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List Price: $14.95 Publisher: Conari Press Released: May, 2004 Our Price: $10.47   Media: Paperback    Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours

[PNN]What prompted you to write this book?

[DKR] My cats, of course. I have always been more at home with animals and nature than with humans and "civilization" even though I grew up in New York City. I switched from zoology to botany and ecology (back when nobody knew what the word meant) because I couldn't kill animals to study them. I was always comfortable with my animal companions, and I guess I had been listening to them and standing up for them all my life. I knew they had language and society, even though the rest of the scientific community is only now catching on. But when I brought home the twins, Isabel and Iggy (short for Ignatius), I was suddenly moved to give them a truly perfect life, one with enough freedom (a huge cat fenced yard with trees and a small barn and tall grass in which to hide) and enough protection to make their lives wonderful, and I began to realize what a spiritual task that I was undertaking. So the book began to grow, helped by watching and conversing with my cats. I wanted to tell others how to give their cats perfect lives and learn to be perfect themselves because their cats are their best guru or teacher or high priestess.

[PNN] Do you need to live with cats to get the full benefit from this book?

[DKR] No, but it helps. I think one has to have a connection with some non-human friend to get the full benefit, but maybe somebody who doesn't yet would be greatly benefited by this book, because it might open them to a new and more wonderful world, one that includes species other than humans. But cats are special, aren't they, so cats are the best teachers.

Dana Kramer-Rolls (photo courtesy of Weiser Books)

[PNN] What do you think is the single most important lesson you have learned from your cats?

[DKR] The old Buddhist ideal of living in the here and now, although cats have good memories, too. And to stretch, and to be pleased with my body even if it is getting wrinkled and old and a bit paunchy. What cat ever stood in front of a mirror and said, "I don't think I can go out today!" They know they always look good because they love themselves, and we should love ourselves, too. Oh, and to stop feeling guilty about checking out for a nice relaxing nap.

[PNN] It is clear that cats spend a lot of their time studying us. Do you think they are learning any wisdom from us, or merely trying to psyche us out?

[DKR] Oh, they learn from us. We communicate and that is a two way street. But they don't "ape" us, not being primates, you know! But I think they are mostly psyching us out, because the notion of wisdom separate from living and breathing survival and comfort is alien to them, and frankly I think we would be a whole lot better not thinking about Higher Things and paying attention to dancing the flow of life, including psyching out our moment by moment environment. By that I mean if we are in touch with our own hearts and those of the things and beings around us, we will be wise without the fuss and bother. Like cats.

[PNN] Quite frequently, cats will insist on having a door opened. Once it is open, they merely hang around the doorway rather than going through it. Are there some hidden insights we can gain from this, or are they just making the point that one of our job functions is 'doorman?'

[DKR] Oh, lots of hidden insights, such as, "I know you control the gateway, but I want you to know I have some rights and privileges, too." When I am home and watching out for my babies, I leave the back door to the yard open, and they never go out front, so they never worry about doors, and they never have to hang out in the doorway, although, come to think of it, sometimes somebody will block the door if they think I am going to call them in and they still want to play and sun themselves. I often go out to count cats, and they often come in to count me. They are free to come and go as they wish, but they come in and "fetch" me, being total pests until I leave off writing or whatever I am doing and come outside to sit or play in the yard. I'm sure they worry about me and my strange habits.

[PNN] Cats have always been associated with spirituality and the paranormal. Apart from their behavior patterns, which can certainly serve as a model for a better approach to life for us humans, do you think cats have greater spiritual awareness than us?

[DKR] Oh, yes, just because they are one with the oneness or whatever is out there. We talk things to death, and it doesn't matter if we are Buddhists, mystical Christians, or Witches. I am a Witch, by both birth and training. I started out touched by the Goddess and her world. I ended up running around somebody's living room, followed up by thousands of emails about how this word or that action was wrong. So I tried reconstructionist paganism, but I am not a sixth century Celt or ninth century Viking. I am a trained scholar, so I could do a pretty good job, but I can't be something I am not. I think I can whomp up more energy stirring a pot of oatmeal porridge for breakfast than any coven or ceremonial lodge I know can by running in circles and screaming and shouting. Because it is real. I don't need to stick a psychic thermometer in my mouth. The magic is there, and it is there when I pick beans from my garden or gather windfall plums from my orchard or eat blackberries from along my fence. And when I do have an experience that is paranormal or extraordinary, I know it is real because I'm not trying to have one. And the cats do this all the time. They listen. So they hear the winds of the otherworld, not because their initiation is better than my initiation, but because they listen and look and feel. So, do they have a greater spiritual awareness? Yes, most of the time. But we could, too, if we just stopped trying to have it. I guess my ideal for being a witch is to be like Granny Weatherwax or Nanny Ogg from the Terry Pratchett books, or Mrs. Weasley from the Harry Potter books, although J.K. Rowling doesn't understand cats, which I don't understand at all.

