Twisted Sketchbook - Katie Cat

` Okay, I think it's about time that I got done editing and uploading some more images of my Twisted Little World sketchbook, which were incidentally taken over a year ago and never uploaded even though they survived through several hard drive crashes. I mean, do I really have an excuse?
` Well, since I'm striving to do subject-based posts, only two of the next drawings are on the same subject, so that will comprise my entire post.

` ...Me? Lazy? Naaah!

` Well, these drawings just happen to be of my Katie Girl, the best cat I ever had. (That's why I included her in this drawing.) When she was happy, everyone knew - you could hear her purring before you got into the room.
` I remember the way she would stand by the sink when I was washing her food bowls, catching water droplets with her paws. Or the way she'd try to get your attention by standing on her hind legs and swiveling her head back so that she could look at you upside-down, and say; 'Muuuurrrrrrr! Cak-ow!'
` Her favorite place was on the couch beside me, so I had plenty of chances to draw her over and over. In this instance, I did so while she was wearing a 'collar', which was actually a cloth choker I had gotten for Christmas. Amazingly, it almost fit her, and it stayed on for several days!
` While viewing this picture, I recommend you click on the image and take a closer look at the captions - this photo is extra-large to show all the details.

` In a couple of those drawings you can see how she had been trying to lick her paws, but didn't seem to care that she was actually licking the inside of the collar; hence the verbalized result of 'lick?'
` On the other side of the page I drew her when she was moving around, which was much harder to do, and the only real reason why I barely drew any pictures of her in action.

` Really, she wasn't much of an ant-hunter, though she did love chasing and eating moths! When I still lived at my mom's house, she loved to go outside in the backyard, though occasionally I would come out to check on her and find that she'd somehow escaped from the fence to go snarl at another cat. And once she had even chased another cat out of the yard!
` When my mom, her friend and I drove up to Everett, Katie was dragged right along with us. Though she howled for several hours and became dehydrated, we forced water down her throat at rest stops, and at hotels she always ate and used the litterbox. At least she trusted us that much.
` Because of this, she was the only one of my pets that ever got to see Old Faithful - before it became less than faithful - as it would have been a bad idea to leave her in the car. She tolerated being on a leash fairly well and didn't react to the geyser - mainly she concerned herself with my mom's legs and I saw that she seemed to have predatory interest in some ravens, which were scavenging nearby.

` Even after two years, it's still hard to believe the cat I lived with for fifteen years is gone. Well, I'm only ten years older than her, so I've lived with her more than half my life! Though I was actually abusive to her when I was a kid - hey! I thought abuse was normal behavior! - I eventually learned what it means to love an animal, and by the way she followed me around everywhere, preferred sitting on my lap to sitting on pillows next to me, liked to curl up by my head and purr in my ear, she seems to have learned what it is to love a human.
` So, when she was suddenly despondent one day and the vet said that her liver had failed and there was nothing he could do, I realized that I'd never see her greet me at the door, hear her contented purring and happy meows, watch her play with string, or sleep on my pillow. My cat would never be happy and healthy - she could only die in pain.
` I had to have her put down right then, on the same day I had to start packing up to move out of the ghetto apartment we had lived in together with that roommate-type guy, Phil. Unfortunately, every time I cried, to try to relieve the grief, he told me to stop that and to keep moving stuff. He eventually convinced me that it was the right thing to do, so by the time he gave me 'permission' to cry again several days later, I found that I couldn't even though he could.
` And what was worse, he wouldn't let me scatter her ashes anywhere because he thought it would offend her (what?), so I never did get around to the whole mourning and letting-go process. In fact, I still have the ashes with me.
` I'm thinking that when I get my next cats I'll spread them over some woodsy area while I'm leash-training them in the great outdoors. That somehow seems appropriate.

` I still love my Katie. My Kiggy-cag. My Chickeny buck-buck.