Paws, Pens, and Productivity: A Study of Pets and Creativity in Writing

Part One of Two—Summer Fun Blog Series on Writing

The solitary act of writing can be an emotional thing when you don’t have a full supportive network in your home or community. Many of the authors that I follow on YouTube have children sitting quietly on the floor behind them playing, or even randomly sprinting across the room. And then there are some who have their pets climbing into their laps, sometimes sitting directly on their desks.

It may seem a little distracting to be an independent writer, but the perks of self-publishing are that you are the one who gets to choose who is in your writing space. So today, I’m introducing you to mine.

Who’s in My Writing Space

I’m a writer with adult children and even grandchildren, riding a constant emotional roller coaster as an introvert who prefers to write and work solo. Besides my son, who lives with me, I don’t have many personal connections with others, and I’m mostly confined to my own home because of my disabilities. Outside of doctor appointments, movie or show nights with my son, and the occasional family get-together, I’m left alone to do what I want: write, despite my multiple and chronic medical conditions and illnesses.

So, as I sit here at my desk and write on the computer, my cat, Everest, lays on my papers nearby.

Although he’s not a “lap-cat,” like most of my previous coworkers bragged about having, he’s still the best pet I’ve ever had, and he’s an emotional support pet that feels like my best friend and writing collaborator.

Pawmanship: The Benefits of Writing with a Cat

How My Cat Helps Me with My Writing Journey

1. Environmental: At home, Everest is my constant writing companion. He’s a great paperweight, holding my loose pages down against the breeze from my desk fan, and he even joins me during my bathroom tile writing sessions.

   
   

2. Relationships: He’s family, he’s my friend, and he’s my writing partner. I chose him at the shelter without knowing what to expect from his attitude or behavior, but at least he doesn’t talk back like a child would. I wanted a companion, and he turned into so much more than that.

   
   

3. Health: He reminds me to take care of myself, physically and mentally. Physically, Everest inspires me to keep up with my yoga. Whenever he comes downstairs after a nap to visit me in my writing space, he stretches right there in front of me, reminding me it’s time for a quick break. Mentally, those visits give me a reason to smile and feel silly again. Even though he’s not the type of cat who’ll let me pick him up and hold him, he’s still a reason I live today. He does let me pet him, though, which is a comfort, and softer than the keys on my keyboard.

   
   

4. Growth: He supports my writing journey and my growth, too. He’s part of my writing career now, showing up in the very posts I write about him.

And it’s not just me. Some of the most celebrated writers in history leaned on their cats too, especially when life got hard.

Writers and Their Cats

Some of my favorite famous writers had cats that helped them in their own lives. Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway were two of them!

Mark Twain: A Sucker for Cats

“Mark Twain also had a hard life at times and he faced the trials that came his way by using his famous sense of humor to get him through the dark times. He also had another secret weapon. Cats. Twain ‘was a sucker for cats.’ He even went so far as to say ‘that animals were in many ways superior to the human race.’ Twain liked to walk around with one of his many cats on his shoulder, and when one of them, Bambino, went missing he took out an advertisement in the newspaper and offered a reward to whoever brought the cat home.” —Marya Jansen-Gruber

That humor got tested for real. After he lost his wife, Olivia, Twain grew more reclusive, and cats like Bambino were some of the company that stuck around. His missing-cat ad for Bambino even included a full description: "Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light."

And Bambino wasn't the only one. At one point Twain had up to 19 cats living with him, each with a better name than the last: Sour Mash, Zoroaster, Blatherskite, even one called Satan. He loved them so much that when he traveled and couldn't bring his own cats along, he'd rent kittens for the summer instead of going without. As he put it himself: "If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

Twain would've loved what's trending now: cat cafés. Instead of renting kittens for the summer like he did, we can just show up, order a coffee, and pay to spend time with cats who already live there. I've had the privilege of visiting a few of these cafés myself, and honestly, it's a lot like Twain's rental idea, just with better coffee. Find your closet cat café here!

Ernest Hemingway: Key West Cats

And what’s better than having a friendly pet nearby to help you in your writing journey, even if they themselves have some type of abnormality in their physical or behavioral traits? Ernest Hemingway had a polydactyl cat (a cat with six toes) named Snow White, a kitten given to him by a ship’s captain, and some of the cats who live at his old home in Key West today are her descendants. Cats were a recurring presence in his own writing too, showing up in stories like “Cat in the Rain.”

Hemingway was a lifelong cat person, long before Key West. He grew up with cats in Illinois and Michigan, and had them wherever he lived after that: Toronto, Paris, and later his farm in Cuba. It's still his Key West cats that people remember most, though, so much so that polydactyl cats are now often just called "Hemingway cats." The museum there is currently home to somewhere between 40 and 50 of them, all descended from Snow White, the kitten a ship's captain once gave him.

I have my own quirks worth noting: my own cat is a sweet scaredy-cat who I sometimes wonder if has some type of eye condition or partial blindness. And here’s a fun coincidence: the ship captain’s own cat, Snow White’s mother, was actually named Snowball. I once had a pet rabbit named Snowball myself.

How Involved Can You Get Your Pet?

I know I've written about pets too, some in fantasy worlds and others in nonfiction, like this post right here. Everest even makes an appearance in one of my Reedsy Prompts short stories, "Steps Toward the Spectrum."

When I was organizing my printed manuscript pages, or my own hand-written pages and designs, I’d lay them out on the floor. Everest would be the cautious and curious cat he is and would just sit on them. He loves sitting on a random piece of paper or stack of paper on the floor.

One of my most unique methods is the Bathroom Tile Mapping Technique, in which my cat would participate with me. He’d sit on the mat of the bathroom floor and watch me. Even though I think he’s a little blind, I think he could see that I was writing on the side of the porcelain tub with a dry-erase marker. We’d be there together for up to half an hour at a time.

There are times that Everest is all the way upstairs, and when I go to turn on my printer and press the “start printing” button, and it starts to work, he’d come bolting down the stairs just to come and watch the paper spit out of the machine. When I’m doing a double-sided print, he gets more interested and will swat his paw at the paper just before it gets sucked back into the machine. Of course, at times, there would be a part of the page that is partially shredded because of him. Each time, it makes me laugh.

Join the Conversation

Do you have a pet who joins you while you write? We’d love to see them! Drop a photo of you and your writing companion in the comments!

Stay tuned for Part Two, where I’m talking about summer vacation and why taking a break matters just as much as the writing itself.

Resources

Writers and Their Pets: True Stories of Famous Authors and Their Animal Friends – Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews, Kathleen Krull, 2019

Mark Twain Liked Cats Better Than People – Smithsonian Magazine, Kat Eschner, October 16, 2017

Our Cats – Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, no date listed

Ernest Hemingway and His Key West Cats – What's Pawsitive, February 21, 2019

Steps Toward the Spectrum – Reedsy Prompts, Weekly Prompts Contest #286, LifeCycles Creative Media, January 25, 2025

How to Brainstorm a Book: 4 Unique Techniques for Writers – Inspire Books Blog, Jacquelyn Lee, July 20, 2026