Cat’s Eye has been described as Atwood’s most autobiographical novel, and Atwood herself has acknowledged certain autobiographical connections. Born in Ottawa, Atwood spent much of her childhood in northern Quebec and Ontario, where her father, like Elaine’s, worked as an entomologist. Like the novel’s protagonist, Atwood struggled to adjust to life in the city when her family moved to Toronto and to make friends in the mainstream education system. Also, like Elaine, she found herself set apart from other girls, who found her love of insects strange and her unwillingness to wear dresses unusual. At one time, she became the target of severe bullying, an experience mirrored in Elaine and Cordelia’s difficult relationship. Atwood has suggested that writing about Elaine’s traumatic childhood allowed her to confront the emotions she too had suppressed from her own childhood. Atwood’s experiences therefore heavily inform the novel’s exploration of The Specter of Male Violence and the Reality of Female Violence.

The theme of Vision and Visual Art also draws inspiration from Atwood’s own life. Like Elaine, Atwood was a visual artist before she was a writer, attending first the University of Toronto and then the Sheridan College of Art.