Aby-a-Day – 1 Juni: Beware of the cat (Cartoon Tuesday)

Today is my birthday! Yesterday, I got this sign from my friend Meg. I absolutely love it…I just need to figure out where to put it. Thank you, Meg!

Aby-a-Day – 14 Maj: How it started (Friday Flashback)

Since last Sunday was Mother’s Day, I thought I’d post this. I was always Daddy’s girl. Also a tomboy. Also hated dresses and pink. And dolls. That was Tabby, my version of a doll. They tried to give me dolls. I took their clothes off and put them on Tabby. This was 1969. You can see the look in my eyes…He’s taking the photo and I’m begging him through the lens to get me out of this and take me fishing or something.

This is where my love of Siamese, and by extension, purebreeds began. My dad’s sister had two: Bippie and her son Caesar. This is me napping with Caesar on my uncle’s lap. Also 1969.

This was my cat, Baby Puss, on Easter.

This is when I met Baby Puss in 1967. She is named after the Flintstones’ cat. We also had a black male cat named Bagheera. I was always an avid television watcher.

My mom was ALL ABOUT the matching outfits. This was for my aunt’s 25th anniversary up in Edmonton in 1971.

And, in case you’re wondering…this was my reaction when my dad tried to get a puppy.

Aby-a-Day – 16 April: This wasn’t the way I wanted to go viral (Photoshop Friday)

So, since I posted last week, Björn is still in the hospital (he may get out tomorrow), and I have tested positive for Covid. Despite having asthma, my lungs and breathing are remarkably all right; my biggest reaction has been in my gut. Nausea, a metallic taste in my mouth, and zero appetite. Since the last time I weighed myself (the last time I weighed the cats), I have lost 5kg (11lbs). Hey, every cloud has a silver lining, right? Anyway, the other night at about 4am, I had this brilliant idea for a 1950’s-style weight-loss ad…it doesn’t include a cat, but it’s a pretty decent Photoshop if I do say so myself.

Aby-a-Day – 11 April: A sad anniversary and an update (Serious Sunday)

I haven’t posted since Thursday, because…Björn and I have been sick. Björn is actually in the hospital with Covid, and I have a wicked cough but no fever yet. It’s also the second anniversary of Jacoby’s death, so with all that going on I haven’t felt very inspired. Kalle and I will get tested for Covid on Tuesday, and hopefully Björn will be home soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Aby-a-Day – 23 Januari: The REAL Abyssinian and Somali Club (Serious Saturday)

This week has been tumultuous for a number of reasons…not the least of which is, through a series of unfortunate events, I was banned from a Facebook Abyssinian group (without cause, but no matter)…and created a group of my own, of which I am the leader and head admin. Never having done anything like this before, it’s a bit…revolutionary. That I did it on Inauguration Day was particularly fitting.

So that happened. If my posts have been a bit patchy, that’s why. It’s a whole new world for me. It’s so much faster than a blog.

If you would like to join, search Facebook for the name (which is the title of this post), request to become a member, and answer the three questions. I still haven’t gotten the answer I was expecting for question #3.

Aby-a-Day – 10 Januari: The second day at the Swedish CFA show (Swedish Cat Show Sunday)

The second day of that Swedish CFA show was as much fun as the first, both for us and for Jacoby.

We had a lot of judges come over from the US. At this point, I had only been in Sweden for six months, so it was fun to see some familiar faces and hear some familiar accents.

This judge, Albert Kurkowski, was one of the few non-American, non-CFA judges; he was from Poland, and he was a guest judge from the World Cat Federation.

I really enjoyed watching him handle Jake.

There was a really pretty little Burmilla girl who was frequently benched next to us during judging.

She reminded me a bit of Tessie.

This judge, Inga Balciuniene, was also a WCF guest judge from Latvia.

Pam DeLaBar is a CFA judge who lives in Finland. I actually hadn’t ever seen her at a show in the States. It’s nice having another ex-pat in the cat fancy.

And our friend Russell Webb was there, too. He was always Jake’s lucky charm.

Jake was Second Best cat in Premiership in Russell’s ring.

As we did Saturday, when Jake got a little antsy we went outside to play in the snow. This time, I didn’t bother with the harness and leash. I figured, how far is he going to get in that deep snow.

Famous last words.

He started making off towards a little house. He went pretty far really quickly, too! I was surprised how hard he was to catch.

I finally caught him, though.

The cats we have now are awesome, and a lot of fun to show…but I still miss going to shows with Jake.

