Why I Let a Cat Narrate My Novel
- Christine Baker
- Feb 27
- 3 min read
There was never really a question about who would narrate Raising Artemis.
It was always going to be Lucy the cat.
I adopted Lucy and her brother Linus in 2002, not long after 9/11. I was living close enough to the World Trade Center that I was meant to be nearby that morning. I overslept. It is a small sentence that still carries the weight of a different life that might have been.
In the weeks that followed, I found a Siamese rescue and brought home two cats who had both known difficult beginnings. Lucy walked into my house as if she had signed the mortgage papers herself. Linus was different. He was cautious. Watchful. He did not trust easily.
The day I brought them home, I lay down and placed Linus on my chest. I made a silent promise: I will not move until you do. Nearly three hours later, he shifted. From that moment on, he loved me with a steadiness that felt earned.
Lucy, meanwhile, did not need convincing.
She was small but self-possessed. Beautiful, and fully aware of it. She ran the house with military precision. She was vocal when she needed something. She was strategic when she didn’t want to be caught doing something she absolutely knew she shouldn’t be doing.
In hindsight, I suspect she pulled the tube from the fish tank and nearly drained it dry. I suspect she broke at least two objects we blamed on her brother. I know she caught a mouse or two and left the evidence as if presenting trophies.
She had a sweetness, but it was edged with intelligence. She reminded me of my grandmother — that rare combination of old-soul wisdom and a twinkle in the eye. The kind of being who does not suffer fools. Who does not entertain nonsense. Who loves you deeply but will absolutely let you know when you are off course.
When Lucy died, she chose my birthday.
I have often believed she did it on purpose. She had that kind of dramatic precision. A sense of timing. A certainty about her place in my life.
There was never a question about who would narrate this book because Lucy always had a voice.
Writing her narration after she passed did not feel like invention. It felt like transcription.
Cats are different from dogs in one quiet but profound way: they do not leave the house with us. They are not part of our public selves. They inhabit the rooms where we remove the armor. They see the versions of us that no one else does.
Our homes are our private sanctuaries. The place where we are most unguarded. And cats demand that we be exactly who we are. They do not follow us into the world. They wait for us to return to ourselves.
Lucy witnessed everything — the ambition, the grief, the exhaustion, the moments when I did not know who I was anymore. She observed without interference. She assessed. She judged, occasionally. She forgave.
When I began writing Raising Artemis, the story required a perspective that could see beyond human panic and ego. It needed someone who understood grief but was not undone by it. Someone who could watch Artemis fall apart and still know she would find her way home.
Lucy had always known.
Her voice was clear in life — precise, opinionated, amused. Writing her voice after her death felt like continuing a conversation we had already been having for years.
Some narrators are chosen for structure or novelty.
Lucy was chosen because she had already been telling me the story all along.
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