I talked earlier about trying to write while thinking about the emotional life of children. And I definitely do that, but sometimes I also think about the emotional life of cats. I have a kitten now. He’s just turned one. And for many years I had two cats named Pongo and Mercy. And when Pongo and Mercy were young — so, really back in the olden days — they had fleas and worms and all kinds of gross kitty ailments because they were rescue cats.
And they were still pretty shy of people and I would have to take them to the vet for these ailments. So, what I would do — because I had a cat carrier. You know, you have to take a cat in a box to the vet. You can’t just carry them freestyle.
And then they would start to cry and they would just — they were terrified in that box and they would be like [meows] and my heart would sink because I love them and I had just betrayed them by wrapping them in a towel and shoving them in a dark box and now I was just going to take them outside to the terrifying veterinarian.
So, I started to think that maybe there was a story about cats in a cat carrier and how frightened they were and all the things that were going on in their minds while they were in this box. And pretty quickly that turned into three toys who had been shoved into a backpack and the backpack is dark and it smells like a wet bathing suit and they had been packed in the night while they were asleep so they wake up in this backpack and they begin to freak out about where they’re going.
Are they going to the terrifying zoo or to be dropped off and abandoned? Are they going to the garbage dump to be left there with the soggy old milk cartons and dirty green beans and things? Are they being taken to the vet? And they don’t even know what the vet is. They just know it’s bad news over there. And I wrote this story, and that was the beginning of the Toys Go Out series. So it came from thinking about my cats and how they felt.
