Day 30: Cat

I could see how "cat" would be easy. I really can. But apparently my drawing skills completely fail me when it comes to doing animals I know and love. Maybe that's why I suck at people too. Anyway, here are my real-life cats, Duane and Lew (kind of):

Lew (a.k.a. "Fat Cat") is the one on the back of the couch, and Duane (a.k.a. "Neurotic Cat") is the one that looks like a dog, which is too bad because he's really very pretty. In real life he's kind of Egyptian-y, but he's also one of those totally black and white cats, so coloring him was a challenge. Lew is fat, hence his nickname, but he's also a Maine Coon cat, so he's about three feet long, which makes him kind of like Shaq in the off-season... big frame with a little jiggle around the middle because of too many Doritos and not enough free throws. We got Lew from a Chicago alley as a three-week-old, not yet weaned kitten, and back then he fit in the palm of my hand and I fed him with a bottle and wiped his butt for him. He's dumb as rocks except when it comes to getting what he wants: he figured out that the best way to get all the food is to eat the dog's food first because she's the pushiest, then Duane's because he's the nicest and then his own, because everyone else has some kind of antiquated notions about not eating other people's food. He also figured out how to get the shiny things in my jewelry box by prying open the lever, opening the doors and pulling out the drawers. Most importantly, he figured out that he doesn't really have to clean himself because Duane or the humans will do it for him. Duane, on the other hand, is a very clever cat, but he's too nice to put it to good use, so he mostly likes to be picked up and held like a baby, to sleep on people's faces at night and to chase the laser pointer, which is his oldest and most deadly nemesis. We found him outside our college dorm living on mice and cans of tuna from the R.A., so he almost even pre-dates our relationship.

Tomorrow, you'll get to see all the drawings next to each other, and then I will embark on a project I've been trying to get started for 10 years: illustrating my "short" story "Dreams." I wrote it in college and at the time just used pictures of the Internet to illustrate it, but found out afterwards that that probably constituted copyright infringement and have been trying and failing to illustrate it myself ever since. With my new-found confidence bought from this challenge, I'm going to give it a shot. Characters you will meet include a retired ice cream man, the Keebler Elf and a Barbie lunchbox. Teasers!

Also, the Daily Animal Doodles continue in July with some truly awesome animals, so I will definitely be joining up with that, just maybe not every day, depending on my ability to actually get this other project going.