Be Like a Cat: Character Creation

I was fortunate to pick up a copy of Be Like a Cat at last years UKGE and I have just picked it up to get ready for some solo gameplay!

Due to me having a board game club, I don't tend to play solo games a lot so it is good to have a sit down and give it a go!

In Be Like a Cat, you are a cat! You create a backstory, set your skillsets and go on adventures! You can choose from 3 backgrounds which all have different bonuses and weaknesses (Feral, Stray and Domesticated).

It states in the gamebook to journal your gameplay. So, in true me fashion, I am not handwriting this, I am typing it. As I was typing it on Word, I thought 'Hang on, I made a blog ages ago that I rarely post on so I can post my journal entries of this game on here!' And that is precisely what I am going to do!

Please feel free to read. I am not a story writer (I teach Maths not English) but I am looking forward to doing this and seeing how it goes.

If you have played Be Like a Cat before and have documented your gameplay online, please share it with me! I would love to give it a read :D

Before the character creation and rules reading began!

The Backstory of Orange (human name Spice)

I was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere in the glorious peaks of the Peak District.

During the first few weeks, we stayed in a barn with some of the other animals. I’m not going to lie, being awoken by loud, proud looking birds at 5am in the morning make lots of noise was not fun. When we were 8 weeks, the farmer set up a room for us to stay in in their house with our mother. I was one of 5 kittens and I was the only boy. I was ginger in colour with bright emerald green eyes. As I got older, I liked playing around with my sisters much to their dismay (Hunt and Prowl skills). My favourite thing to do was hide amongst the furniture and jump out and scare them! My mother always used to moan at me for doing this but I was having far too much fun.

As we got older, people would come into our room and make a right fuss of us all. I tried my hardest to impress them all but didn’t like it when some of them got too close. Especially the younger looking ones. They were far too grabby (Cute and Scare skills). Slowly, over time, these people would come along, take one of my sisters and I would never see them again. This made me quite sad. Who was I going to scare if they weren’t around? Eventually, I was the only one left. I was 16 weeks old with no other kittens to play with. It was quite lonely. Mother was allowed to prowl around outside in the big open world beyond the doors of this farmhouse. Due to this boredom, I started getting up to mischief to entertain myself more than anything. The farmer’s wife wasn’t happy when she found me on evening at the top of her curtain rail (climb and land skills).

One morning, it happened. My life started. I was sat pruning myself on the rug in the middle of the room where I had lived for the past 8 weeks when a lady with brown curly hair and a friendly face entered the room. She wasn’t like any of the other humans I had encountered who had come in to see me and my sisters before. She was different somehow and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. She looked happy but on the inside, I could sense this intense sadness. She perched herself on an armchair next to the rug as the Farmer stood at the door chatting away to her. All of a sudden, I just had this overwhelming urge to jump on her lap and just comfort her because I just felt this negative energy from inside her. So, from the comfort of my rug, I got up onto my paws, stretched and did a big jump onto her lap and curled onto it. After a short amount of time, I felt the sadness slowly subside. It was still there but it wasn’t as dominant as it was when she first entered the room. After some time, she picked me up, placed me back onto the rug and walked away. I hoped she would come back some day. I really liked her. I told my Mum about her in the evening when she had come back from her travels.

“Maybe she is your human.” I hope so.

The next day, she was back! All smiles. She had a purple round thing in her hand and as I went over to greet her, she placed this around my neck. My Mum had one of these too with her human name on it (the name her humans gave her). So she was going to be my human! Before she could pick me up, I slowly went over to my mother. I knew this was going to be the last time I saw her. I gave her a gentle lick and went back towards my human. She slowly picked me up and cradled me in her arms as we walked out of the room I had known as my home and into a weird black thing with doors that moved! Humans have weird things. Why not just use your legs? We all have them. There was another human in this small contraption. A man. He smelt like smoke but had a friendly face. I sensed that immense sadness in him too. I wondered what had happened.

We travelled not too far away to a lovely little cottage. This place was known as Brown Edge. It was covered in lovely fields and other houses. We lived in a square with a church. The house was called Patchwork cottage. My humans were called Simon and Lizzy. They were only young. I loved my first few days. Exploring their home from top to bottom. There was a room that I wasn’t allowed in though. Simon raised his voice whenever I went near the door. What he didn’t know is that when he wasn’t here, Lizzy had actually let me in. Well, she hadn’t let me in. I was pruning myself on the landing when I sensed that sadness again and I heard this loud noise. I got up onto my paws and sauntered towards the room. It was a bright room with lots of vivid colours. She was perched on a chair next to a bed with bars on it and was just crying. I knew she needed some comfort so I did what I did when I first met her. Just jumped and curled up on her lap. I knew she appreciated that as the sadness subsided slightly.

In terms of going out and about, I haven’t really adventured that far out of the square really. This one time, I went out at night time and this really nasty creature with a long pink tail tried to bite me but luckily I managed to claw him away with my sharp claws (claw and bite skills). Now that I am a bit older and settled into life here at the Patchwork cottage with Simon and Lily, I am looking forward to adventuring further afield to see what’s out there in the big world of Brown Edge!

Oh, also, my cat name is Orange but my HUMAN name is Spice.