Aby-a-Day – 22 December 2020: Catty Christmas cards (Not Really Cartoon Tuesday)

Okay. Now, I know these aren’t cartoons. But I have been working on colouring Dashiell Hamilton every day. I want to get the green of his suit just right, and it’s taking a lot longer than I thought…and I haven’t even started on colouring Dash himself! I am trying to do as much as I can in Procreate…but yesterday I got a new Paperlike screen protector, and let me tell you, it is a game changer! It really feels like I’m drawing on real paper, and it is so much better than drawing on glass. Even though it’s digital, it still feels organic. I’ve also ordered a set of Pen Tips, which should also improve the drawing experience. While Paperlike and Pen Tips ship worldwide, they are based in Germany and the Netherlands respectfully, so I don’t have to pay any import taxes!

Since Dash-Ham isn’t finished enough to post an update, I’m sharing some Christmas cards I’ve received. The above card arrived today from my Sverak club AbSolut Kattklubb. That is one lovely blue Somali.

This card came a couple of days ago from my friend Donna in Massachussetts. I think these Birmans are adorable. At least, I think they’re Birmans…hard to tell when you can’t see their feet!

This cute little Siamese postcard came today, also from Donna. I love that she keeps sending me postcards…it’s nice to have physical notes from friends sometimes, especially during a pandemic.

Aby-a-Day – 8 December 2020: Create your own tabletop gaming minifigure (Kind of Cartoon Tuesday)

Well…I woke up this morning full of ambition to work on my Dashiell-xander Hamilton drawing, only to have a Facebook friend post the minifigure she made on Hero Forge.

So, you know I had to make one, too.

Annnnnd…I spent most of my afternoon creating what I would look like as my dream player character. Well, it’s kind of like drawing a cartoon…a 3D cartoon.

Basically, you can create pretty much any character you can imagine (with a few limitations).

Of course I made myself as a humanoid feline (or, if you prefer, a felinoid human) with a cute skirt, lots of jewellery, a pen and an iPhone.

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Yes, that is a PEN, and yes, I know what it kind of looks like. And she has an iPhone because they didn’t have a laptop as an option.

Maple leaves are scattered on the maple-wood flooring, of course.

The interface on the website is super awesome. You can look at your character from virtually any angle. Cool, right?

You can purchase your character 3D-printed in full colour for $44.99, but the colours aren’t quite as vibrant as they are in the creator.

Still…I think it’s pretty cool. I’m getting one!

Aby-a-Day – 22 November 2020: Remember when we travelled? (Cat Show Sunday)

Today Björn posted a memory from this day last year, with the comment, “It’s a year since the last cat show we attended, and when we could travel like so many times before. How things can change in a year…”

This was the train to the ferry to a Turku, Finland, where Izaak and Lorelai earned their International Champion titles. We haven’t been to a show since then. A whole year without a cat show…hard to believe. And I haven’t been anywhere at all since July! Because of my asthma I stay in as much as possible, especially since the health officials in Sweden are still saying masks don’t help against the coronavirus…especially on public transportation.

“We don’t see that we are at a point where we might recommend general use of face masks on public transport,” Karin Tegmark Wisell, head of the Public Health Agency in Stockholm, told reporters on Thursday. “Face masks shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to keep a distance.” That’s a direct quote. Yeeeeaaahhhh…I’m not going anywhere by train for a while.

Aby-a-Day – 14 & 15 November 2020: Learning curve (Serious Saturday and Sunday)

Okay, so the new laptop arrived on Friday. I spent the rest of the day and part of yesterday transferring data from the old MacBook Pro to the new one.

Problem is, I had to upgrade the system. I don’t have a choice; there’s a Magic Keyboard that I don’t think will work with the older software. However, I must say, the thing is wicked cool. The functions you have change depending on which application you’re using. In Facebook, you get predictive text like on the iPhone. Listening to music on iTunes, you have the play, pause and skip functions. And in photo apps, you get controls for whatever you’re doing.

Also, no need for passwords; there’s a Touch ID button so you can log into everything with your index finger.

However…I am absolutely bereft without Photoshop. I did everything I could find to work around it…to no avail. I have been using Photoshop since…1997, I think. I can do everything so reflexively…Why, Adobe, why?!

Well, I absolutely do NOT want to pay $20.99 a month for a subscription. So I’ve been investigating other apps that have very high ratings. I’ve downloaded a couple of trial apps. The first one I tried was Acorn. It is highly rated, especially for Macs, and it’s only $29.99. It’s pretty nice…but I couldn’t figure out how to do simple tone, colour and contrast corrections (the things that are so easy to do in Photoshop). I’ll go back later and play with it. The other one I am trying is Affinity Photo, which is a LOT easier to figure out. It’s much more similar to Photoshop, and it can open .psd files. I can also import all my special brushes into both Acorn and Affinity, which is awesome. It’s $49.99…but it seems worth it (and, okay, it’s a lot less expensive than Photoshop was).

