What inspired Miao, the googly-eyed cat?

Miao the cat started life in Jian Goh's blog. Now, the illustrator has a book out called Once Upon A Miao.

One sunny and hot afternoon in Seremban, Jian Goh was approached on the street by an elderly woman in distress.

“I have lost my wallet, my IC and all my cash! Can you please give me some money so that I can take a bus home?” she begs.

Goh did what any well brought up young man would have done: he gave her the cash.

After thanking him, the woman went on her way. Minutes later, Goh noticed a police station down the road.

“I realised that she could’ve actually approached the police if she had really lost her wallet and all. Then only did I realise that I could have been cheated,” the 30-year-old Sarawakian recounts in an e-mail interview.

And being a young man of his time, Goh naturally wanted to blog about this interesting life-lesson. But there was a problem: Goh couldn’t possibly narrate this entire incident to his blog’s readers.

“It would have been too wordy and less interesting,” he recalls thinking.

That is when an ingenious idea lit up in his head: draw a four-frame comic strip about it.

Goh uses his cat character to remind his readers about the innocence of childhood and the dreams one had as a child. Photo: Jian Goh

A recent posting in Jian Goh's blog (akiraceo.com) using Miao to tell his mother about his book.

“My readers liked it and a couple of friends told me they liked this style. That was when I decided to post comic strips on my blog.”

What came out of this most perplexing incident was the birth of a most interesting character: Miao the cat.

“When I started blogging, I needed something to represent myself. I love cats and, somehow, I am the only person who likes cat in my circle of friends, so I figured it was the best representation of me,” Goh, an engineering graduate, explains.

But it did not stop there. All his friends and family members eventually got an animal avatar too.

And what grew in popularity on his comic-strip blog, Miao & Wafu Pafu (akiraceo.com) ultimately culminated in Once Upon A Miao, a collection of Goh’s stories from his childhood before he moved to the peninsula to further his studies.

“Down the line, I realised that by using animals as the characters, I can remove any racial context in my stories,” he reckons.

“And animal characters make better merchandise!” Goh quips (he likes making quips – they’re prevalent throughout his book).

What the cartoonist realised while working on the 189-page book was “how similar and different life can be between the two regions”, referring to Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia.

“For example, we don’t live in trees, and we had the same childhood activities like catching fish, playing hide-and-seek and games like ‘Pepsi-Cola’ or ‘batu Seremban’.”

One of this writer’s favourite chapters from the book is entitled “Quarrel”. In it, Miao and his younger sister, Momo, fight over a pack of chips and the innocent quarrel turns tragic when Momo falls and hits her head on the floor.

Goh dramatised the incident, as any young boy would at such a moment, to the point that Miao deemed Momo dead. Such silly and light-hearted stories abound in the book, making it very relatable.

And this was one of the main reasons why Once Upon A Miao was written, Goh shares.

“I want to remind my readers to reminisce about the good old days spent with childhood friends and family, and also forgotten dreams that they used to have. In hopes that they will rekindle friendships, visit their hometown or parents, or pick up their forgotten dreams.

“The message that I’d like to share with younger readers is to cherish the moments they have right now and also for them to know it is okay to have a solid education background as set by their parents, and at the same time not lose sight of their own dreams,” says Goh.

When asked if he has any future plans for Miao, Goh replies that he hopes to continue his colourful stories in his next book and expand on the Wafu and Pafu characters, his pet hamsters.

“Imagine a How I Met Your Mother storyline (from the TV series), but instead, it’ll be called ‘How I Met My Pet Hamsters’,” Goh says.

Hopefully we don’t have to wait for nine seasons ... I mean, nine books before we find out how he met them!

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Once Upon A Miao is available at major bookstores in Malaysia. Follow Miao on his crazy adventures at akiraceo.com.