As you saw yesterday, Os-car is a little eerie, especially with his ear bones.
Jacoby seems to like him, though.
The pair of them got to be pretty good friends, actually.
That is, until Os-car decided he wanted to share the Finnish bed with Jake.
Which he attempted to do by simply standing on Jake…which is actually pretty ironic, since that’s what Jake does when he wants to “share” one of the beds that one of the girls is already sleeping in.
Not quite so funny when the shoe’s on the other paw, is it, Jake?
Last year I managed to snag one of the last Kitty Bonez in Boston on Halloween. I thought I’d posted photos of him, but apparently I didn’t.
So here he is this year all dressed up in Jacoby’s coat and hat for a pre-Halloween Fashion Friday!
I named my Kitty Bonez Os-car, and he’s really pretty cute. He is roughly cat-sized, and fairly anatomically correct, with the addition of ear-bones! I guess the creators of Kitty Bonez thought he looked more like a cat with pointy triangle ears.
Jacoby was very interested when I brought Os-car down this year and dressed him up. Jake examined him from his nose…
…to the tip of his bony tail.
“Seriously, Mom? Seriously?”
Eventually, Jake retired to his catnip paper bag because the lighting was better to think, but Os-car followed him.
“Honestly, can’t a cat get a little peace around here?”
“Oh, well…I guess if it means she dresses you up instead of me, I guess I’ll let you hang around.”
According to the National Cat Day website, this holiday was canonised 10 years ago, in 2005, “to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of cats that need to be rescued each year and also to encourage cat lovers to celebrate the cat(s) in their life for the unconditional love and companionship they bestow upon us.” So let’s toast our bond with our feline buddies with a treat!
What do you think, Jake from State Farm? Would you like a treat for National Cat Day?
While I was looking for something else, I came across a couple of “idea sketches” I did for a pair of my holiday cartoons last year. I thought it was kind of interesting, so I figured I’d share them with you to show my process for cartooning.
I often quickly sketch out an idea while I’m at work. I simply grab a sheet of copy paper and a pencil and draw the idea out of my head. In this case, it was an idea about Jacoby wearing an ugly Christmas sweater. And, of course, a joke about Angel’s eye.
I happened to refine this sketch a bit on my iPad using an app called Paper. The wording for the joke itself was tweaked a bit from the original sketch.
And here’s the final version. The sweater was actually created by taking several of the worst sweaters I could find in a Google Image search and compositing them together in Photoshop. I was trying to make the worst Christmas sweater EVER.
This one changed a lot from the original sketch to the final cartoon. Originally, my idea of catnip eggnog had Jake a lot more goofy.
But in the final version, Angel wins the day. I’m not sure why I decided to add a slam on football…other than I absolutely loathe it and hate what it does to Sundays (and Mondays, and Thursdays) for a quarter of the year in the United States.
The MBTA Commuter Rail system is not the greatest in the world, and its infrastructure could use an overhaul…but it does have free WiFi on most trains.
So, on the way home from the NEMO show last week, Jacoby and I FaceTimed with Björn while we rode the rail.
FaceTime is a huge part of our relationship. I shudder to think what we would do without it. Thank you, Roberto Garcia.
As I do every year…it’s time to remember Jacoby’s escalator incident, which happened five years ago today (24 October was a Saturday in 2010, too).
I did a series of cartoons depicting the accident last year.
Of course, I didn’t have any photographs of the actual event, but I wanted to show what it looked like, not just tell the story of what happened.
I remember panicking for about a second and a half. I couldn’t find the stop button, so I just pulled Jake’s foot out of the escalator and held it tight.
There wasn’t that much blood…in fact, I still have that sweater and have been wearing it this week.
Jake, of course, ended up being fine, and you can’t even really tell he was ever injured, apart from the claw on that one toe being a bit thick and dull. Makes claw clipping that much easier!
“Saint Francis – Eight-year-old Isis, a beautiful blue Abyssinian, loves this statue of Saint Francis, says Lucinda Korman of Sharon, Ontario, Canada. Isis will eat anywhere, but she especially likes sharing a meal with the patron saint of animals, who loved all wild creatures and sometimes would kneel among them in the forest, offering bits of his meager supper.”
People sometimes forget this, but San Francisco was named for Saint Francis…
One more from the stack of artwork my mom sent me. Experimenting with rapidograph pens and coloured pencils in 1980.
When I was in junior high and high school (this was drawn in high school) I’d added foxes and various members of the weasel family into my drawing repertoire. But cats were always my main focus.
While at the NEMO show last weekend, I had to take a couple of selfies with the famous Jake from State Farm.
And of course, Jacoby obliged me, as he always does.
Well, he mostly obliged me. But in this one you can really see the little State Farm pin I found for Jake to wear on the collar of his polo shirt.
Here you can see Jake’s infamous khakis.
Okay, so this one isn’t exactly a selfie…but you can really see our costumes and my prop cordless landline phone. Not only was this one of my most perfect costumes…but it was also the most comfortable!
Buddy Rich is a grandson of the famous Grand Champion JazzyAbys Fats Waller (aka “Wally”), against whom Gun-Hee competed in the kitten class. Gun-Hee actually competed against Wally at his first show. This video shows Gun-Hee (#28) earning second best of breed in a ring with Wally (#30) being awarded best Aby in that kitten ring.
My friends Bob and Iris were Robin Hood and Maid Marian, along with Harold, a deer from Sherwood Forest.
This little girl was a princess, and her shaded Persian was her Prince Charming.
And last, but not least, we had a Harley biker gang.
And the winners were…
Charlotte and Arwen as Fred and Ginger! And in second place…
Jake! From State Farm!
Charlotte and I were both thrilled to have won, having entered all three years with what were (according to other people and not just ourselves) ingenious and well-done costumes. As I told Charlotte, our victory wasn’t just this year’s costumes; like figure skating, our scores were based on our historical performance as well as the current one.
I’ll miss this contest when we move to Sweden, but FaceTiming with Björn while at the show gave me a brilliant idea. At the next show, I’ll FaceTime in during the contest, and I’ll be one of the judges!
When Jacoby and I went to the NEMO show last weekend, we were delighted to see that there were four Abys entered in the Premiership class. I think this is the biggest Aby Premiership class we’ve ever had in our show career.
The other Grand Premier, the red Aby on the end, #109, was none other than our old friend Garçon, visiting from Florida! He and Jake split the finals; out of the eight rings, Jake made four and Garçon three (one judge did not final an Aby at all). The other two ruddy girls were Premiers, not Grand Premiers.
What was even more fun was that we were all benched together, too. Here’s what all the Abys looked like when they were at “home.” In the cage between Jake and Garçon (on the end) is Meg’s kitten Monty – you’ll see photos of him later.
The Daily Abyssinian...and Singapura 