As a bonus, in learning about these two apps (and another one, Affinity Designer, which looks interesting), I discovered I can also import my brushes into Procreate. That means no more having to finish drawings in Photoshop…I may just be able to do everything on the iPad now.

Still, I really want Photoshop back. I have a lot of work and research to do in the next ten days.

Aby-a-Day – 8 November 2020: Technical difficulties (Serious Sunday)

I have been trying so hard to keep this blog going, and make sure to post everyday. An I will still do my best. But Friday, I noticed my 2015 MacBook Pro was…broken.

Like, really broken. I suspect that it is a battery issue, but my machine isn’t eligible for replacement. I think it’s probably because it was already replaced, in March 2016.

I have been staying off it as much as possible since I noticed it, but I think it’s worse. This is how it looks today.

Pretty bad, right? I have been keeping it turned off – and unplugged – unless I absolutely need to be on it.

I have already ordered a replacement, I wasn’t really ready to get a new laptop right now…but it was five years old, and it was going to happen sooner rather than later, so…yeah. It is what it is. I will need to find a workaround so I can still use Photoshop, because the updated iOS (Catalina) doesn’t support it. But there are ways to make it work.

…but in the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep posting on my phone and iPad until the new one arrives. Which I hope is soon.

Aby-a-Day – 10 Oktober 2020: My last NEMO show (Cat Show Saturday)

Facebook reminded me today that exactly five years ago, Jacoby and I were at our last NEMO show. Kind of interesting that in 2015, the 10th and 11th of October fell on Saturday and Sunday the same as this year. One nice thing about the show hall at Sturbridge is that it has WiFi, so I was able to FaceTime with Björn and virtually introduce him to my friends.

It was funny…Jake never used to “pole dance” on the judge’s table, but for some reason, at that show, he did it quite a few times!

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He seemed as surprised as anyone.

He got a catnip kick-stick from our friend Donna.

He really liked it.

We also got to meet our friend Kim’s famous Bobby, star of Netfix’s Catwalk. Yes, we can honestly say we knew him when.

Jake’s mini-me was at the show, too.

I had to show it to Carla Bizzell, who had once called Jake a posable action figure. She was quite amused.

And let’s not forget the costume contest! Jake and I dressed as >a href=”target=#>Jake from State Farm and the woman on the phone.

It was the best costume. I got to wear a bathrobe and pajamas all day. And I even had a phone.

“What are you wearing, ‘Jake from State Farm‘?”

That was one of the best shows I’ve ever been in. I’ll always remember it fondly.

New England is beautiful in autumn…but our part of Sweden gets similar bright foliage, so I don’t miss it too much.

Aby-a-Day – 6 Oktober 2020: Paws Across the Sea (Cartoon Tuesday)

I know, I know…I dropped off the face of the world for a week. Part of that was due to me getting a new medication that was kicking my butt until I got used to it. The other part is that last Monday I got this email from Iris:

Your former region (Region 1) and your adopted region (Region 9) are joining forces for a virtual qualifier show for the CFA International Top Cat Challenge, and Sharon asked me to help with promotional copy and/or a theme. What I came up with is really crying out for some kind of sketch that we can use on the flyer and platform. It’s “Paws Across the Sea.” I don’t have any visual ideas other than two paws reaching toward each other with an ocean in between, but I thought maybe you could come up with something better. Please let me know if you’d be willing to work on this. The time frame is short but not an emergency. . . If you could do something by the weekend I think that would work.

My mind instantly went to vintage Disney “It’s a Small World” art. I made a globe/earth that featured the US Northeast and Europe and then made the quick sketch above to map out the international breed representatives. I had many ideas, but finally decided on featuring a Siamese, a Russian Blue, a Maine Coon (Marlin, the NEMO mascot), a Scottish Fold, and a Singapura. I had wanted to include a Japanese Bobtail, but I realised that if you couldn’t see the tail, it might not be clear what breed it was.

I started by making a generic cat sketch. I enlarged it for Marlin, made it smaller for the Singapura, and stretched it out for the Siamese.

I made sketches for all five breeds, and combined them on one layer.

Then I did the ink outline in Procreate.

I did the undercolour layer beneath the ink layer in Procreate as well. Colouring tortoiseshell-and-white cats is difficult, but fun!

My best fur brushes are in Photoshop, so I moved to that to work on the texture layer.

