Have you ever created a great character for a story you never finished? If so, have you thought about reusing that character in another book?

After my first published mystery, Going Home, came out in 2014, I started writing a sequel. In that novel, my protagonist, Michelle DePalma, is raising her newfound eleven-year-old granddaughter—quite a disruption to her happy marriage and their peaceful, childless lives.

The story explores the adjustment to family dynamics, and eventually, grandmother and granddaughter bond over solving a murder mystery and caring for homeless kittens. The working title was Murder of the Cat Lady.

The victim is a reclusive woman named Catherine Foster (“Cat” for short) who likes animals a lot better than people, and her abrasive personality draws her share of enemies. Catherine volunteers for a local rescue group and—you guessed it—fosters cats. So, of course, after she’s killed, someone has to take over caring for those cats.

I wrote one of the early chapters from the victim’s point of view, and I fell in love with the character. I admired her dedication to cat rescue and sassy, independent spirit. I sympathized with her intolerance for many fellow members of the human race. (I must admit, I’m also someone who thinks animals are better than people!) I enjoyed writing Catherine’s character so much, I didn’t want to kill her.

But the whole story was built around her murder and my grandmother/granddaughter sleuth team solving the crime. I thought about bringing in a sister or doppelganger and having a case of mistaken identity. The plot started going off the rails.

Also, Going Home takes place in 2001, a month after the terrorist attacks of September 11. That meant Murder of the Cat Lady would have to take place in 2002. I didn’t want to set a story in 2002; I wanted to write about contemporary times.

Stalled, that novel joined the pile of unfinished manuscripts, and I eventually went on to write something else.

Since 2007, I’ve been volunteering with a local animal rescue group, and for years, I’ve wanted to write a story featuring that world. Although there’s no one in our organization quite like Catherine Foster, there are some colorful personalities and more drama than I ever would have dreamed from a group of volunteers working toward a common goal.

Before my rescue experience, I assumed all cats were potential house pets, like the adorable cats who appear in cozy mysteries. I didn’t realize there are millions of unowned, unsocialized cats who call the outdoors their home.

My town, like most communities all over the world, supports multiple colonies of free-roaming cats. They populate wooded areas, trailer parks, shopping centers, and restaurant parking lots. Free-roaming cats might be lost pets, strays, or truly feral felines, born outdoors and never socialized to humans. Unfortunately, they reproduce exponentially. A kitten can have a litter before she’s six months old, sometimes as early as four months. And most of her surviving kittens will have litters of their own before she’s a year old. In a state like Georgia, where the winters are mild, cats breed all year; a couple of abandoned, unaltered pets can quickly grow into a huge colony.

Fortunately, volunteers from rescue groups like ours are passionate about Trap/Neuter/Vaccinate/Return (TNVR) as a means of controlling cat overpopulation. They set humane traps to catch these free-roaming felines, transport them to a low-cost clinic to be spayed or neutered and vaccinated, then return the unsocialized ones to their outdoor homes, where they can live out their natural lives but not reproduce. While the cat is under anesthesia, the veterinarian clips a corner from the left ear; if the animal gets trapped again, the ear tip saves everyone another trip to the clinic.

Since feral cats are mostly nocturnal, our trapper volunteers must work at night, usually in deserted locations. A perfect set-up for danger… or finding a dead body.

Hence the premise for my latest mystery, Trap, Neuter, Die.

And Catherine Foster was the perfect character to put in this book. She’s the person who can make those antisocial, politically incorrect comments that most of us would never get away with—even though we might be thinking them.

When the story opens, my protagonist, DeeLo Myer, gets sentenced to community service with the local humane society and assigned to the TNVR program, which Catherine Foster runs. Cat doesn’t exactly give DeeLo a warm welcome. The night gets even worse when they find a dead human.

Spoiler alert: Catherine Foster doesn’t die. In fact, I’ve signed a contract for a three-book series with Level Best Books, and I expect Cat to be around in all three. Surly as ever.

DeeLo Myer, newly transplanted from Los Angeles to Pecan Point, Georgia, gets sentenced to community service with the county’s humane society. She’s paired with the judgmental Catherine Foster, a Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (TNVR) guru who prefers feral cats to people. During DeeLo’s first night on duty, she and Catherine are led to the strangled body of a local bookstore owner by the victim’s cat.