How to write from a cat's perspective?
I want to write a short story from the perspective of a cat who wants to kill a bird that extremely annoys her. Just like Tom is trying every time to kill Jerry or do something to him. However, I don't know where to start and how do I make it look like a cat's perspective.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/29848. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
3 answers
You are accessing this answer with a direct link, so it's being shown above all other answers regardless of its score. You can return to the normal view.
Remember that all stories are told from a human perspective. Cats don't have grammar and they don't have stories. A cat's eye story, therefore, is an act of projection of the human into the cat. It is a human experience of a uniquely human ability: the ability to project themselves imaginatively into others, including animals. This ability is at the root of our capacity for sympathy and our love of stories. For a great example of this kind of projection, read The Once and Future King.
0 comment threads
I think I might be rephrasing what @MarkBaker says, but perhaps stating it differently would be helpful, especially since he seems to have attracted some antagonism.
You're telling a story. What is your story about? No, it's not about "a cat chasing a bird". What's it about at its core? Is it about hunter and prey? Is it about the futility of chasing an unattainable goal? What idea(s) do you want to express or explore?
What your story is about defines how you tell it. When Seton Thompson wrote The Pacing Mustang, for example, he wrote a story about freedom. He recognised that freedom and an indomitable spirit in the mustang, and then he focused on it and exaggerated it. A real horse might stop eating, but it won't commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The story you want to tell is bound up with the character who tells it.
Once you know what your story is about, you know who your character is - what kind of "person" your cat is. (Or vice versa - if you know the "person", you know the story.) From there, you'd need to add decoration to convince us that this "person" is a cat: the smell of things, the sensation of pouncing - all the physical attributes of the experience of being a cat. The senses your character has are those of a cat, and its body is that of a cat. Study cats, so you can transmit that realistically. But its emotions, its thoughts, its experience of concepts like "love", "responsibility", "freedom" etc. - those are human. They are merely wrapped up in a cat's body, presumably for the purpose of making some attribute sharper than it would have been otherwise.
0 comment threads
Study a bit how cats (supposedly) see the world, how they behave, and so on.
First of all, you should read a bit about cat vision. After all, you are going to describe the world from a cat point of view. From my first shallow research, it seems that cats are good to see at low light hours, like dawn/nightfall and night (obvious enough); they should have lower sensibility on colors (even if here scientists seem to disagree) and higher periphereal vision.
The other senses are important as well and can help you give the feeling of the point of view of a predatory animal.
Regarding cat behaviour, you can do a similar research. E.g. cats are less active during daytime, they like to sleep on relatively high places (rather than the ground), they have certain cleaning habits, they mark their territory in certain ways ... whatever can help.
Of course you are going to give the cat human-like qualities - since cats aren't supposed to have self-awareness - but that is to be expected. How should you play this, however, is entirely up to you.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads