{zchardetails:cara}

Cara is a striped African sandcat who works on the crew of {zshow:iz} - it was her first job in the television world after a three-year degree in media studies. Growing up, she enjoyed watching gungy game shows and was particularly fascinated with IZ - though she was embarrassed about her liking of it, and hoarded episodes of it on her computer to watch them after dark.

She had a difficult time in school, being nervous and often picked on. During a summer camp, she had a bad experience with being picked out of the audience and gunged in a tank on a stage show against her wishes. On top of that, one of her best friends in university applied to IZ on her behalf as a joke. As a result she arrived at {zplace:pinehillstudios} very fearful of what lay in store for her, especially as {zchar:alex} had requested the crew to keep the show she was working on a secret, and was picking up on signs throughout her orientation day that a surprise was going to be sprung on her.
 
At her welcoming party she learned she was going to be gunged as an initiation, and went back and forth between fear and enjoyment during the chase the crew had set up for her. In the end, the game and the good-natured gunging was a much better experience for her than she had imagined, and helped her begin to get over her bad experience in the past.

As part of Industrial Zone's backstage crew now, Cara is slowly beginning to fit in and is working with a set designer, Lorna. Her shyness to do with anything messy also kept her away from joining others in the recording booth to watch shows being filmed until a meeting with two of the friends who had put her name down in the past helped her past that too. Although she wouldn't admit it out loud to many, she has a grudging respect for contestants who might bend rules or exploit small loopholes, as she did herself during the initiation chase, and is often hoping to see more clever escapes or dodges during recordings.

Many of the other crew members think that she and Ander would be good together. Cara denies any interest in her friend, for now.

Cara was created by TheFanfox.

==== Influences ====

Cara Aurata's species was chosen because TheFanfox had always loved sand cats and loved the idea of her nervous character being a smaller species animal rather than something larger, as it would let her be agile during the chase sequence and squeeze through smaller gaps.

Her name is derived from the Latin species name for the African Golden Cat (//caracal aurata//), a close relative of the African Sand Cat.

Cara's insecurities around gunge and the incident that incited it are based off thoughts and events that happened to TheFanfox, who wrote Cara as she had once been a few years prior to the writing of Backstage Crew.

===== Appearances =====

{zcharstories:cara}