Let's rewind back a decade to 3rd or 4th grade. I was a dorky, socially awkward little girl who had an imagination so big that nobody wanted to hang out with me. Seriously, if I could go back and tell myself how stupid I looked by doing 99% of the things I was doing... man... things would be different...
So anyway, here I was, this short-haired, whiny, annoying little girl who refused to wear jeans (until I got a nano kitty- then it was cool to wear it on the belt loops :-3) and instead wore leggings (ugh!) and matching shirt and pants sets. I may have looked too young for my time... or too old... or... outdated... um... but anyway I had an undying love for cats. Yes, cats were one of my obsessions of choice. I decided that I was going to create a world called Planet Cat.
Planet Cat was the size of Earth and was basically just like Earth but with a different continental setup. There was a special country, the main focus really, of Planet Cat. Its name? Cat. That's right. Continent Cat on the planet of Cat. It was kind of like Australia- being a continent and a country all in one. It was "strikingly" shaped like a cat's head too. It was round with two big, pointed peninsulas for ears, and there were two lakes where eyes would have been and they even had islands in the middle for complete eyes. There was also a triangle-shaped lake for the nose and rivers that made the mouth. Real original? Yeah... Realistic? No. It occurred alongside a large landmass that looked an awful lot like North/South America. The "South America" part was shaped like a tie, giving it the name Tie-Land. No joke.
There were two "cities" that I familiarized myself with. In the island on the "west eye" was New Italy and in the island on the other eye was Zealand. Original? No. They were obviously named after places I was interested in visiting at the time. If you're wondering, I have been to Italy but I still have yet to go to New Zealand. Remember these names. They sort of came back when I revisited this country in high school.
In late middle school, I created a country that was made up of states (sound familiar? United States???) that I could relate to, because by now I was... living... in my world... I called it Kiillaana. I had several rough drafts before coming up with the final 40-state map that I refer to today. Don't ask me why there are three repeated letters in a row. I don't know. I think it was because I had a language idea that didn't really take off. The inhabitants of Kiillaana (pronounced ki-la-na) speak a language called Kevian (because I used to have a multi-planetary system and this particular planet was called New Keva and they had a universal language. I nixed that to make it more historically accurate.). People of Kiillaana are referred to as Kiillaanian, the Kiillra, or sometimes Kevian. It looks a little too familiar to the United States, but this is in part so I could travel somewhere and keep the travel times contained and consistent with the "real world." By the way, Kevian = English, the language is the same to both worlds.
You may have noticed that Kiillaana was not what I was just talking about a paragraph earlier. That's because it isn't! Kiillaana in fact established itself on "Planet Cat" along with this cat-shaped country-thing. Since I "live" in Kiillaana, and not this catty island, I established it first before giving Continent Cat a major facelift and upgrade. By the way, Kiillaana, in relation to Tie-Land, is the "knot" in the tie. Continent Cat is where the real-world Bahamas, etc are approximately located. Therefore, it is southeast of Kiillaana.
So what ever became of this "Continent Cat?" Well, I don't remember when, but when I decided to include it as a legit country in my world, it acquired the better, more original, and more native-sounding Catarika. A much better name than Cat and with this name it was less-dependent on cats to back everything up and could be opened more to new ideas. I finally drew it out as a junior in high school and it still has a cat-like resemblance but not enough to be able to really tell. The lakes for eyes are still there and the island in the east lake is still there, but the other lake is island-less now. The lakes are not in line with each other anymore, so they look less like eyes and more like actual lakes, although they are quite round. The nose is gone and so are the rivers that form the mouth, although there have been hints in some of my writings as to rivers and mountains in the central part of the country. Along with the upgrade to V. Richlin-worthy status, the names of cities changed and even a race was established. Remember New Italy and Zealand? They changed to sound not-so-obvious and more spicy (spicy is a generic term I use for amything exotic or of another country).
New Italy, which was located in the western eye island (and is now along the coast of that lake, seeing as it lost its island) was transformed into Nialli. A very pretty name indeed, and you can't tell that it was once New Italy. Zealand still exists as it did a decade ago, in the island of the eastern lake, although its facelifted name is Zirin (or Zeren, depending on the source). Zirin now coexists with another city on the island called Zahala. The capital of Catarika is Rihanu, and NOT Nialli like "everyone" thinks.
Above you should see a map of modern Catarika. The two first cities are highlighted in pink. Now you can see what I have been talking about.Moving right along, I began to have a great interest in race and language. I had started "speaking" a made-up language that really had no purpose but to sound spicy way back when this first came about. By the way, the language of the people of "Cat" was Catin. Today, in Catarika, the people and language are referred to... as... Catin. The two may look the same, but their pronounciations are very different. The former rhymes with Latin. The latter, which I have been using since a text-to-speech program said it this way many years ago, is pronounced cay-tin. From here on out, every time you see the word [Catin] it is pronounced cay-tin. Simple as that.
The Catin language and race have very distinct Japanese influences, since that was the language I studied in high school. If you know how to speak Japanese, that is how you speak any Catin name, word, or phrase. If you don't know what Japanese sounds like, you can try relating the world to African words, since many early names sound African as well. I'm going for an easy, phonetic (for the most part) language here. Basically every letter makes one, maybe two sounds, so it's pretty easy. In a later post I will give out a basic guide to language. Let's focus on the race for the remainder of this post, shall we?
The typical Catin is not terribly tall. The average height of males is about 5'8'' and for girls it's about 5'6''. Their voices tend to be on the higher side so when they sing you'll hear lots of tenors and sopranos in relation to altos and basses. Typical Catin hair is stick-straight, sleek, smooth, shiny, and jet-black. This is where the Japanese influence has come about most. There is no curl in Catin hair at all unless they have some Kiillaanian or other blood, for most of the other races tend to have more textured hair. The most notable feature of a Catin is the eyes. I don't know how else to describe this but that their eyes are cat-shaped. They are slightly round and the ends come to a high point, if that makes any sense. The eye color for 99.9999% of Catins is brown. The only exceptions are the rare genetic varieties of blue and green, or of course mixed heritage. Their noses are small and catlike with a straight nasal bridge. The end of the nose turns up slightly in most. Their faces tend to be oval-shaped with higher cheekbones and a smooth, pointed jaw. Basically, look at a picture of me for the face shape or look at my Catin drawings. There are exceptions, as there are in any race, but that's the generic umbrella of looks. As for body type, Catins tend to have big hands and feet with long fingers and toes and are slender-built for the most part. Catin men do not typically go bald or gray. Think likeness of the cat. There is a historical backing for this, which I will discuss later.
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