Zibby interviews filmmaker, actor, animal advocate, and bestselling author Cathryn Michon about her comforting, heartfelt, richly illustrated gift book for people grieving the loss of a pet, I’M STILL HERE: A Dog’s Purpose Forever. Cathryn delves into her emotional, ten-year writing journey, sharing how her own dog, Tucker, and her husband, W. Bruce Cameron, inspired her to bring this book to life. She and Zibby also talk about faith, signs from lost loved ones, and the lessons dogs teach us about joy and living in the moment. Finally, she describes her creative collaborations with her husband, including films based on his novels.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Katherine. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss I'm Still Here, A Dog's Purpose Forever. 

Cathryn: Congrats. Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. It's such an exciting thing. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, this book, oh, went right to my heart. Oh my gosh. Do you just cry every time? Like, tell me about writing it.

Tell me about why you wrote it. Tell me the whole thing. 

Cathryn: Well, you know, it's, it's funny, that dog on the cover, That's my little dog Tucker. And I really, you know, Bruce and I, my husband, Bruce Cameron, and I went on this big, long, a dog's purpose journey. And, you know, we we've made three movies of his books and, and the novel has been, you know, it's really a classic novel.

And I always felt, he always felt this too, that we wanted there to be sort of a, a more gentle introduction to the, a dog's purpose philosophy, which is basically that our souls are eternal, their souls are eternal, and this is an eternal relationship. And so we talked about it a lot and I really wanted it to be this beautiful graphic gift book that you might buy for yourself, but odds are a lot of the time you'd buy it for someone else who has lost a dog and, you know, the dog is just telling you, I'm still here and I'm still your dog. And our relationship is eternal. Even, even as I'm over the rainbow bridge with all the people and animals that you have loved, it took 10 years to find the publisher that would make a book like this, that would make with full color watercolor paintings.

And on beautiful textured watercolor paper and all the things about it that are that are so lovely But at a honestly at a price point that that people could afford For that gift, you know a lot of people wanted to make it some big, you know expensive coffee table book, which would have been lovely but, you know, didn't suit the need for that, that gesture, you know, that the book I hope is becoming.

Zibby: So when I interviewed your husband, Bruce, last week, I think I was grilling him a little bit too much. Cause I was like, but 

Cathryn: how, how 

Zibby: do you know that the dogs come back? I mean, you have a deep belief. You and Bruce both that I really want to believe and I mentioned to him, you know, my rational brain says, how could dog souls return in the body of the next dog, which is in your movies and, and in the book and that they're never really gone.

But what, is it just a fundamental faith that you have and have you always had it? Cause I know you were convinced sort of. 

Cathryn: I have not always had it. And I, it is, it is a come to believe. thing for me. Part of it has to do with experiences I've had when, when I've lost people or dogs, just, I'll just tell you one story and you'll probably think it's weird because you are a rational thinker and I respect that.

Zibby: But, but I like to believe, I mean, I believe in signs. I believe, you know, I like to believe that there is more than what we can see. 

Cathryn: Well, uh, not long after a dog's purpose, It's polished and we were sitting in our dining room table and we our house is like yours We got a lot of books everywhere and we have bookshelves near our dining room table And i'd always put my dog ellie's collar On that shelf, uh, right by the table, so I think of her and we were talking and Bruce said, you know, I wonder if what Ellie thinks of a dog's purpose and the book and, you know, because she's a character in the book, he named one of the four dogs, dog bodies after my dog, Ellie, and said, I wonder what she thinks and literally, At that very moment, that collar just left off the shelf and cluttered to the floor.

And I know it's California and you say, oh, you were having an earthquake. We're not having an earthquake. I checked, I, I checked the seismologist side. Nothing had happened except that that collar just came flying off that shelf. And you know, that's just one experience. that I've had. When my dad passed, there was a whole thing that happened where my, my aunt said, Oh, I was in the garden and this dragonfly landed on my shoulder and, and he wouldn't leave.

