Usually, a story idea bursts into my brain, often in the moments before I go to sleep, and I have to get my phone out to make a ‘sticky note’ of the idea. When I get the kiddies to bed the following evening, I then take the time to flesh out the idea and see if it has potential, more often than not I find that it doesn’t or that once fleshed out it becomes too similar to someone else’s already published idea.

Sometimes though, the idea comes from someone else and that is the case with my latest story. You’ll probably be aware (I hope) that my most recent book, Pandemic Pooches, is all about how our pet dogs are coping with their humans being at home all the time. When I launched this book a couple of friends said the illustrations were great, but they were cat people, so the book probably wasn’t for them. My brain took that information and instead of thinking ‘tough, I’m not a cat person’, I thought ‘hmmm, perhaps I could do a cat book’.

Now, the problem with that is that the only cat I have any real memory of is Tiger, the mean-spirited cat owned by my Nan and Grandad when I was a child. Tiger was a nasty piece of work as far as I remember. When I used to walk through their kitchen door it would swipe its claws at me and hiss. I don’t ever recall ever doing anything to cause Tiger to dislike me, though my Nan often says that it never did this with the other grandchildren, so I must have done something! Tiger drew blood from my skinny legs on many, many occasions and I was genuinely frightened every time I went to visit my grandparents…perhaps that is why Tiger used to ‘get me’.

During my time as a child and as an adult I have always been a dog person and although I find kittens (from a distance) quite cute, I have no interest in grown cats at all. So, you’ll understand perhaps, that for me to write a children’s book about cats is, quite frankly, weird! However, I couldn’t get the idea of Pandemic Pusscats out of my head.

I haven’t yet come up with the actual story, though the initial idea is there, but I have already produced 8 images of the Pandemic Pusscats and their families. I thought I would share the process of this in stages and so here we have Alan and his owner (currently nameless)…

Now that I have all 8 initial illustrations, I find that ideas are coming to me about what some of the cats think about their owners being at home, but I’m asking for help from cat-lovers, as I really don’t know enough about cats to come up with the whole story myself without a few tips. It isn’t often that the illustrations come first in my story process, but that seems to be the way this book is going and actually, it’s not too bad a way to work, so far.

If you think you can help me figure out what cats think about their owners being off and maybe what things they can’t get up to now their owners are working from home, then please comment below or send me an email to flowerguardbooks@yahoo.com My thinking is that a lot of cats, especially outdoor cats, probably couldn’t give a monkeys about their owners being at home, but that could just be my perception of the independent cat who couldn’t care less as long as there’s food and water always available at home. Prove me wrong though if this is a stereotypical view from a dog-lover who has no fondness for felines!

Thanks in advance!