Have you ever felt invisible or alone in a filled crowd? Top that with being ignored and disrespected of your own family, and you have the most condescending situation imaginable. In the short story "Letter to a cat" from 1997, respect and care is one of the main themes. It takes respect and care to build a relationship. But disrespect and carelessness can equally tear a whole family apart.

Our main character is Norma, a very obese Irish housewife with a life dominated by routine and pleasing her family. She is a lady with very few hobbies in life: reading English literature, collecting shells and sowing her own kaftans. She is a naive and loving person, who time and time again offers her family the opportunity of accepting her. This we also see towards the end of the short story, where she offers them one last time to accept her, and her beloved kaftans. But the reaction is unambiguous:
"Ridiculous, I hope you're not even thinking of wearing that tomorrow!" As she rustled out of the room, Colonel Blimp gave her a long hard look and closed his eye.
Not even the cat supports her, and this, you could say, is the last push she needs to take action into her own hands.
Norma never gets any credit for her kind heart and compliant soul, and she is forced to put her few hobbies away in a little room, out of sight and out of the mind, by her husband and daughter.

Her husband and daughter are hardly described in the short story. They express great contempt towards Norma. Even the daughter, June, who is to be married soon, talks down to the mother in a superior and disrespectful way:
"Mother, would you stop pretending you're talking to the cat."
In the short story it seems, that Norma has no backbone, so she rarely speaks directly to her family, instead she utters her vaguely rebellious comments to the family through the cat:
"Colonel Blimp do you think that fascism is carried in the genes?" (first line)
Colonel Blimp (meaning an ultra-Conservative old soldier) is the one-eyed housecat - equally as careless and indifferent about Norma as June and Daragh, the husband. The title would indicate that the cat might have been Norma’s only ally, but the cat turns a deaf ear to Norma’s cries for attention and love which leaves Norma alone with her 16 stone body and low confidence.
The quote, which opens the short story, represents Normas thoughts of her daughter and husband. Indirectly she indicates that both Daragh and June are fascists – in other words, evil and hurtful people.

But every story needs a hero, and Norma’s knight in shining armour pulls her out of her safe and uneventful life. Arthur shows her respect, and cares about her, which quickly develops into a mutual trust between them. Norma realises, that she did not fit into the lives or the home of the rest of the family. Her life: the books, kaftans and shells, were separated from the rest of the family in a little room. But in Arthurs yellow tin-shed their lives and things complement each other and together they complete their collection of books English Literature and Philosophy.

You may say that Arthur brings Norma back to life. He cares for her, and makes her feel valuable. He feeds her, and makes her feel cared about. He makes love to her, and makes her feel beautiful.
Before she met Arthur, her view upon herself was very mixed.
"With her sixteen stone Norma would have been a success in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq - countries where real women are appreciated." (page one)
This quote represents her view upon herself. On one hand she recons, that she is a real woman. Who deserves respect and success, but she does not fight for this respect or success. She follows the road that she has been following all along, without any further complaints.

This lack of involvement might be cause by the ruthless treatment from her family. The lack of respect from her family has influenced her own view upon herself:
"They were works of genius, lovingly created in the lonely hours of a misfit's time."
The rough tone from her family has imprinted itself into her own mind, so therefore she refers to herself as a misfit.

Therefore has Arthur not only restored Norma’s own self-respect but also encouraged her to fight her own battles, which gives her the courage to go back and write the goodbye letter.

The title, "Letter to a cat", proves that even though Norma has made allot of progress since she got to know Arthur, then she is still not ready to face a confrontation with her husband and daughter. Therefore she uses the cat as a mouthpiece one last time.

The short story ends in a typical fairytale-style, when Norma walks towards the beckoning shores. Towards a safe valuable life – a better life at least.