And my dad was a pilot. So it makes so much sense to me that he would come back as something that could fly because that was his favorite thing. And, and I, I was very, Jealous of that experience and I said to my husband this is like the day after he passed I I said, where's my damn dragonfly? Like I it's not fair. Why does it come to her? I need to hear from him. And the next thing I know I picked up the mail and there was a condolence card my first condolence card from my friend chris, on the cover was a beautiful dragonfly, and I'm like,.. 

Zibby: Hmm, wow. 

Cathryn: You know, so like, and, and there are rational explanations for those things, but for me it became, it began to solidify, uh, a belief system where I, I just, I just think our souls are, are too important not to be eternal, our souls and their souls. I mean, anyone that has a relationship with a dog knows what loving spiritual creatures they are. I actually think they're Teachers, you know, I think a lot of in the book. I'm still here. A dog's purpose forever. The dog has a lot of really good advice, you know, talks about how people spend too much time in fear and they really don't.

The example I always give is that Tucker, my dog, if you say go for a car ride, want to go for a car ride? He does, he wants to go and he's a senior dog now. He's going to be 13 in October and quite often the car ride ends up at the vet and he does not like the vet, not one bit. He never approaches a car ride as it's potentially going to the vet.

It's always something good. And then when it's the vet, he lets it go after we've left, you know, like he doesn't live in that, in that fear and, and dread that most of us do a lot of the time. You know, so if my soul is eternal and I do believe that, then it has to be, you know.

Zibby: I love that. I just love it so much.

So when did you conceive of doing this project? And yeah, how did it come about? 

Cathryn: Well, I mean, like I said, it became a 10 year project. I've got to stop having 10 year projects. I'm too old for this. I need to get, I need to get it faster going. Uh, you know, the movie A Dog's Purpose was a 10 year project. I mean, Hollywood is always a 10 year project.

But, uh, you know, I just, I had this idea and did, you know, explore with a bunch of different publishers. But it really, we were also really busy making movies. And that was another thing. Right. 

Zibby: Yep. 

Cathryn: And, um, COVID shut that down. And then we had two strikes. And so, uh, I, I sort of got the gift of time. that allowed.

I'll try to see it as a gift because look at what it resulted in. 

Zibby: I love that you just had a vision, a clear vision for it, and it just like came to you this way, and that you were able to make it happen, you know, timing. Yeah, that's amazing. 

Cathryn: Yeah, I'm grateful. Really grateful. 

Zibby: Wait, tell me more about because you were a screenwriter on all the movies as well.

You and your husband did it together. First of all, how do you and your husband work together without fighting or do you fight or what is that like? 

Cathryn: Well, sure. I mean, we have creative fights. You know, I mean, I think all artists have to stand up for what they, you know, what they're seeing, their vision, if you're not a good artist if you can't defend your vision. We do have a thing where when we make movies the person who's because you know, uh, a film gets you nowhere, right? So when we're making movies from his IP, his books, he does have the final word. And I think that's fair, you know, because he, he created it, although we're heading into a different situation because I'm directing his next movie.

And he does acknowledge that the director, you know, the scene has to go like, I can't. I can't always ask, I'll always ask his opinion, but at a certain point you're in an editing room and something goes, you know. So, but we've talked about it. I think the thing that people, when they collab, we went to a therapist.

We, we, you know, set ground rules. We, cause our, our marriage is important to us, obviously. And our work is really important to us. I think we're both kind of workaholics. I don't know why that has to be an a holic, though, I just, I love my work.

Zibby: Yeah. 

Cathryn: It's, we're, we're, we're hard workers, okay? And so we, we, we put a lot of effort into that.

People always ask that question. It's a good one, you know, because if you, if you work with your spouse at all, it's, you know, first of all, you don't want to sleep at the office, you know? 

Zibby: You have to go into a different room, right? You must have a writing. 

