Jeff Chapman is stopping by the blog today to share the inspiration behind the first book in his latest fantasy series CAT SIDHE: Into the Witchlands I. I tend to be a bit picky about stories with animals POV characters, but I really loved this one (see my 5-star review on Goodreads). And learning of the real cat that inspired the character of Merliss made the story all the more meaningful. Welcome, Jeff!
A human spirit banished to the body of a cat.
Merliss has seen centuries of change, centuries of trouble.
Something nasty has come through one of the ley gates. It walks upright. It talks. And it looks like an oversized cat, but as Merliss can attest, it doesn’t smell like a cat.
t’s a cat sidhe on the hunt for slaves, anyone with opposable thumbs. Merliss travels to unknown territories to rescue a friend and encounters more trouble making her way home. The situation on the moors is far more dire than Merliss and her friends could have imagined.
Cat Sidhe is the first in a fantasy trilogy. Join Merliss on her prowls through dangerous lands.
Cat Sidhe is fantasy from a cat’s eye view. The protagonist may have been a girl once, but after centuries inside a cat’s mind and body, she’s almost as much cat as human. It’s a struggle for Merliss to hold on to her humanity.
The idea for Merliss, who first appeared in my short story “The Water Wight,” came from a real cat.
Smokey, three weeks after rescue.
In the fall of 2015, I pulled into my driveway to find a small gray cat sitting in front of the garage. I had seen this cat before but never had a good look at it. I had usually glimpsed it at night or twilight and a gray cat in the dark appears to be little more than a shadow. I had assumed it belonged to someone in the neighborhood. I was so wrong. It was starving. I could see every bone in its ribs. Pus was visible beneath one eye. The cat meowed at me. My wife came out the breezeway door at that moment. The cat trotted toward her and tried to enter our house.
We gave the cat some food and water. It ate like it had never seen food before. My daughters surrounded the cat so it wouldn’t run away, but I believe at this point the cat had decided it was going to live with us. We coaxed it into a carrier and took it to an emergency vet. The cat, which we named Smokey, was not sick with any life-threatening disease. She was dehydrated, malnourished (only 5.5 pounds), suffering from an upper respiratory infection and an eye infection, and had a million fleas.
Smokey shows off her two fangs.
Several hours and several hundred dollars later, we returned home with two antibiotics and a sick cat. We quarantined her in the breezeway. Out other cats spent a lot of time sniffing at the back door.
Smokey responded well to the medicines and our TLC. She gained weight and proved to be incredibly well-tempered. She wasn’t the cutest kitty on the block but certainly the sweetest. We soon discovered that she was deaf and missing an upper and lower canine. We had no idea of her age but Smokey appeared to have been up and down the alley a few times. When her quarantine period ended, Smokey moved into the house.
Smokey, looking cute.
We speculated a lot about Smokey’s past. What stories would she tell if she could talk? The speculation got me thinking about characters based on an old cat. Somehow, I made the leap of pairing a human spirit with a cat’s body. In the fantasy world I was developing, this pairing would grant the animal’s body unusually long life, but injuries would accumulate. Merliss was born.
Unfortunately, Smokey passed away in April. Her health had been declining for several months and then x-rays revealed painful bone tumors in her sternum. Taking her to the final vet appointment and staying with her until the end is one of the roughest tasks I’ve experienced. I still miss her every morning when she’s not waiting in the kitchen demanding breakfast.
Smokey’s memory lives on the character of Merliss. The cat silhouettes in the map and at the beginning of each chapter were made from pictures of Smokey.
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“The Water Wight” appears in Spirits in the Water: Elements of Untethered Realms Book 4. Store links to Cat Sidhe and Spirits in the Water can be found on my website at: http://www.jeffchapmanbooks.com/books/.
