Do You Talk to Your Pets?

Do you talk to your pets?

Or even if you don’t talk to them, do you sometimes imagine yourself having conversations with them?

Or perhaps you try to imagine what they’re thinking when they look at you or jump on you?

We’ve got two cats, Jack and Meg, and I often imagine myself talking to them, and I imagine them talking to me as if they are one cat: ‘the cats’ or just ‘cats’ on its own!

I write these imaginary conversations down and sometimes post them on social media or put them in books.

Here’s one:

Me: Have you seen my phone?
Cats: No
Me: I’m sure I left it on the desk here
Cats: Really?
Me: Oh look, it’s on the floor under the desk
Cats: It must have jumped off the desk on to the floor
Me: I wonder if an animal pushed it off the desk
Cats: Highly unlikely
Me: Really?

If you write like this, it’s like a play or a film script. There are none of those words like, ‘she said angrily’ or ‘then he walked out’ which you write when you’re writing a poem or story. One word for this kind of writing is a ‘sketch’. It means a short play, often funny, like you sometimes see on comedy programmes on the TV.

In this cats sketch I’ve made the cats be a bit sly, a bit ‘tricksy’. As you can see, I’m pretty sure that they’ve pushed my phone off the desk but they’re obviously fibbing. I like to think of cats being like that. They do things that sometimes mess up our lives like fight with the rug, eat food we left on the table for five seconds, and, as here, push things off tables and desks.

So why don’t you have a go at writing a Conversation with a Pet’?

You can be the person asking your pet questions, almost as if you’re a teacher or even a police officer!

You can try cross-examining them asking them why they try to catch their own tails, or why they chew their toys, or fight with the carpet.

Or, the pet can be asking you questions, trying to figure out why you do things like watch TV or put on shoes. After all, the human world must seem very strange to a pet!

Think of their character. Is it sly? Sometimes I make my cats out to be snobbish and contemptuous of me, as if I don’t really do anything interesting or important.

You decide what kind of character they are, and then exaggerate it a bit.

If you have an enthusiastic dog, make it out to be really crazy and desperately keen to be doing this, that or something else.

Or if you have a dozy cat, make out that it’s really lazy and can’t be bothered with anything!

And you can make yourself out to be anything you want: clever, silly, worried, fussy, hungry or whatever.

Then see if you can write a ‘sketch’ of you and your pet having a chat.

Then after you’ve written it, you can have fun reading it out with a friend or with someone from your family, putting on a funny voice for your dog or cat or whatever pet you’ve got.

Or, if you know something sad has happened to you or one of your pets, you can have a conversation where you try to understand what’s going on. I’ve done exactly that with my most recent book, Where are you, Eddie?. I tell the story of how Meg helps me understand something to do with my son Eddie, who died.

Good luck with your writing.