Cathryn: You have to find separate times where it's just fun and and not talking about work, you know. 

Zibby: Yeah. Wow And what about even the creative vision of how you're translating the books onto the screen? Because that's a whole thing in and of itself. 

Cathryn: The whole thing I know you have filmmakers in your family and you know about this and you got a lot of filmmakers. You know, it is kill your darlings course, you know, a movie isn't five hours long and you have to get down to the essence of it.

And, you know, I was a screenwriter before I met Bruce and Bruce had always been a novelist. I don't know if he told you, but he wrote nine unpublished novels. I wouldn't type before his book got published. So he's a dedicated you know, real writer and, and I had come from television and from film. And so he, he kind of allowed me to take the lead in that because I had done it and when it comes to these really tough decisions of what you let go. That's why I always say, of course, of course, see the movie.

We want you to see the movie, but read the book. Book is always better. It's always richer and has more detail. And that's, you know, I watched your brother's movie, Nyad, and I loved it. And and then I went and read her book and there was, you know, more detail and it was it was great. And that's the process. That's the art form. So you have to get to a place where you, you can say, I, I know that scene was great. Didn't have time. 

Zibby: Wow. But you're also a writer. So you wrote a girl, a girl genius guide to being a girl. 

Cathryn: The Girl Genius Guide to Life. That was memoir. And it was a crazy memoir. It's not normal memoir.

I loved your memoir, by the way. 

Zibby: Oh, thank you. Thank you. 

Cathryn: I was in New York on 9 11. So it resonated with me a lot. My memoir is. It's about me, but it's also about a lot of other women because the whole idea was declare yourself to be a genius with no empirical evidence whatsoever, just so you can get through the day, you know, because men do that all the time where they get declared geniuses.

Why isn't everyone talking about how Greta Gerwig is a genius? She is. I mean, she is. You know, but it's all about, you know, the other guy and what a genius he was. And I think they're both geniuses, you know, so that was the premise of the book, but then I, I included all these stories of, of women who I think are geniuses or who, who are geniuses, who are unacknowledged, like Maleva Merrick Einstein, who was Einstein's wife who co-wrote the paper that postulated E equals MC squared, and in fact did all the calculations because she was the better, better mathematician. And then at some point, they, uh, their relationship fell apart and he was the more powerful person and he had her name removed from all those papers. And people talk about Einstein and the theory of relativity.

It was Einstein's and it was the theory of relativity. So I, so I talked about a lot of things like that, which are really, um, important to me. It was a memoir where I turned the focus on to other people. 

Zibby: I love that. I love, why not make ourselves geniuses, right? I mean, yeah. 

Cathryn: There's no genius police.

They're not going to come arrest you for a thing. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I mean, what does really make a genius after all, right? Hard work, creative thinking. I don't know. Something out of the ordinary. I don't know. Lots of women doing a.. 

Cathryn: Spark of a vision. A dog's purpose, to me, was a genius book. You, you ask about the, the, the soul, how do we know?

Well, the interesting thing about the premise of that book and then subsequently my book is that we don't know, they can't tell us. So it is entirely possible that the dog you love today was sent to you by the dog you loved yesterday. And that they don't really, they don't really need to tell us. In, in, in the movie, A Dog's Purpose, the dog figures out a way, like throwing the collar off the shelf.

But, you know, but I, I think they are, they are content dogs to, their purpose is to guide us, whether physically or emotionally, you know, to, to becoming more joyful people. And, and that if there's a takeaway from I'm still here, a dog's purpose forever. I think the dog is just asking you to, to be guided towards joy, but he's also comforting you because there are some very deep moments in the book where the dog, for example, really wants you to know that they know when we are helping them cross over the bridge and they are grateful and want you to know us to know that.

