Pets play a great role in our lives, be it cats, dogs or other pets. You may wonder what role these play in our lives. Pets are fun to be with and play a major role in driving our blues away. The companionship you share with your pets after a hard day at work can make you feel better.
How can pet cats give you ideas to write your stories? Pet cats, for instance, can teach us a lot many things. You can even relate them to your creative writing ideas.
Warmth
The warmth and the cozy bonding that you share with your pet cat can be a wonderful trigger for your stories. Sharing a good rapport with your cat can be one of the themes of your story. The bonding that you and your cat share is similar to the relationships that your characters may nurture in their lives. For instance, you can introduce the element of love or romance in your story. Substitute your cat with a lover in your writing. This lends interest to your story and keeps your readers glued.
Caring
Cats are very possessive of their kittens. A mother cat exhibits protective behavior and may growl at others who approach her kittens. Their possessiveness reminds us of the loving relationship that a mother shares with her children. Use this trait of the cat to add some good dimensions to the characters in your story. For instance, you can carve a very caring and protective mother who is attached to her children as one of your characters.
Call sign
The mother cat is usually caring toward her kittens. As her kittens start growing, she tries to make them a bit independent by encouraging them to walk. As the kittens grow more mobile, many mother cats will use a “call sign” to signal the bolder kittens that they have ventured too far from the nest. Use this trait of the cat to add depth to your characters. You can introduce an element of suspense or symbolism in your plot. For example, you can change the mood of your story by introducing a storm at some point. A storm symbolizes impending danger. Introduce the color black. Include a description about darkness and use it to weave an element of foreboding terror.
Aggression
Sometimes, cats display aggression; it could be territorial, play-related, fear, or maternal aggression. Equate aggression with squabbles in your story. Not every story is a lived-happily-forever story. So add more interest to your story by introducing some disagreement among your characters. This could be an opinion disagreement between father and son or between spouses. Some short stories portray women exhibiting verbal aggression and men exhibiting physical aggression. The choice depends on you. Aggression may help in adding a realistic angle to your story.
Head butting/blinking
Cats display affection for their owners by using their heads, foreheads or chins. Some may blink their eyes in a slow and relaxed manner to express their fondness for you. Use this trait of cats to introduce some spice in your story: romance. Everybody loves romance. So dish it out among your characters. Add some nice romantic description in your story.
Image credit: Wendy Cope on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
I’m Smitha Abraham. I love traveling in my flights of imagination and use these flights to craft short stories and poetry. I am a budding writer from India. My passions are reading, creative writing, listening to music, learning new languages, meeting new people, getting acquainted with different cultures and traveling. Authors like Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, genres like magic realism, historical romance, and writing styles that are imaginative and flow effortlessly fascinate me. I love to unwind with a book curled up on a sofa or by gazing at the stars by the sea shore. I am a nature lover and spending time admiring the sunset and sunrise is relaxing for me.