Set in the near future, in an America that has resorted to flight travel assisted by the use of Emotional Support Humans, Tomás Q. Morín‘s Cat Love is a sometimes whimsical, sometimes tragic, always imaginatively conceived treatise on the nature of human relationships. Narrated by an unnamed cat, we traverse her abrupt abduction from the cozy confines of feline comfort to the jarring realities of orchestrated car accidents, buck hunting in dry lake beds, and the multiple hazards of manufactured food. Along the way, our cat heroine opines on art, music, and the afterlife in witty, often sardonic detail. With the artistry of a poet tripping the words fantastic in the realm of fiction, Morín navigates us through an emotionally hazardous tale juxtaposed with forgotten (forlorn?) tenderness to its ultimate, heartfelt conclusion. I asked him about his motivation in constructing this world.
The following is our exchange, conducted by email and edited and condensed for clarity.
Doug Jones: This novel is a feat of the imagination. The cat narrator is clever, uproarious at times, is knowledgeable about music, pop culture, art, film, is very observant, and extremely opinionated. Tell us about your motivation to write this novel. Is it important for readers to be familiar with Schrodinger’s cat experiment?
Tomás Q. Morín: I’d never written fiction before so my motivation at the start was to just have as much fun as possible. Once the story gained momentum, I then also felt an obligation to get the story of this cat right, to really do justice to her life. I tried my best to not make it so that a reader needed to know about Schrödinger’s thought experiment. I didn’t want that to be a barrier to this story that is about so much more.
DJ: This world in which the cat exists is a bit absurd, to say the least – airline passengers requesting Emotional Support Humans in order to fly, people host Pity Parties – but our narrator doesn’t elucidate as to the development of these circumstances. What happened to our current experience of the United States?
TQM: I think our current “reality” in the U.S., if we can call it that, is no less absurd! It’s tempting to say that the U.S. in the novel is the country we know but dialed up to a 10. The “real” U.S. and the one in the book are both 10s, only maybe one is in Times New Roman and the other is set in Comic Sans. Wait a few years and the distance between them may narrow.
DJ: Through the cat’s perspective the reader comes to understand that the environmental condition of the world has deteriorated, at least in America – large bodies of water have evaporated, food is mass produced with too many chemicals, implementing car wrecks is a practice to deter traffic accidents. In between the narration, there are these quizzes that alternate between hilarious, sometimes thoughtful, insight into this world or guide the reader toward certain assumptions about this American society. There is a distinct dystopian cast to this world, which yields to moral commentary at times, like the moments between the buck and Blondie or the cat’s retribution on the Silver Fox. Expound more on this world you’ve constructed in this novel and its relationship to the world we live in today.
TQM: As I mentioned in the last response, the world in the novel is a version of our world. If it’s a mirror, then it’s a funhouse mirror to be sure. But I think go back in our history and flip this or that policy decision or a certain cultural moment and the world we live in could easily be the one in the book. A reader could easily find this hilarious, terrifying or both!
DJ: Clearly, our kitty narrator is a wonderful wordsmith, the fluid machinations of a poetic mind. How important is poetry to the novelist’s work and vice versa?
TQM: Oh, what a great question. Hmmm well I think all writers should fool around in all the genres. This commonplace in the literary traditions of other countries. Because we are who we are, so much of the teaching of creative writing in this country has been about siloing the genres. I love a poem that can tell a good story just as much as a novel that can soar lyrically. At the end of the day we’re not producing widgets. Making good art is so incredibly hard that we should use all the tools we can, regardless of which genre they come from.
DJ: The narrative voice is first person, present, moves along at a fairly rapid clip, oftentimes avoiding details of the landscape, facial expressions, and the tonal mood exchanges between people. Tell us about your decision to make a cat the narrator of this novel. What were the advantages? Any limitations? How did your narrative decisions aid in building the environment that propels the reader through the story?
TQM: I always knew the narrator would be a cat, and that she would be a sassy tortoiseshell, as my own dear cat was. I didn’t want her voice to come across as simply a mask behind which there was a clever human saying clever things. Even though I spent many years working for a no-kill shelter that focused on cats, managing feral colonies, trapping and releasing them after they were fixed, observing them, at the end of the day, I can never truly know how a cat experiences the world. I think it’s fair to say that cats probably notice much more than we do, but what they choose to focus on will be radically different. It felt like this was the place where I could lean in and make the narrator “catlike.” For me point of view wasn’t just theoretical, it was also physical. For the writing of some scenes, I would get on the floor to approximate her height and ask myself, what can she actually see from this vantage point and then proceed from there.
DJ: The cat has significant rage against the man in the trench coat and the Silver Fox, but none against Teddy, whose original crime against the cat initiated the sequence of events which sets the novel on its trajectory. Why?
TQM: Because she’s a mom and she knows through experience that making mistakes is how kids learn and grow.
DJ: In closing, I found our kitty’s memories of her time living with the Moustache positively enchanting – reminded me of the tenderness I shared with my pooch. Is there a cat, at present, occupying a fond place in your heart?
TQM: My tortie Lindsey, to whom I dedicated the book, passed a number of years ago at the age of twenty. Channeling her personality into this narrator was such a joy. In a way, giving her this new life on the page has made it possible for me to think of bringing another cat into my life.
About the author: Tomás Q. Morín is the author of the memoirs Let Me Count the Ways, winner of the 2023 Vulgar Genius Nonfiction Award, and Where Are You From: Letters to My Son, as well as the poetry collections Machete, Patient Zero, and A Larger Country. He is coeditor, with Mari L’Esperance, of the anthology Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine, and a translator of The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda. He is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
About the interviewer: Doug Jones is an alumnus of Morehouse College and received his MFA from Columbia University. His debut novel, The Fantasies of Future Things (Simon & Schuster, April ’25) was longlisted for the First Novel Prize (The Center for Fiction). His work has been included in the anthologies Black Love Letters (Zando Projects / Get Lifted Books), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press) and Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (Other Countries Press). He has written for LitHub.com, Black Issues Book Review and Venus Magazine. An inaugural fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, Doug’s early work received recognition from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. Doug is an avid art collector who enjoys swimming and traveling and is the proud pet Dad to a lovable mixed bred German Shepherd, Baldwin. Doug lives in Atlanta, GA.
One thought on “Tomás Q. Morín on Dystopia, Grief, and the Feline Voice Behind Cat Love”