking he was like a dog and would eat anything, we gave him some corn kernels. I’m not even sure he had anything else to eat. That evening, he got the zoomies. My mother decided that was because he was having fits from eating corn.

I don’t remember how long we kept him, just that I was totally in love with him.

As I said, we knew nothing about cats. Nothing, except for the story of a Persian cat named Creme-puff that got run over by a car when my mother was a girl. I’m not even sure I had ever seen a movie with a cat in it. I did have a really sweet book, April’s Kittens, about a little girl having to give up for adoption either a kitten or its mother cat.

Anyway, my mother took Little Lightning to a vet and told us he was “put to sleep.” In other words, killed, like the old, sick dogs we had in the past.

I was heart-broken.

I never forgave my mother for killing my kitten. 

She hated cats, even though her middle name was Leonia.

This incident probably destroyed my relationship with my mother forever.  Beyond the grave. 

Janey remembers it somewhat differently, but the kitten was gone. 

I have no idea why my mother didn’t lie and say the kitten had been given to somebody else. I also don’t know why a vet would euthanize a healthy kitten for having the zoomies.

I still feel grief-stricken when I remember that episode, that dear little ball of satiny energy. Even as I write this.

He was so sweet.  Darling.

I still think black cats are the best.

Mollie: What do your cats think of you?

Mary: Scaramouche thinks instead of eating breakfast every morning I should let him herd me to the front closet, where the cat toys live.

Samurai thinks I’m very nice and delightful to sleep on top of, but kind of stupid because I don’t understand he needs fresh kibble, not the stale kibble that’s been in the bowl for over an hour.

Mollie: If you were a cat, what would you be like?

Mary: I would be Siamese. I would be very finicky about my food and eat mostly fish. I would adore tuna. Also, I would delicately lick yogurt from a spoon held by my human. 

When someone came into my house, I would immediately sense if they did not like cats or if they were loud and stupid. Then I would savagely attack them until my human rescued them. Then I would hide somewhere until my human thought the intruder had kicked me out of the house. I would stay hidden until late the next day. In this way, I would cause my human to realize the intruder was evil and cursed by Bast, and she would never let the intruder in again.

I would sleep most of the day on my human’s bed. At night, if my human had a husband, I would ingratiate myself with him by lying on his head while he was asleep. I would help her make the bed, too, by lying on the part she was trying to straighten. I would be a shoulder-cat and ride around on her when she was wandering the house. I would type novels on her computer when she wasn’t looking. These would be in a special cat-language known only to Siamese and perhaps a few Sphynxes.

Mollie: Tell us a true cat story.

Mary: When Scaramouche and Samurai were tiny and new to our house, we kept them in a room we used as an armory for our fencing addiction. Scaramouche and Samurai were littermates. After a few days, we decided to let them out to explore the rest of the house. Scaramouche (I think—we had trouble telling them apart) promptly found the stairs into the basement and vanished.

Samurai was inconsolable. He had never been separated from his brother, from conception itself.

We eventually found Scaramouche between the cushions of a sofa and restored him to the room with Samurai, where his brother purred with almost hysterical joy at being reunited with him.

They now know places to hide where we can never find them.

Mollie: Tell us a fictional cat story.

Mary: Azrael was my son’s cat, and I adopted him and his son Tyrael after my son’s death. Azrael was a gorgeous black cat, with silky long fur, a glamorous floofy tail, and chatoyant eyes.

He was small for a male cat, very shy, and so beautiful that, by accident, we sometimes used the wrong pronoun for him. We referred to him as “she,” despite his having fathered Tyrael. (That part is true.)

In a former life, Azrael was a celebrated drag queen. (The nine lives of cats are not always lived as felines.) He was exquisitely beautiful when in drag, and although straight, he liked to enter beauty contests where he often took first prize over all the biological women. 

A billionaire fell in love with him. Azrael had fun dressing in drag, but he was straight and had a charming wife, who loved cats. So this was not going anywhere.

