I hate to bring up the subject of The Cat Who Saw Stars again, as every time I do I seem to end up badmouthing it, and it's bad form for me, especially in my position as maintainer of a Cat Who... site, to belabor the fact that I thought the book sub-par, but I'd like to address what seems to have become a focal point of controversy for Cat Who... fans - the ending and, more specifically, in what spirit it's meant to be taken. Here there be spoilers - I cannot, of course, discuss the denouement without going into specifics - so turn back now if you wish to be spared said knowledge.
Still here? All right, then. Now, Saw Stars's ending - like, alas, nigh everything else in the book - has nothing to do with its "mystery"; instead, the tale wraps up with Qwilleran and Koko having an apparent close encounter of the third kind. The big debate, of course, rages around whether or not we're supposed to believe that whether or not this "encounter" actually happened or not. Before I begin to scrutinize the issue here - attempt to ascertain the veracity of the event, so to speak - perhaps I'd best refer to the only resource we have - Qwilleran's first-hand account of the incident in his journal.
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Pickax - Thursday, July 16
Last night was our last at the cabin. We were sitting on the porch after midnight with the lights turned off, inside and out. To use a cliché, the night was pitch black. The cats like it that way; they're fascinated by the invisible sights and inaudible sounds that only they can see and hear.
When I'm lounging in a porch chair with my feet up, just thinking, time means nothing, so I didn't know how long I had sat there. The sky seemed to be getting lighter, yet my watch said it was only two-forty-five. The cats sensed something irregular and fussed nervously. Soon Yum Yum ran indoors.
Was it my imagination, or was the sky getting green? Also unusual was the deathlike silence. Suddenly a strong gust of wind stirred up papers and whatnot on the porch, and Koko jumped up in my lap and dug in with his claws for safety. It lasted only a few seconds, though.
At the same time, a large round disc floated downward, throwing shafts of light on the beach. I could feel Koko's fur standing on end. His tail bushed. Next thing I knew, he was at the screened door, pawing at the defective latch.
"Koko!" I yelled, though I couldn't hear my voice. I leaped out of my chair, but he was outside on the deck. I dashed after him and made a grab. He slipped away and headed for the beach, straight down the side of the dune.
Just as I was about to go after him, I saw small creatures tumbling out of the disc and sliding down the shafts of light. They had four legs and long tails! He was going to meet them!
"Koko!" I screamed, but no sound came out of my mouth. He was picking his way through the tall grass on the sandy slope. Desperate, I plunged headlong into a flying tackle and landed on top of him, then saw stars and blacked out.
When I came to my senses, I was pinned down under a heavy weight - in total darkness. Where was I? My eyes were open, but I couldn't see, and there was a throbbing in my chest that alarmed me.
Then something wet touched my nose. The weight on my body shifted. Managing to raise my arm, I felt fur! Koko was on my chest, purring loudly, and I was back in my lounge chair. How did I get there? My mind was muddled. The green light had disappeared, and the beach was dark. I could hear the waves splashing.
Still I felt stunned. It was a dream, I told myself...or was it? Koko's fur was sandy, and when I stood up, I brushed a shower of sand off my clothes.
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Now, there are basically three camps on the reading of this ending:
1) It's just a joke on Lilian's part; it's not meant to be taken seriously. Forget it.
2) The alien encounter in Saw Stars was adequately, if not amply, foreshadowed by all the talk of aliens in previous visits to Mooseville and with its UFO-loving denizens in books like The Cat Who Went Underground; Braun is only following through on a theme long-established in the series and carrying it to its logical conclusion. (I must say, though, that I immediately take issue with this side's use of the word "foreshadowed"; to foreshadow something means to subtly telegraph its occurrence with subtle hints in the preceding prose and events, and to say that flying green kitties from outer space were telegraphed by some folks in Mooseville jawboning over flying saucers a few intermittent times over the space of sixteen books would be a stretch worthy of Art Bell. The "cats are smarter than people" series subtext doesn't carry over here either, by the way; it is very uncatlike for felines of any sort to abandon their transcendental intuition and innate good sense to follow suit with the humans and rely on crude outside mechanical vehicles and devices, never mind using them to come halfway across the galaxy to study an inferior race. (Cats would never travel the stars in search of intelligent life, anyway; they could never conceptualize the idea of a race superior to or more interesting than their own.))
3) It's dang confusing.
With that, I pitch my tent squarely in the third party, as the events themselves are completely fantastic (flying green kittycat invaders from outer space?) and out-of-place in a Cat Who... book, but the tone and structure of the prose seem to deem Qwill's experiences completely credible. Consider:
Most dream-events in fiction that the character feels that he's truly experienced but actually has only dreamed have a distinct "break-off point" from reality - the character begins to get tired, then all of a sudden "notices" some abrupt occurrence - that occurrence being the start of a whole wild sequence of events that eventually turns out to be only a dream, and that the character actually "fell asleep" when he thought he was just beginning to get tired.
The sequence of events that leads up to the UFO encounter, however, is very gradual - first, the sky subtly begins to lighten, then the wind kicks up, then Yum Yum runs in and Koko perks up - and then the disc comes; there's no distinct breaking point from "reality" and what could be definitively considered as part of the official "UFO encounter", what the author does (or does not) want us to consider as a possible by-product of Qwilleran's subconscious. Moreover, we see no sign that Qwilleran is even getting drowsy before or during the encounter, other than his being lost in thought.
Another matter of note - Braun takes special pains to detail and to have Qwilleran perceive experiences that are common among people who say or believe they have been abducted by UFO's during their supposed "visits" to the alien crafts - opening one's eyes and crying out but not being able to see or hear anything, being "pinned down" by an unseen force, etc. True, Qwilleran has felt pinned down in his sleep before, only to wake up and find Koko and/or Yum Yum sitting on his chest and demanding breakfast, but the break in paragraphs here - the deliberate pause in the narrative - seems to denote a change in scene and denies the usual immediate "it was only a dream" realization for the character and reassurance for the reader.
Am I overanalyzing this passage? Not at all, I believe; Braun clearly plays with us here as to whether or not we should think the UFO encounter is real, and the only resource we have available to help us determine that is Qwill's first-hand report - along with, I might note, the point that that one experience was realistic enough to convert Qwilleran, die-hard UFO skeptic, into somewhat of a believer. That fact, when given the considerable amount of time the story devotes to Qwilleran's resultant change in attitude towards Mooseville's cult of UFO believers and Elizabeth Cage's prospective UFO library, when given that this account was written after Qwilleran finally "found the objectivity" to relate his tale and that the version we have read is as realistic and fact-based as this veteran reporter can make it, is near-clinching evidence in itself.
We do, though, have to put all of the above in perspective with (as much as I hate to revisit this topic) the quality of Stars - it isn't a deep book, Braun doesn't exactly exude mastery of her craft in it, and Qwilleran has been acting a little erratic lately (say, ever since The Cat Who Sang for the Birds and that whole Polly-portrait thing); for all we know, this whole ending coulda been something that Braun just tossed off one day and to which she didn't really ascribe any hidden meaning whatsoever. In any case, I'd like to hear some other viewpoints out there - what is your interpretation of the ending of The Cat Who Saw Stars? Historically, this website hasn't had a good track record when it comes to features requiring reader feedback, but who knows - we might get lucky, and I might be able to get a C-pad out of it - and thus get out of actually writing one myself. It's already gotten me out of writing a decent conclusion for this one, in any case. How unfortunately apropos to its subject.
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