The Writer’s Cat

 “For writers and cat lovers alike – the book you didn’t know you couldn’t live without. Fascinating and indispensable!” Dr Deborah Challinor M.N.Z.M

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I read The Writer’s Cat: the Cat Behaviour Thesaurus for Fiction Writers, by Dr Caroline S. Bagshaw. I was told it was like The Emotional Thesaurus by Ackerman and Puglisi, which is every writers’ best friend, but a compilation of body language, behaviours and feelings relating to cats. Really? Who the hell knows what goes on in cats’ heads? Well, Dr Bagshaw, who has a Ph.D. in animal behaviour, does, and she’s put together an inventory of everything you could possibly want to know, from cat courting and mating, showing love and being unsociable, defending territory, hunting, being a parent, playing, self-care and feeling under the weather.

          But that’s definitely not all because Dr Bagshaw is also a published author and demonstrates with examples and different points of view (those of the cat, the cat lover, the cat hater, etc) how the behaviour and actions of a fictional cat might influence the characters in a story, as well as have an impact on the reader. As a writer who often includes cats in my own work, it will be very helpful to accurately portray their behaviour and the reasons for it, and not just depict them as naughty little beggars swinging on curtains and generally misbehaving, because, as we all know, cats are so much more than that.    

          From a personal perspective, as a cat person it’s delightful to have such insight into the verbal and body language of cats. I’ll never look at another moggy again without checking out what its ears are doing, and slowly blinking my own eyes in an effort to send a message of affection. I may be completely ignored, of course, but now, thanks to The Writer’s Cat, I’ll know why I’m being so disdainfully dismissed.