The billionaire’s girlfriend entered a beauty contest and came in second to Azrael (he used an assumed name, of course). When her husband confessed that he was in love with drag-Azrael, the girlfriend became enraged and stormed into the music store where Azrael worked. She stabbed him repeatedly in his chatoyant eyes with a tuning fork, and he perished. 

In his next life, with my husband and me, he retained his great beauty. But at the age of 23, one of his beautiful eyes developed cancer, and he died while his silky black fur was being groomed. The groomer said he was purring when he died. (This part is also true.)

He must have realized that death was not the end. 

I often wonder where he was reborn, and if he retained his alluring chatoyant eyes.

Mollie: Do you sing to cats?

Mary: I don’t sing to them, but I do read poetry from a book of cat poems to Scaramouche. He really likes poetry. The Christopher Smart poem “Jubilate Agno” about Smart’s cat Jeoffrey especially pleases him. 

Maybe he especially likes the poem because his other favorite human is my husband Geoffrey.

Mollie: What famous cat or cat person have you met?

Mary: Gwen Cooper, author of Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat.  I was lucky enough to get into  a writing workshop she conducted, sponsored by the CWA. It was great!

Mollie: Where are you sitting right now? From where you are, how many cat-themed objects can you see? How many cats?

Mary: OMC, twenty-eight objects, not counting greeting cards and books. Two live cats.

Mollie: In your cat’s words, tell us how you would save the world.

Mary: I would sit on bad people’s laps until they fell asleep, and then they would become good people.

Mollie: Have you ever seen a ghost cat? 

Mary: Only in dreams. But I know he was real.

Mollie: What’s the craziest thing your cat’s ever done? 

Mary: Scaramouche, when he was about three months old, liked to walk as if on a tightrope on the banister ten feet over the entryway to our house. This scared Geoff and me. One day I was in the kitchen and heard a THUMP. I ran to the entryway, terrified that he was hurt, but no cat was there. I found claw marks in the rug. Later I found him hiding in the downstairs bedroom, unhurt, but clearly shaken. 

He kept doing this trick, though. I tried hard not to watch him when he did it, since I was afraid to remove him from the banister and startle him into falling. And I think he enjoyed an audience. I also layered four oriental rugs on the floor underneath to cushion any further fall. He kept it up for a while in adulthood but now just weaves in and out through the banisters, his body slinking over empty space.

Scaramouche also asks me to brush his teeth every evening before I go to bed. He HATES it, but he still comes into the bathroom and won’t leave until I do it.

Please give us the names and short descriptions of your cats.

Over the years my husband and I have companioned twelve cats. He and his family had several more cats, and of course I am not counting Little Lightning, who my mother murdered.

I’ve mentioned our current cats, Samurai and Scaramouche, and also our departed cats, Azrael and Tyrael. 

Lurker-on-the-Threshold was one of our most memorable. My son went on a trip with his dad and gave her to his aunt to take care of. The aunt had 22 other cats, and when I finally found Lurker, this poor little kitten was living in a closet with no light. I plopped her in a carrier and started home with her. She must have had motion sickness; she screamed so loud and unrelentingly that I became disoriented and drove over the state border into West Virginia. She also had to be sedated and ride in baggage when we flew to a temporary home in Pasadena so Geoff could work on a NASA Mars mission. We were afraid if she was allowed in the passenger compartment of the plane, some passenger would be driven crazy and try to kill her. 

Lepton (named after a subatomic particle) was a calico who brought live game for Geoff to admire. Late in life, she cornered her sister Quark and wouldn’t let her out of the coat closet to eat or use the litter box until Geoff took pity and rehomed Quark with his mother.

Abobo was very affectionate. He would press his chubby, warm orange body against my thigh while I was doing yoga. He knew how to turn doorknobs.

Maha was the first cat I had as an adult. She looked Siamese and had a voice to match. She once cornered a rat that was bigger than she was.  The rat fled our house, never to be seen again.

You can find Mary Turzillo on her website.

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