Here are all three layers combined.

Then I add the whiskers, eyeshine and shadow, and voilá: a graphic for an international virtual cat show!

A slight postscript: I couldn’t fit an Abyssinian into the graphic…but who’s that holding the Siamese’s other paw?

Aby-a-Day – 17 September 2020: Me and my shadow (Thursday Things)

Because he follows me everywhere, I call Izaak my “little shadow.” But there are times when he is literally my shadow.

When the sun is just right…

…Zak’s shadow shadows me.

There goes my shadow…and his shadow.

Aby-a-Day – 5 September 2020: Singapuras make a lasting impression (Singapura Saturday)

Izaak loves to sit on my legs. He sleeps on my legs, and he seems to prefer skin contact, which is a trait of many Singas, I have noticed.

I posted a couple of these photos to a Singapura Facebook group. One person commented, “I always find for such a small/lightweight breed they have the ability to become 100% heavier!” Another added, “Cats can control their relationship with gravity. They can land as light as a feather or as heavy as a bag of potatoes.”

Sounds about right. Like their cousins, the Burmese, Singas are “bricks wrapped in silk.”

Zak sat so heavily, he left a pawprint on my leg! And he isn’t that heavy, either; last week he weighed in at 3.6 kg.

And it was still visible an hour later!

Aby-a-Day – 21 Augusti 2020: “It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19”

Hello from Sweden, where the nation’s head epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, tells the citizenry that face masks are “dangerous.” Well, he’s started to come under fire for his stubborn failure to change the advice he’s been giving since February. At least some Swedes are starting to stand up to him and wear masks!

You may remember my post back in June where I showed off my collection of masks.

Well, I just got this new “Six feet, people” mask from a company called Gossby. It’s a fun site, acutally: you can choose the phrase that appears on the mask, and you can choose the colours of the cat. Of course, I chose Abyssinian colours.

I also ordered this mask from them, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Sure looks like an Aby/Somali to me!

They have some cute masks, though. There are even some you can customise to look like your own cats and include their names. I like the wording on this one…the cats, not so much.

Especially when you have this mask, where the cats actually look like breeds. I mean, look at the Izaak cat; that is totally a Singapura! And the Dashiell and Angel cats…well, all of them! But I want the quarantining wording with these cats, so I am conflicted. Maybe I’ll send them an email.

But, as I always say, no one reads this blog to see photos of me, so here is Alfred wearing my new mask.

Be honest: Who wore it better?

Aby-a-Day – 2 Juli 2020: My birthday present finally arrived! (Thursday Things)

My birthday was a month ago, but my big gift from Björn arrived today: a Baby Yoda doll!

Izaak (rather amusingly) was quite interested in the little green doll.

The Baby Yoda doll also makes sounds.

Lorelai did not like the sounds!

I have a little Lego-compatible Baby Yoda in his Sphere, so…yeah.

He (or she) has a cup of bone broth and a Sorgan frog.

The detail on this doll is spectacular. Hard to believe it’s meant for children over three.

Rory still doesn’t trust it, though.

I love it, though. Thank you, Björn!

Aby-a-Day – 26 Juni 2020: “Wearing a mask is not only important, it’s life-saving” (Fashion Friday)

You may recall my post back in April about cat-themed face masks to wear as a defence against spreading Covid-19. Even though Sweden has been famously against face masks (I went out shopping today and saw ZERO masks apart from my own), the tide may be changing; Dr. Tengele may be changing his opinion on masks (finally).

The above mask came from a link on Facebook. It’s cute, and a double layer of cotton. Unfortunately, it’s too hot to wear in the summer.

I love these two masks featuring a (Singapuras and BLUE Abyssinians wearing masks…but they are also double-layer (and have a pocket for a charcoal filter), and way too hot to wear in summer.

my favourite mask was made by my friend Airie of Simply Sphynx. It’s a single layer cotton mask with a cute kitty print on.

It’s very breathable and comfortable to wear – my favourite thing about this mask is that it doesn’t loop around the ears like all the others. When you wear glasses, that can be a real issue.

But nobody reads this blog to see photos of me, so…

…Here is Izaak wearing the Singapura mask.

I absolutely love that this mask features BLUE Abyssinians.

Lorelai…not so much.

Aby-a-Day – 17 Maj 2020: An Angel watching over me (Swedish Sunday)

I fall asleep watching television pretty much every night. I never see the end of movies we watch.

I guess Angel decided I needed some company and settled herself on top of the big sofa cushion and joined me in my little nap.

Aby-a-Day – 29 April 2020: Wordless Wednesday (Cuddly Izaak)