I learn to upload photographs

This a photograph of my* cat, Simba. He is currently resident in Nuneaton, Warwickshire with my friends Fred and Sylvia, and their other cat, Sam-puss. Both cats are male, although Sam as a kitten was thought to be female and was called Sue, until we noticed she had something little-girl-cats don't. The cats play nicely together, and are known collectively as Sim and Sam.

When I started writing the first chapter of Chaos Man, I had a character list the names of guests at her forthcoming dinner-party. I included the names Sam and Simon because they were deliberately ambiguous; Sam could be short for Samantha, and/or Simon could be short for Simone. They turned out to be a gay couple when I wrote the dinner-party scene. (I also had Ali and Ian, but they didn't show.)

I wasn't thinking of cats when I chose the names; they just emerged from under my fingers as I typed.



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*to the extent that a cat is anybody's, that is.