And I think if anyone's ever had to make the decision to put a dog down, we can't do that with people for all the reasons, but we can do it with dogs and it's the compassionate right thing to do. They don't need to suffer. There's no reason to let them suffer. And, and I think they're, they're trusting us.

It's so absolute that they know that we're helping them. They'll, they'll let you know when it's time. 

Zibby: This makes me, I have so much anticipatory sadness because my dog, who's like camouflaged into the couch behind him, you know, she's 10 and you know, my daughter the other day was like, Oh my gosh, if anything ever happens.

And I was like, honey. Something is going to happen because this is this is going to happen over the next what five years like we can't stop it. So we just have to enjoy our time with her, right? That's all we can do is savor the moments, right? 

Cathryn: And it's interesting because in my book, no one's ever, people always say, why must they live such short lives?

Why can't they live as long as we do? And nobody's ever asked the dog. And in my book, the dog says that he thinks it's a good thing because that way says we can go first and show you that it's no big deal. And then when it's your time to cross over the bridge, we can be there to meet you. And this is another, you'll like this because this is evidence based and you, you talk to hospice workers and I've spoken to many of them.

They will say that at the end of people's lives, they will see people and animals they love at the end of the bed waiting to, as the dog says in my book, fetch you home. And that is, it's so common that that hospice workers are never surprised because, and they are, they're good. If you're looking for evidence of, of the eternal nature of our.

Souls, you know, talk to hospital that that nurse Hadley wrote that wonderful book, the in between, which I loved. And, and she's just saying that over and over and over again, that, that, you know, she sees it in her, her daily work. So, I mean, that's something else that maybe you can share with your kids. I mean, this is an adult, this is a book written for grownups, but I absolutely have read it to kids in the process, and they love it. They really love it. We get much more emotional reading I'm Still Here, A Dog's Purpose Forever than kids do. There's one kid that we have that's kind of a super fan of Bruce, who read it early on.

He just loved it. He just, he loved hearing the whole thing from the dog, you know, about life and, and what happens after life, you know, he got it. 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, it's, it's universal in the way that you wrote about it and sort of package the information with the pictures and all of it is so Like, you can't help but respond to it emotionally and, and feel very invested and, I mean, it's emotional anyway.

It's emotional. But good. In all the good ways. In all the good ways. 

Cathryn: And, you know, I put myself on the line. I made my own senior dog, the angel dog, and as I wrote the book, he sat at my feet. I write in the Eames chair, I sit there and write, and he sits at my feet, and I joke that he dictated it to me. to me during his many naps.

Um, but I did, I did feel him and his energy and, and the things, there was something that happened during the writing of the book where there's a little game that my dog Tucker likes to play and it's called take out the garbage. We live in a condo. And we have a garbage chute and, you know, he likes to go with me and run down the hall and take out the garbage.

And one day, uh, a piece of paper towel flew out of the garbage bag and he grabbed it in the air and he ran around and he ripped it up and he loved it. It was so much fun. And, and then the next time we did it, I thought, Oh, I'm just going to throw a paper towel and see if he does the same thing. And he did the same thing.

So that became the game. And now when I would say, take it, let's take out the garbage. He goes mad. He's so excited. But I got busy. And I, a couple of times, like kind of sneaked out and took out the garbage and didn't play the game because I was too busy and I didn't want to clean up all the stuff in the hallway.

And, uh, I came back into the vestibule and he was there and he was looking at me with those big brown eyes. Like you did it without me. And I thought this is the lesson I should always have the extra four minutes that it takes to play the game with him, you know, that's what he's here to teach me. You've got to find that four minutes to play a stupid game.

And, and, you know, that could be with your kids or, or anything, you know, you'd have to not get so busy and focused and that you don't have the time for those moments of joy. And I'm like, Oh my God, that's what he's here to teach me. And, and I need to pay attention to that lesson, you know. 

Zibby: That hits home for me.

Cathryn: A bunch of kids and you, and I don't, I look at your schedule and I'm like, Oh my God. Does Zibby sleep? Does that girl sleep? I don't know, I'm worried, you know? 