[PNN] Do you have any other projects on the horizon?

[DKR] Tons. For one, I am working on a book about making our personal environment spiritual and magical, a cozy house or witch's cottage. And I want to do a popular book about the medieval Mary legends that I did for my dissertation. Many of them are very magical folk tales, and she was the Great Goddess for most of the western world for a long time. And I want to work on my book on deep ecology, searching for ways to share and protect the planet. We can have Mars Rovers and save the tigers and grow organic gardens. We don't have to give up anything. We just have to balance our lives, so we don't squander the world and destroy it and all the other living beings which share it with us. And I am still doing academic papers. That is for starts.

[PNN] What would you say has been your greatest achievement to date?

[DKR] Just one? Let's see. I was the third woman to be knighted and the first to win a throne in the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and a role model for a lot of women and a lot of men who were older or less athletic then they thought they were. It was a wonderful time. And I finally finished my Ph.D., having started when I was 20 in botany and didn't finish one in folklore and anthropology/history of religion until I was 60. My first academic publication was pretty heady. The Star Trek book was a milestone, but The Way of the Cat is one also. Maybe I haven't had my greatest achievement yet. Who knows?

[PNN] If you could go back in your life and change one thing, what would it be?

[DKR] I should have finished my Ph.D. in my early twenties. I would be a comfortable professor emeritus in botany. But then I wouldn't have been an SCA knight or written this book or have found my beautiful Twins, Isabel and Iggy, or had my human babies or known my current partner and husband Bill, so who knows. Maybe it all turned out the way it should. Although I really want to go back and do a second doctorate in biological science, maybe in my old field of Ecology and Evolution, but incorporating my Ph.D. studies in folklore and human belief systems. That might yield some insights as to how we can live in harmony with nature, sharing the space and not destroying it.

[PNN] How would you want to be remembered?

[DKR] Gosh, so many people have told me how I changed their lives. Especially in the SCA. And I am always astonished. A friend to and advocate for non-human animals? A wise and kind person? Somebody who is so sensible that they can cut through the bull and see truth when there is any? I don't know. You'd have to ask the people around me how they would remember me.

[PNN] Do you have a favorite group/musician?

[DKR] I like early music, or anything up to about the nineteenth century at most. And folk and ethnic music. The Chieftains and Kitka, or whatever the musicians from Ensemble Alcatraz have morphed into, that sort of thing.

[PNN] Do you have a favorite bumper sticker?

[DKR] Not really. Maybe something like "Protect your Mother [Earth]," or "My Other Car is a Broomstick." May I get on my soapbox, please? I have a cause, and that is to make declawing of cats illegal in the U.S. as it is in the UK and most of Europe. It is totally unnecessary, and it is mutilation. They cut off cat's fingers and make them cripples and helpless, and there is no excuse - and I have heard all the lame excuses about furniture and saving them from getting stuck and protection from scratches. Anybody that fragile or protective of their sofa or skin should get a goldfish. So maybe a bumper sticker that said, "Hurt a cat, go to jail," or "Declawing is mutilation. Would you cut your children's fingers off?" might be the ticket.

[PNN] If you drew a picture to represent your mind, body and spirit, what would you draw?

[DKR] I think I would draw some scene from nature, a mountain meadow, or deciduous forest on a lake, or a boggy wetland, or my backyard, but through the eyes of my cats. But it would have to be more than a picture. It would need the smells and sounds and touch of the place. Because all our senses are doors to magic and spirit. And cats know this, so a moment of time in nature prowling in my cat form is the way I would picture myself.