If your cat requires entertainment and Animal Planet does not capture its attention, you can always get a fish. This is a watercolor I did in my late 20s. I’d like to offer this design on a T-shirt.

I’m in mourning for my cat right now. Algernon was geriatric at 17, and he suffered from a rare slow-moving cancer called multiple myeloma, and, at the end he was deaf, and blind, and incontinent, but he was the best cat, absolutely full of devoted love. In fact, he was my husband’s cat, and had been since he was young. My husband had Algernon before he met his first wife, but once we moved in together, the cat decided to love me best. He would purr so loudly you could hear him from twenty feet away whenever I walked into the room. He used to sleep next to my head (he had his own pillow) and purr into my ear when I had a headache, and he would head butt me repeatedly if he didn’t get enough pets. He was also prone to tender love bites.

Fast cat

I can’t find the sketch I want to include here, of my friend’s imperious cat, Suna. I know it’s around somewhere, because it’s one of the nicest cat sketches I’ve ever done. Possibly, I gave the picture to my friend. Instead, here is a super-fast drawing I did on the Wacom tablet in a minute or two. I was trying to look at the proportions of a child’s body, and the cat was a convenient way in.

Another fast cat

Cats make terrible subjects. While they may lie, unmoving, for hours a day, the second you try to sketch one, it will move. You have about fifteen seconds to limn a cat before it changes poses.

I miss him a lot. You were a good cat, Algernon.