I want to start by saying how much I loved the piece and its focus on cats! I volunteer at a kitten nursery, so seeing your protagonist, Kate, learn more about cats through her friend's wisdom felt incredibly relatable and sincere. Can you share how your own personal relationship with cats influenced "Clockwork"?

A kitten nursery—I need to find one of those!

My stories and poems that feature or are about cats were inevitable. With the exception of my college years, I’ve had cats constantly in my life since I was five years old when a stray tabby showed up at my family’s front door. I was madly in love even though she took a while to tame (after many scratched legs and much cursing from my father). That cat was quite popular with the toms, and my childhood was filled with kittens—back in the ‘60s, spaying and neutering wasn’t very common. Since that time, I’ve had 11 cats in my life, two of whom were feral back porch kitties that I tamed. I like to think of that ability as my superpower, by the way. The true inspiration for the story, though, was a work friend in the late ‘90s. She was passionate about TNR and tended several feral colonies in Raleigh. She was so dedicated that she would bring a cat carrier brimming with kittens to our office suite and let them run amok and become used to people. Yes, I adopted one of them, a precious calico my husband and I named Ferguson. That cat-saving friend is still very much alive, thank goodness, so Marcella is entirely fictional. When I wrote the story, I wanted to honor my friend and all the amazing people like her involved in animal welfare.

Kate fulfills her friend's dying wish to take care of the stray cats, including her own cat, Spartacus. Do you mind expanding on this concept of processing grief through animal caretaking roles such as Kate's? And how might Kate's tumultuous relationship with Spartacus represent the way we deal with loss?  

I love this question because I’ve come to realize that loss and grief are thematic threads woven through much of my creative work. In “Clockwork,” Kate runs through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The alignment might not be precise, but the stages are there. While Kate initially sees the cat-tending responsibilities as a burden and a constant reminder of Marcella’s absence, they force her to forge connections with Clockwork, Spartacus, and Marvin, connections that will carry her out of the darkness. Marcella knew exactly what she was doing by asking Kate to take in Spartacus; pet cats can feel loss keenly—I’ve seen it with my own cats. When I wrote the story, I imagined Marcella having a conversation with Spartacus about helping Kate grieve and about offering his love to her. She knew it wouldn’t be easy for either of them, that getting to acceptance would be messy. That’s the work of grief, isn’t it? We have to claw our way through those stages.

(Coincidentally, a poem I’ve written with knitting as the five stages metaphor is forthcoming soon.)

Your piece also points out the unfair treatment of stray cats, and how they are often uncared for or euthanized. Can you comment on this ever-growing problem, and how much of an impact these issues have on your work? 

The burgeoning feral cat population, both in urban and rural areas, is a significant problem on a number of levels. I have an undergraduate degree in wildlife biology, so I understand that feral cats have a devastating impact on songbirds, small mammals, and other wildlife. Now, I teach scientific communication to college students, and my wildlife majors are sometimes rabid cat haters, as they’ve been taught to be by some of their wildlife professors. But I don’t see the feral cat problem as a cat problem—it’s a human problem. We domesticated cats, we made them into pets, and then we turned them loose and expected them to do what…not eat? Not reproduce? So, I am entirely opposed to inhumane solutions to the problem and believe that we will eventually find a humane solution. How does that affect my creative work? I think it’s a reflection of my ethos, which in a circular kind of way was developed by my cat love. I hope that my drive to be humane is apparent in my poems and stories no matter the theme.

I also see you're a highly decorated poet, and your debut collection, "A Prayer For Forgiving My Parents," discusses personal topics that hones in on finding hope and absolution amidst dark times. Can you discuss how writing poetry helped you work through your personal endeavors? What kind of insight did it provide?  

The book is a memoir that reaches all the way back to my toddler years. In some respects it’s an ode to my mother and her home beauty shop, which was a refuge for me during the years when my father was a violent alcoholic. I didn’t begin writing those poems until after my father died and my mother was in her 80s; I didn’t publish the book until after she died (and I inherited her ancient blind and deaf cat). Once I started writing the poems, I couldn’t stop writing them—they simply kept bubbling up. I couldn’t ignore them. I suppose that, even though I wrote poems as a child and as a teen, I saved up those poems for when I could write them, when I needed to write them. They were a kind of self-therapy. Writing them helped me let go of the emotional bruising left by my father and even my sweet mother. The insight for me was that I didn’t have to forgive my parents, only to understand them.

In addition to writing poetry and short fiction, you're also a triple graduate and have a broad range of career paths. From working as a talent agent to teaching scientific communication at your alma mater, you're incredibly well-rounded! How has this diverse blend of interests informed your writing? How does teaching impact your craft, as well?

The most significant contribution of a diverse work history—restaurant hostess and waitress, department store cashier, talent agent, newspaper reporter, communications specialist, magazine writer and editor, university lecturer (for almost 30 years)—is that I’ve had conversations with literally thousands of people and learned something from all of them even if I don’t remember them. I imagine that I’ve knitted together bits and pieces of the people I’ve met and the students I’ve taught into my fictional characters and into my poetic voices.

Teaching a scientific writing course for literally decades has been the proverbial double-edged sword. In that type of communication, being concise and clear is paramount. I can edit my work to nubbins if needed. As a creative writer, though, I have to shut down that editor so my writing can sprawl and be messy while I’m in the genesis phase. That editor becomes handy, though, when I’m shaping the final story, especially when trying to stay within a word limit.

I always like to end on this question: what advice do you have for aspiring writers? 

To paraphrase Dory and in the voice of Ellen DeGeneres, “Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing, writing, writing.” I try to write something every day, even if it’s just an idea for a poem or a character, or a revision of an existing piece, or musings about why I’m creatively blocked. I’ve done that and ended up with the first draft of a poem or the first scene of a story before I knew what was happening.

The other piece of advice I’d offer is to find your people. That doesn’t necessarily mean a writers group; I was in one for 15 years before I realized it wasn’t working for me as a writer (the writers were wonderful people, though). It also doesn’t mean a class at a college or community center. You don’t need a degree to be a published writer, but if that environment is creatively stimulating, then jump in. When I pursued my master’s degree, I chose a concentration in creative writing and studied under the amazing Southern writer Lee Smith. She taught me so much about writing and about more than writing. What I think is most important, though, is to find the people who support your creativity, people who inspire you, people who love that you want to be this wonderful thing—a writer!

Read Daun’s short story, “Clockwork” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue NO. 1.