Hello all,

Your kinda my last hope for ideas. I'm in my final year of uni and I'm making an animated short about a cat that lives in a fish shop. I've based it on a cat that lives in a fish shop in Huddersfield but I plan to use my cat, Remus as the star instead. My plan was for it to be similar to the Simon's Cat animations, funny, some anthropomorphism and makes cat owners relate to it. The fish shop of course has other animals mainly fish but also reptiles, birds, rabbits and rodents. The cat is meant to be mischevious and naughty. I have been keeping a blog about it and my dissertation at Emma's Final Year Project Research

The point to this is that I'm not a very good writer and I'm a bit stuck for a good story idea. I'm also not sure whether to do short clips like the looney tunes episodes or as a short film story. I was wondering if you would all help me come up with ideas or if anyone could write me a story. I'm sorry if posting this here annoys anyone but I thought seen as your all cat owners you will all have funny stories or experiences with your cats that could be used in my animation.

Thank you for any help you give. I look forward to hearing your ideas

__________________

Short clips like garfield type cartooning would be good. Because then the story won't drag on you can make them short and funny.

My cat is a lil silly around water, she sits by the bath dipping her tail in it then has to spend the next 30 mins (untill her tail is dry) chasing it, sometimes she looses her balance and falls in the bath and runs off leaving a trail of soapy puddles...she always seems confused as to how its happened and never learns!

Hope that helps with some ideas! good luck x

As it's a shop, you could have fun exploring the cat's reaction or attitude to lots of different customers... Knocking someone's hat off? Stealing a feather in a lady's hat? Trying to attack a man's beard? making faces at babies so they cry? Stealing things from people's shopping bags?

Unfortunately the funniest thing my cats ever did might not be suitable for a 'family rating'. A lady and her children came to see a litter of kittens I had, and when I ushered them into the room I was horrified to see the kittens had gone through my handbag and were now running about playing with several Tampax 'mice'. And yes, the children did as mummy if they could get some toys like that for their cat...

I did have a Siamese who loved retrieving - you could spend hours with her throwing toys and she would bring them back time after time after time. She viewed any visitors as potential toy-chuckers, and of course they would oblige, but not for as long as she wanted. So she would simply drop her toy into their coffee when they weren't looking! I made her lots of different toys from fur fabric, assorted sizes. Once she pestered a visitor to play with a mouse-sized toy but he ignored her. So she left the room and came back with a bigger one... rat sized. Still no response. She fetched a slightly bigger fur toy - small rabbit size. Nothing. Finally, in utter frustration, she brought in the big guns - a HUGE toy the size of another cat, which I had made as a joke from the last piece of fur fabric.... dragging it in while growling. Now that got a reaction!

__________________
‎

Great ideas so far! Especially love yours merlin... really made me laugh. I will also be looking at the Garfield strips, great idea too. Thanks

Will post the story I go with and when its done the animation I hope you will all like and thanks for the help. Please keep them coming!

__________________

Actually Boris is sat on the printer watching me on the computer. He just sat on the printer 'ON' button and now is completely startled by the noises beneath him!

Oh, and he has an obsession with the toilet flush. He will come running into the bathroom and stick his head into the toilet to watch the water go down. Not normal feline behaviour, I'm sure. But as if I could ever get a normal cat?!

I think an amusing thing that most cats do is to "get in the way".

Millie particularly likes to fall alseep on my laptop keyboard or jumps on the paper you're reading and starts tearing it up.

Simple ideas like that???

Whilst storytelling/writing is not my forte, I am however a qualified animator/designer, so could possibly help if any were needed in that field?

__________________
UK Horses for sale and Kittens for sale

Hi Emma, I think you could find some of this Japanese writers work good for inspiration about cat stories. His name is Haruki Murakami, and his best book (IMHO) with regard to cats and characters involved with cat is 'Kafka On The Shore';

The plot is a slow-ravelling two-strander. In the first strand, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura (we never learn his real name) runs away from Tokyo and his sculptor-father who kills cats to make flutes from their souls. Kafka winds up in the provincial city of Takamatsu on the smallest of Japan's main islands, Shikoku. Here the cross-gender librarian of a private library, Oshima, and its enigmatic owner, Mrs Saeki, provide the mature-beyond-his-years runaway with employment and a roof. The second strand begins as an X-File recorded by American Occupation forces, and narrates how a group of wartime evacuees foraging for food in the Shikoku mountains glimpsed a possible UFO before losing consciousness for several hours. All subsequently recovered, except for one boy, Nakata, who remained in a coma for some weeks before waking up, as he says, "not very bright", but with the power to talk to cats.

Five decades later, in the course of his job as a finder of strayed household felines, Nakata is coerced by Kafka's father (posing as "Jack Daniels") into stabbing him to death in a "kill me or the cats get it" scene. Back in strand one, Kafka falls in love with the 15-year-old ghost of Mrs Saeki and begins an affair with his employer Mrs Saeki, in reality old enough to be his mother, whom she may well be. To evade the investigation into his father's death, Kafka goes to earth in Oshima's mountain hut. In the depths of the surrounding forests he finds the entrance to a semi-real hinterworld. Meanwhile Nakata, whose attempt to turn himself in for murder is dismissed as simple dementia, follows a psychic urge westwards in the company of a drop-out truck driver, Hoshino, all the way to Takamatsu, Shikoku. Here the novel's two strands braid themselves together.

Huruki's books will draw you in, and a constant theme throughout them are cats. If you want to read it there's a review here Review: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami | Books | The Guardian

Anyway hope that helps, and good luck with your work.

Hi Emma - my advice is to keep it simple - sometimes less is more, it's all about timing. If you are using animation tell the story through the pictures. For example - as the cat lives in the fish shop s/he will be used to living there and will have a terratorial routine (cats revisit areas of a house like a patrol). You could have a scene where your cat is seen looking into a fish tank and the POV (point of view) is from the front. The fish inside - obviously familiar with the cat peering in from the back - goes about its fishy business while the cat's distorted image (as seen through the water and could be magnified) is watching the fish. This could be about the expression the cat uses in her/his fascination or desire for the fish. n occasional large paw could trace the fish as it swims across the tank. Just an idea! I did a Masters in writing scripts for radio and television and learned that you should give your audience something to do - don't hand it to them on a plate. Say it in pictures and actions - see what you can get away with without dialogue - like Simon's cats. Hope it works out - good luck. LM