Here’s another installment in the behind the scenes sneak peeks for Cat Girl’s Day Off. Today I’m gonna tell you about the three main cats. There’s more, of course, but these are the three main cats you get to hear from.
Meep is Nat’s cat and, in a lot of ways, her first friend. She’s had Meep since she was really young. Meep is a special cat — she’s a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat (you know, for people with severe cat allergies, which Nat’s mom has). That means she’s also a really expensive kind of cat (I’ve based her loosely on the hypoallergenic cats available from companies like “Lifestyle Pets“). This is about what I imagine she looks like:
Meep!
If I’d really thought about her name before she became “Meep” to me, I’d have named her Pixel (bonus to you if you can figure out why), but once I started calling her Meep, the name stuck. Meep’s cat name and human name are the same since Nat just used the name that Meep gave her when she asked. Even kittens are very opinionated on what their names are.
Now, Rufus Brutus the Third aka Tiddlywinks (his human name given him by Easton West) is a cat of another color. Literally. He’s the cat on the cover of the book and yes, he is indeed pink. He’s a Scottish Fold cat which gives him a different kind of look — small, flattened ears, a roundish-face, and kind of buggy eyes.
He’s pampered, spoiled, and very opinionated. You know, a cat.
Since he’s the favorite pet of a rich and famous celebrity blogger he’s never experienced anything more taxing than…well, okay, he’s never before experienced any trouble. He’s always gotten his own way. So when the kitty litter hits the fan, it really gets his dander up.
He’s the cat that Nat sees in the online video that starts off the whole wild madcap caper and, to be honest, they don’t really hit it off in the beginning. But by the end, they’ve come to respect each other.
Harley / PD
Lastly, there’s Purr Daddy aka PD aka Pebbles (his human name). He’s Ian Abbot‘s cat and one of my favorite characters in the book. I have no idea how he came to be named PD (yeah, I know, if I don’t know who does?), but he’s always been that in my head. He’s actually the first cat I came up with. The first chapter of the book that I wrote is one where Nat is at Ian’s house (though she was named Kathryn/Kat then and he was called Nick) and PD figures large in it.
I love PD.
Originally he was going to be a calico, but most calicos are female, so he got changed to orange and white, which actually works out really well because my old cat Harley was orange and white. Harley died a few years ago (um, three-ish, back when we lived in Chicago) and I still miss him. One of my most favorite cats ever, though I’ve loved all of my cats. So PD looks like Harley. The picture here is the very last picture taken of Harley (day before he died). Just like PD, he had lots of attitude and a bit of a preoccupation with his nether regions.
If you have any questions for the cats, post ‘em here and I’ll have ‘em answer.
I’m having such fun reading these!