I had a rare opportunity to write about my cat today. I mean, someone else specifically requested professional quality writing about cats for publication on a paying website, and I wrote about mine. I have written about her before and also attempted to paint her for this blog. This cat is a very particular representative of her species. We’re talking the archetype of Kipling’s cat who walks alone. She wants all the comforts of home and none of the restrictions, and while we mostly understand each other, there is clearly nothing I can ever do to communicate to her that there is no type of animal, dead or alive, that I would even enjoy receiving as a present. So she just keeps trying.

Actually, I should count myself lucky that she’s never brought me a rat, but that’s probably just because there aren’t that many rats around here. There must be Norwegians, because there are Norwegians everywhere, but I’ve never seen evidence of one. If she got a rat, it would probably be a packrat, but it doesn’t seem like she’s ever brought a packrat in. Maybe they’re super-delicious and she keeps them for herself.

Also, I recognize that it was extremely unprofessional to draw that woman’s hands with zero fingers but I did draw her fingers, over and over again, and all of them looked super freaky and I called it a day. No fingers for you, freak out lady. She’s lucky. I originally uploaded a version where the joint on her left arm was backwards. It looked crazy painful. Her hair started out with best intentions but lost something in translation. That rat is just gross as can be. Actually, it could be grosser. But it’s pretty gross. Seriously, if my cat brought that inside I would probably cry.