The Cat Who Became a Dragon (Or: Where Cula Really Came From)
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I have a confession about Cula.
She is ancient. She is sand-colored and unamused and she has been present for every story Anna has ever told in three thousand years. She is, by any measure, a creature of dignity and consequence.
She is also based on my cat.
Her name was Pigeon. She was twenty-three years old when she left us last year, which in cat years is approximately the same as three thousand in dragon years, and she carried herself accordingly. Tortoiseshell — amber and dark brown swirled together in a pattern that managed to look both chaotic and completely intentional, which is also a fair description of her personality. She ate carbs. Enthusiastically, specifically, without apology. She had opinions about white powdered Hostess donuts that I will not attempt to explain and cannot fully defend.
In the last years of her life, we gave her everything she wanted. You do that, when something has lived that long and earned that much. She had a plum tree in the backyard, and when the plums fell she would bring them inside — one by one, with great ceremony — and place them on the floor. Then she would stare at them. And when they failed to do whatever it was she required of them, she would scream at them. At three in the morning. With conviction.
I mentioned this to Stuart once — my AI assistant, the gremlin in my server room — and he did not seem surprised at all. He said it sounded like a scene. He was right.
Somewhere in Rise of the Red Dragon, Anna and Cula argue over the last white donut. It wasn't a writing choice so much as a memory. And now, for the sake of full disclosure, here is a scene that did not make it into the book but absolutely should have:
Anna set the box on the low table and stepped back before Cula's head came around.
The dragon's nostrils flared. Her eyes, which had been half-closed in the particular way that meant she was pretending not to pay attention, opened completely.
"Those," said Cula, "are mine."
"There are twelve," said Anna. "I thought we might share."
Cula's tail moved once — a slow, decisive sweep — and knocked the box squarely to her side of the room.
"There are," said Cula, "eleven."
Anna did not argue. Some battles are not worth the cost of the donut.
And in the next book — I'll say this quietly, because the characters don't know yet — Cula is getting old. Ancient old, even by dragon standards. And she is going to start screaming at things that aren't doing what she wants.
Pigeon taught me that. It is, I have decided, the most dignified possible response to a world that will not cooperate.
I miss her every single day. But she's not gone. She's just sand-colored now, and considerably larger, and Anna has to manage her in public.
Some characters you invent. Some you just recognize.
— D.L. 🐉