CAT NAPPING
I took the photograph his painting was based on some
time ago. This will be the 3rd painting I have done of him. The 1st,
Domestic Tiger, I did in the first three years he came to live with us. The 2nd,
Eye To Eye, I did when he was around six. We recently figured out how long he
has been with us and it is about nine years. In a cat’s years that would make
him approximately 75 if he were a human, so in all likelihood, this will be the
last painting I do of him before he too passes over the bridge. Shere Khan was
sort of a rescue. He was part of a gang of feral cats who were being fed by a
woman renting an apartment where my husband serviced the apartment pool. She
told my husband that his people had simply moved off and left him, a vulnerable
kitten on his own. Humans can be very cruel and unthinking. At the time my
husband found him, he had been wild about three months. He was only six months
old so he had still been a baby when they abandoned him to fend for himself.
Vernon persuaded Shere Khan to allow him to pet him and then brought him home
to our mixed household of cats, dogs and a Guinea pig. He soon learned that
inside our house was neutral territory and he was safe there from the dogs, but
he had been wild long enough not to be happy spending all his time inside the
house. He also had to learn that he wasn’t allowed to hunt or terrorize the
Guinea Pig, Frosty. Sine he is getting older, he now spends most of his day
asleep in the yard instead of patrolling the neighborhood. He has regained
control of the back yard and garage now that our four dogs have traveled over
the rainbow bridge and succeeded in ridding both places of the field rats and
mice that infested them. He has outlived the dogs and the Guinea pig, and has
been an indulgent Uncle to two kittens. One of them Spooky passed away early
from a brain tumor, but Moonstone our little princess is very much in evidence.
MILKMAID
A woman in a red dress is milking a goat. I have always been fond of goats and my Family history with these clever, funny animals comes from my favorite Uncle who raised them on what would these days be considered a “hobby farm”. As a child, I loved visiting his place because of the variety of animals he and my aunt kept. I learned to milk the family of goats, feed them, groom them and after the meat returned from the local butcher, to eat them as well. . It caused quite a family ruckus when the family discovered he was naming his nanny goats after his female relatives. After my mother threatened to name the dog after him, he switched to using a baby name book. Uncle Swede had a rule, if he named a goat it was destined for the dairy and it was safe to become fond of it; unnamed goats were destined for the table.