My Mother and I, We Talk Cat

Photos and article by Sandra Michaud

Past Silver City Poet Laureate Elise Stuart read selections from her newest book, "My Mother and I, We Talk Cat" to a group of people at the Silver City Public Library on Tuesday afternoon.

The book is a memoir, which Stuart said helped her to come to grips with her relationship with her complex and often unstable mother. Stuart’s mother had left her abusive father when Stuart was only a few months old, returning to her home in Minnesota. Her mother left her with her grandmother for extended periods of time and when she would return was often cold and distant.

Stuart read selections of prose and poetry from the book, which showed her changing perceptions about her mother, who was in many respects frustrated by the strictures of the world in which she lived.

Stuart said that toward the end of her mother’s life, she had a cat, and that when they would talk on the phone, all her mother would talk about was cats. She read a poem about “her cats, the neighbors’ cats, where they eat, where they sleep, everything she talked about was cats. When I asked her how she was feeling, or had she been to the grocery store lately…” she veered back to talking about cats, “as if she could escape the true real world and narrow it down to one familiar subject.”

Stuart brought some of the few remaining items she kept after her mother died and shared them with the audience. One of them was a stage makeup kit that her mother had used, and another was a small metallic purse.

You can find copies of Elise Stuart’s books at Tranquil Buzz and Wild West Weaving in Silver City, and they are also available on Amazon. You can also read more of her work on her website: https://elisestuart.com/