Let’s take a closer look at the ginger cat who helped inspire Clover.
I’m a cat person (not like a tabaxi, just someone who really loves cats), so—naturally—when Wizards of the Coast included a feline race in Volo’s Guide to Monsters, I knew I had to create a character around it in our next campaign. I also knew two things I wanted from the character: I wanted her to be a monk, and I wanted her to be orange. I’d always wanted a ginger cat but had yet to experience the…experience. Fortunately, since our first campaign took six years to finish, by the time campaign two rolled around, I had achieved my dream of cohabitating with just such a cat.
For those who have never had an orange cat, there are some things you should know. First, most of them are boy cats. Second, their level of spice can be second to none. Third, their level of adoration for their chosen human can be second to none. My husband and I wound up adopting an abandoned ginger kitten at the terrifyingly tender age of 4 weeks. He was so tiny I actually cried. But that face—I couldn’t get over how adorable he was. What I didn’t realize was that he came fully loaded with a personality that had no intention of bending to our will or the niceties of civilized living.
I’ll just come out and say it: Mozzie was a chaos demon. Since he was partially feral, he was aggressive and rude and destructive and still so, so tiny. I assumed that he would grow out of his awful behavior with lots of love and the friendship of our two older, very nice cats. He was, after all, so young, with so much to learn. Surely we could mold him into an amazing cat like our other two. Well, I’ve been wrong about some things before, but never have I been so catastrophically wrong as I was about that. For a year I butted heads with that cat in a way I’ve never experienced with a pet. He destroyed my plants, tore up our window screens, scratched at our TV, tormented our other cats, attacked our hands at the slightest touch, dug through our drawers, shredded our carpet…need I go on? At my wits' end, I broke down and told Ben we had to re-home him. I was devastated. As much as I couldn’t stand the little spice demon, I’d never given up a pet before.
A few months into our search for a new home, something oh-so strange happened. Mozzie chose me as his person. Me. Not Ben, the person who had gotten up in the middle of the night to bottle feed the little furball. Not Ben, who liked him and wanted to keep him and gave him is t-shirts to sleep with when he was cold and alone. Me. Why? Let’s call it divine intervention. This cat went from terrorizing me to insisting on snuggle time every single day. He purred, he made biscuits (so many biscuits!), he drooled and cuddled and gave me blinky eyes. He even started liking to ride around on my back. In short, he won me over fast and hard. Is he still a chaos demon? Absolutely. But he’s also the weirdest, most entertaining cat I’ve ever met.
So how did this half-pure-evil cat inspire my D&D character? Well, there’s the shocking lack of impulse control. There’s the obsessive nature (have I mentioned Clover is obsessed with keys and maps?). There’s the absolutely absurd speed and agility. There’s the weirdness of his sleeping positions…
…and there is, of course, the knack for punching things. Mozzie, bless his demonic heart, will sometimes punch me in the face if I am not paying attention to him at night. I have awoken to a slap on the forehead, a punch right in the eye, a bop on the cheek. And he hits hard. He tackles our other cats, parkours off walls, leaps tall objects in a single bound. In short, he is our very own little monk cat. Oh yeah, and he punches fire. He will fight any candle I light.
All in all, not a bad role model for a tabaxi monk. Every day is an adventure.