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| The One-Eyed
Cat and Other Critters |
| Read a book and it’s
likely that you’ll find at least one animal in it. He may be
playing a supporting role, perhaps as the feline friend of detective.
Or the animal might be the main character, such as a certain popular
cow dog that lives on a ranch in Texas. |
| Why do writers like
to include animals in their stories? One reason is that we ourselves
have pets and want the people in our stories to have animals, too.
It’s part of creating a world for our characters—a comfy
couch by the fireplace, some hot chocolate in a mug, and a red-and-blue
striped poodle, whoops, make that a white or a black poodle…
(Unless, of course, your story takes place in a fantasy world and
then you can use any kind of crazy animal you want.) |
| Writers have also
discovered that animals can help reveal information about a character.
Say you have a 60-year-old man in your story. |
| You want to show
he’s a good guy, but it would be boring to just say, “Clarence
was a nice man.” Instead, you could show us he’s a kind
person by writing something like this: |
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My guinea pig Houdini |
“Clarence
squinted his eyes at the shadows near the base of the tree.
Something had moved. He stepped closer. It was a kitten, half-drowned
from the storm the night before. Clarence bent down and scooped
up the miserable creature, wrapping it gently in the folds of
his sweater. ‘There, there, little fellow,’ he said.
‘You’re going to be just fine.’” |
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| I don't know about you,
but I'm just about ready to invite old Clarence to my birthday
party. |
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| Dogs with Poor Table Manners |
| Another reason writers
put critters in their stories is that some things are just funnier
when an animal does them. For instance, about two years ago I took
half of a chocolate cake over to my neighbor’s house. She put
it on her kitchen table. A little while later, her teenage daughter
said, “Hey Mom, what happened to the cake?” We ran to
the kitchen and found the plate on the table—licked clean. Their
blond Labrador, Gypsy, stood nearby with a few telltale cake crumbs
around her mouth. My first emotion was horror that a dog, and not
me, had scarfed down all that chocolate cake. My second thought was,
“I need to write this down—it would be great to use in
a story.” (Gypsy got a little sick that night, but was fine.
Apparently, chocolate is really bad for dogs.) |
| Cats and Mice I Have Known |
| Lots of young people ask where
I got the idea for Callie, the one-eyed Calico cat in my book, “Galveston’s
Summer of the Storm.” I tell them that a one-eyed cat used to
live on my street. Whenever I took walks in my neighborhood, she would
slink up and rub herself against my ankles in a friendly sort of fashion.
Similarly, a friend’s mutt whose name was Daisy inspired the
dog Sandy in that same book. |
| One of the new books I’m
working on will have a mouse as the main character. I thought hard
about tackling a rodent character. After all, there are so many great
mouse books out there—“Stuart Little,” “The
Tale of Despereaux,” “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH”
to name a few. What more could I add to the mouse genre? But this
little mouse named Joey kept intruding into my thoughts. To get him
to stop bugging me, I finally promised him that I’d write a
book about his adventures. (By the way, my daughter just happens to
have white mouse that shares the same name.) |
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