The Cat Who Would be Giant

So I failed at a couple of things. I wasn't up to the mark. But failure is just a detour, not a dead-end street. I sharpen my claws on failure!

Failure only makes me more determined and I will be the first cat to make Giant Squid!

I have more ideas now. It's always better to have a lot of ideas and for some of them not to work, than to have no ideas at all.

At the Giant Challenge of 31 March 2010, I will succeed!

How many times have I told myself I don't have time to reach Giantdom? There are only 24 hours of the day, or 7 hours if I deduct my nap time. What can I do in 7 hours?

I determined that to make good use of my time, I had to know what was most important and then give it all I've got. I set myself Goals. I used my rest periods as times of day-dream, of nostalgic peeps at the past. When I napped I dreamed of solutions to draughty corridors and global warming. I used these insights from my unconscious as the basis for each new lens.

I'm not alone, other cats have broken new ground before my time. Brave cats, fearless cats, full of derring-do. I'm inspired by these heroes to boldly go where no cat has gone before.

The Heroes of my youth still run through my veins, right alongside of the wild feline spirit bequeathed to me by the Honourable Ancestors.

I kept my eyes on the stars.

The sheer physical difficulties involved in writing has threatened, at times, to overcome me. But difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage! Challenges make Life interesting; overcoming them makes Life meaningful.

Fortunately I am nocturnal for, of necessity, all writing must be done at night when the woman is asleep. Luckily for me I can see in the dark, I only need the blue glow of the monitor to use the keyboard.

Then there's the matter of using just one claw to type. It's dreadfully slow work and dreadfully tiring work. Accidents can happen too. It's no joke having a claw snagged under the Shift key.

I've tried channeling the woman to auto-type in her sleep, so far with minimal success. Unusual, as she is pretty well susceptible to mind-control in her waking hours and I have it down to a fine art. To this day she still doesn't know why she bought the cat-sized notebook, why she leaves it next to my basket, or why the batteries are flat in the morning.

When you first learn to bat a feather round at the end of a string, you try and catch it. But the Life Lesson in this simple toy is to aim higher. And keep aiming. Eventually you will capture the whole shebang, feather, stick, string, even the door handle if you're determined enough.

In the same way, don't try to write a good lens. Write 50 good ones! 50 of your very best!

After you've published a lens, read and re-read it. Read it to yourself and read it aloud. You'll be sure to find a sentence you can tweak or a noun you can personify. I bet you find a lot of superfluous stuff too, excessive verbiage and repetitions.

Then get a friendly cat or a human pal to read the lens too. Was it easy to understand? Without getting into a brawl ask what improvements could be made. Think about the criticism, wait another day, them go back and read your lens again. (The woman has tips on what makes a good lens, good advice).

If you're determined, you'll get there.for sure.

This is called Ambition

When you take an active interest in the world around you, all manner of ideas will flow as inspiration for a lens.

I keep up with local politics, the bylaws and back-stabbings. Any sensible cat must - especially when he lives near a protected area with native wildlife. Economics is another source of inspiration, the price of food is of great importance to me. And sometimes there's a strange story on the evening news that positively begs for a lens!

For example, the curious incident of the Giant Cat . ......

Looking around at my family I was struck by the rich history of my ancestors. What an inspiring bunch they were! What a source of inspiration for a writer like myself!

You must have some characters in your cupboard too. Take a closer look at your ancestory and evaluate your current eccentric relations through the light of a lens.

If I omit the tyrannical Madame Geralde, a great, furry, dominatrix of a cat who ruled my early years with a paw of iron, and Joe, the clumsy bumbling tabby who shared my kitten basket, I can see a long line of Famous Cats. From divinities of Egypt to consorts of convicts, and those poor shattered souls from the Middle Ages.

But the most inspiring is the Wild Cat, the Honourable Ancestor.

While you were considering your family tree you were probably waylaid by fascinating characters who leaped out of history into your face. I was.

Now there's a vast reservoir of ideas for lenses. Who knows what's beneath the murky waters of the family lake. Even if you can't find a bear-baiter or bordello-babe, there's certain to be something. Did they live in a famous locality? During an eventful era?

Looking at my own history, I was inspired by my distant cousins who roamed the wild places long before this little black moggy, or anyone else, was born.

I think sometimes part of them is still within me. Along the gene thread some vestigial insanity is lurking and, on a dark night when the West Highland Terrier next door least expects it, I will surely kill him. (The Slayer of the Jungle unleashed!) But I am civilised and far too much of a gentleman to let myself give way to primordial imperatives. I am a philosopher after all.

There was many a strange branch on the evolutionary tree and the saber-tooth cat is just one of them.

It's no surprise that humans are constantly in search of information. Not being born with the astounding memory or natural intelligence of cats, they need to read things to learn anything.

This is a handy fact to know about humans, it helps to understand their behaviour.

Give them some information they can use - give them facts to bite on and ideas to chew on. Give them a helping paw.

You must always keep in mind that, due to lack of basic resources, people can be abysmally ignorant. Particularly on matters of great importance! The number of humans who unwittingly place cats (and dogs) in danger is horrific - and it's just down to lack of knowledge.

Do them a favour, and yourself, by pointing out the obvious.

You can open your heart when you write. Baring the soul is the mark of the true writer. Use your experience, your emotional responses, your frustrations and your glories. Don't be afraid to reveal yourself.

Tap into your Passion.