Writing Memoir - Anne Kaier Guest Post

Memoir can get a bad rap. It’s been likened to reality shows, panned for TMI, pigeonholed as mere publicity for politicos. My favorite peeve is the ghostwritten celebrity memoir—or, worse, the simpleminded recovery story in which the protagonist falls into drink or illness and, inevitably, regains health by page 300. It’s the "inevitably" that bothers me. These memoirs, written according to formula, often gloss over the real difficulties of people trying to make and keep their lives better.

The “my cat saved my life” story bugs me no end, as you can imagine. So why did I write a memoir about a feral cat who helped ground me emotionally in an uneasy period of my life?

The most important answer is that Henry, the ginger cat I rescued one night after someone’s car had hit him on a busy road, turned out to be one of the sweetest creatures ever. Oh, he hissed and spat at the beginning and hid under my spare room bed for six months. But when he finally began to trust human beings, he showed himself as a loving, friendly companion. So I wrote to celebrate him. However, I was determined that I would write a pet memoir which showed the complexity of my feelings around the time he came to live with me—as well as his initial distrust of me.

When I rescued Henry, I had just moved into my first house, as a single woman, at age fifty. I was afraid of everything: the mortgage, the weird house sounds at night, and the self-image this move drove home. I was a single woman living alone with a cat. Talk about a stereotype. I had to break out of it. Learn to include my friends and neighbors and nephews in my idea of “family,” learn to trust that my home was as enticing as one defined by a married couple, children and a white picket fence. Just as Henry needed to learn to trust me, I needed to trust my own core self.

I aimed for emotional complexity in Home with Henry. I wanted it to echo great pet memoirs such as Peter Trachtenberg’s Another Insane Devotion, in which the philosophical author explores the whys of cat love. Or Mark Doty’s Dog Years with unforgettable scenes about his dogs and his lover and the meaning of life. Books such as these set a high standard. Henry, a contemplative sort of cat, perched in a chair next to me while I wrote, muttering under my breath, trying to get our story down in the most honest memoir I could manage. Henry and I hope you like it.

For a list of classic pet memoirs, check out a free pamphlet: “Tall Tails: how to write about your cat” on the Home with Henry page of my website: www.annekaier.com. 

You can buy Home with Henry by clicking here. 

Visit Marian Allen's blog tomorrow for the next stop on this blog book tour.

Best American Essays notable author Anne Kaier has published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, and Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, an ALA Notable Book for 2012. Anne lives in Center City, Philadelphia and teaches at Arcadia University and Rosemont College. She has a Ph.D. from Harvard University.