Stella started out as merely a minor character in Starry Sky, as I needed a ‘conversational partner’ for the leading character, Emma, when she was alone.
But before I knew it, Stella had taken over and started to live a life of her own.
She got to be such an integrated part of the series that it was her my readers loved first and foremost.

I realized that the black-furred character I’d built had our youngest cat, Killmousky, as role model.
Lots of Stella’s actions in the fictional world is taken right out of Killmousky’s real world – well, of course, with some exaggerations now and again.
Furthermore: Since I began writing more intensively about Stella, it seems as if Killmousky has taken a strong interest in my computer. Like Stella, she has the bad habit of creating additions to my manuscripts whenever I turn my back. One day, she’d even managed to open a horoscope template on the screen.

Killmousky, as her two siblings, was a foundling kitten – just a couple of weeks old when her mother was run over by a car. And so, she and her foster siblings entered our family. We bottle fed them and raised them – well, as far as you can talk about ‘raising’ a cat, that is.
This background has given us a very different insight into cats’ behavior than we had before: These three kittens, now grown cats, are very different individuals, as cats always are.
But the three of them do have one thing in common: They clearly see us as members of their clowder. Until then, we had no idea cats could be such social animals.

Their protective instincts toward us show they don’t think us to be in our right mind and therefore not in a position to take care of ourselves. We have a sad lack of claws and fangs.
We’re pretty sure that’s why they follow us every time we go for a walk.

After I had an operation, I was rehabilitating my body and therefore went for many cautious, small walks out in the countryside. Killmousky accompanied me, circling round my legs.
As I sat down on a bench to rest, she jumped up and sat next to me.
A woman on a bike came toiling uphill towards us, huffing and puffing from the exertion. Apparently Killmousky thought she was hissing at us. She clasped tightly to my body, and a deep growl warned the threatening person against getting any closer…

We’ve laughed a lot at this episode – Killmousky being such a small, slim cat – her courage, though, very much exceeding her physical appearance.
And then again – there’s nothing wrong with ambitions!
The episode with the small cat, trying to protect her owner, is reproduced in the first book in Starry Sky – just a bit exaggerated, of course.
A lot of the events in the books with Stella in center is inspired from Killmousky and her dignified siblings – the real life’s Stella.