Catwings and windsteeds
An Ursula appreciation post.
I just listened to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Catwings, a children’s story about—you guessed it—cats with wings. It’s the first installment in a four book collection about stray kittens, with wings!!!, whose mother encourages them to fly off and find a safer home. It’s very sweet, and like most of Ursula’s writing, its surface-level fancifulness is underpinned with a current of deep seriousness. Ursula’s own audiobook narration is especially lovely, sounding like a grandmother reading a story to her littles (which is exactly what she was and I imagine she would do).
While reading (er, listening) to Catwings, I was reminded of Ursula’s drawings of winged cats that I found on her estate’s Instagram, as well as the dozens of photos, posts, and poems dedicated to her beloved cat, Pard, on her archived blog.
And just two nights ago, after powering through Martyr! and Imago, my brain and heart needed a real break. I picked up Worlds of Exile and Illusion, a compilation of Ursula’s first three published novels, all set in the Hainish Universe. Her first, Rocannon’s World, was published in 1966 and is a sci-fi / fantasy mash-up—perhaps unpopular in 1966, but so common as to be unremarkable today. In the opening chapter, her characters fly around their low-gravity planet on windsteeds, which she begins to describe with sparse, highly selective word choices. Reading the word steed, I immediately conjure an image of a winged horse, but reading on, I pick up other context clues—fuzzy fur, paws, soft ears and purring. I immediately run a Google image search and confirm, to my UTTER DELIGHT, that a windsteed is a giant, flying cat. In her first-ever published novel Ursula has made fierce flying felines the primary mode of transportation for our heroes:
This was, as Gen Z may say, a choice. A silly choice, sure, but an assertive one, too. Of all the gravitas ascribed to Ursula and her writing, let’s not forget that she loved cats, especially winged ones, and found ways to balance her self-seriousness with levity. Literally.
As a cat caretaker myself, I am absolutely tickled at Ursula’s imagination and envision her cackling with self satisfaction every time she succeeds in convincing her publisher to insert yet another flying cat into a story. When I pick up one of my own cats now, I fly them around the room bellowing, WIND-STEEEEEED!!!!! until they cry out in protest at the indignity and I put them back down on solid ground.
What I’m writing
Reworking an important scene.
What I’m reading
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Borrowed Ways of Being by James Bridle, The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir as audiobooks from the library.
What I read
Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin as well as Adulthood Rites and Imago by Octavia Butler, finishing off my read of the Xenogenesis series.
A helpful thing
For other Ursula stans out there, I recently learned about a new-to-me art press and bookshop, Winter Texts, that has published a bunch of Ursula’s work in standalone, repackaged publications, including short stories and novellas. I bought the lot of them (there are currently five books) and can’t wait to dive in!
I’m heading up to the Catskills for a long weekend with my sister and bestie, and plan to peruse every used bookshop I can on the hunt for Ursula deep cuts. Wish me luck!