Behind the Whiskers: The Serious Craft of Intentional Nonsense

Cats and ridiculous tales are, in fact, two very serious ideas when it comes to doing their job of entertaining people. Readers want to be charmed and allured by words and scenarios—but how exactly do you do that? Ridiculous tales only work when rules are followed, and these are not your everyday rules.

When I was writing the short stories for Purrfectly Ridiculous Tales, I learned that even absurdity requires boundaries. If a cat could speak, yes, that was fine. If a teacup had opinions—and excellent ones at that—and if gravity simply forgot its job, then it was even better.

However, once the nonsense was established, there was no going back. There was no need to apologise or panic that something had gone wrong. These 25 stories shouted at the top of their lungs by treating the impossible as mundane and letting the reader do the job of catching up!

Maybe you could call it selective seriousness being just as committed to how ridiculous something happens as to what happens.

From a distance, all the short stories might look the same just different ideas. But it’s only after reading them all that you begin to understand the intellect of humour employed throughout the book. That intellect lives in timing as much as imagination. 

A joke that arrives too early feels rushed; one that lingers too long forgets why it was funny in the first place. Writing these stories taught me that nonsense has rhythm. A pause here, an unexpected turn there, and suddenly the ridiculous lands with precision instead of chaos.

Cats, of course, make excellent teachers in this regard. They are creatures that move effortlessly between dignity and absurdity without explanation. One moment, they are ancient deities surveying their kingdom; the next, they are startled by their own reflection. 

That duality became a quiet guide while writing—take the situation seriously, even if the situation itself is completely unhinged.

Besides, these are my actual four cats, whose personalities are very much based on who they already are in real life! Mini, Bunty, Babli and Prince Goldie. All they had to do was come to life in the book.

There is also a strange kind of trust involved. It’s about trusting the reader to follow you into nonsense without holding their hand. Explaining a joke ruins it. Over-justifying the absurd drained its magic. 

The intentional nonsense came from real-life events: a yoga retreat, a book launch, a book and film festival, and more. But it was never about being random. It was about being creative - creative enough to choose rules that make no sense on paper, and disciplined enough to obey them once they existed!

That's what made the ridiculous comforting, the strange become familiar, and the laughter feels earned rather than forced.

And maybe that’s the real secret behind the whiskers: nonsense wasn’t the absence of meaning.

It meant wearing a silly hat (or wearing those silly whiskers), typing on the keyboard, and daring people to take things seriously. That’s exactly what I had to do—even if it meant pulling out my own ridiculous strategy cards to craft these stories.

So, if you ever wondered how these short stories were made, there was strategy and invention; real life scenarious and alot of humour - things that I knew would make people think twice and even laugh!