In the last 15 years of her life, May Sarton published a series of journals about aging: At Seventy and After the Stroke. She said, "If I were in solitary confinement, I'd never write another novel and probably not keep a journal, but I'd write poetry because poems, you see, are between God and me." She said, "My cat likes to go out at one in the morning, so I have to let him out. And at two he meows to come in. [During that time] I make notes for poems. And then in the morning, when I'm all there, as much as I ever am, I work at them. I would not still be a poet without the cat."