Zibby: No, don't be worried. When you said, like, workaholic, like, I'm just, like, really excited about everything I'm doing. Like, you don't feel like, like, people who watch TV aren't TV aholics, you know?

It's something they enjoy. You know, there's no negative, we don't have to spin a negative thing on it. Like, oh, well, maybe I read too much? Like, I talk to too many people about books? Like, come on. You know, like,.. 

Cathryn: What you're doing is great. It's so great. That, that you are so author supportive and author forward and that you have this forum.

It's really, it's meaningful. And I think you're, I think you're changing publishing, honestly. 

Zibby: That's lovely. Lovely. 

Cathryn: Kudos to you. You're a genius. Don't forget. 

Zibby: Oh, okay. Yes. Now I have to get your girl genius book and just like remind myself each morning. 

Cathryn: Yeah. It's a good, it's a good bathroom book. You can flip through.

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? 

Cathryn: Yeah, I think not being precious about just getting started, you know, it's a lot of what I write tends to be dialogue oriented. And I think if you just do nothing but let them talk, you know, I sometimes because I'm an actor, I can, my background was being an actor.

I just, I just start, I'll be on a walk and I'll start talking like the person that I'm I want to write it, including if it's a dog, because I write a lot of dogs. They're the best characters to write. They're so fun. You'll never have a more joyful or optimistic character. You know, it was so lucky that we got Josh Gad for the first movie because Josh is like a dog.

He's like, like, I, when I watched the movie with him, when we watched the final cut together, he was laughing at every joke he had as if he'd never heard it before. And then sobbing at every emotional moment. Like, I'm like, that's, you know, so to write a character like that is great. But I think for, for beginning writers, find your character.

Find your characters and let them talk, you know, just let them talk and then figure out what the book is and then do structure and all the things. But I think it's, it's more simple than, than people make it. 

Zibby: I love that. Actually, Josh was just on this podcast to talk about Picture Face Lizzie, his new children's. 

Cathryn: Oh, I know!

I was so excited! I was like, we're on the Zibby's list together! 

Zibby: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, Katherine, congratulations. Your book is so beautiful. It's going to be so helpful. You know, it's the book to give to anybody who has lost a dog or any, and haven't we all? I mean, I don't know. Everybody, it's just, it's, it will be such a balm.

Um, and it. already has been for me in anticipation and for prior dog losses and all of the rest. 

Cathryn: I do want to share one little thing about the book. 

Zibby: Yes, yes. 

Cathryn: Physically, because I know you physically love books. Yes. I designed and it very specifically, it doesn't have a dust jacket and it has this front leaf, which is a painting of footprints at the shore.

It happened to be my footprints and my dog's paw prints. And what I want and hope people will do is take old fashioned little ground off photo corners like you used to make or if you're scrapbooking if you're like that kind of a person and put a photo of the angel dog you want to remember right in that front leaf of the book so that every time you pick it up you see that picture of your dog as you're reading these words that was I as far as I know no designed a book to be almost like a scrapbook to to be a book that's meant to be customized for you because I really want this book to be for each individual angel dog.

And as I did a pre-sale program where I've been signing book plates and I got all these inscriptions and it's like for Coco the best dog ever and Coco is the best dog ever. And, and I just want people to personalize this physical book, which is very beautiful as, as a way of, because we don't, we don't have that.

We don't have urns usually or grave sites or, or, or things that, that are a place where we go to remember the dog. So I want this book to be that for people. 

Zibby: So beautiful. So beautiful. Well, thank you, Catherine. Um, I will see you at the bookshop soon, I'm sure. 

Cathryn: I hope so. 

Zibby: Thank you for all of your time and all of your wonderful work.

Cathryn: You're Thank you so much, Zibby. 

Zibby: Okay, of course. All right. Enjoy your day. Bye.