Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A near cat-tastrophe

There isn't anyone else to blame it one, so I'm going to blame the cats. There's no other explanation. I was up late drawing last night, as usual, and at the end of the night before I turned my light off I left one drawing on the upper left corner of my table (resting on top of the colored pencils, which are all flat out on the table) and one drawing centered on the table. That's pretty much where I always have them. It's very stiff paper, it doesn't warp or bend or get any odd marks on it from sitting atop the pencils.

At least not til last night...

Today, when I sat down and got to work, I picked up the drawing I'd left on the upper left (a White Polish male) and HOLY CRAP it was dented! A lot! There were two quarter-size spots with multiple indentations, and it absolutely looked like the blunt ends of the pencils had been pushed into the back of the paper. It wasn't like that last night, and it hadn't been moved.

All I can think is that one of the kitty boys got up there early this morning with wet feet (and yet there are NO footprints on the paper or the white tabletop!) and stood on the drawing, and the combination of wet and pressure indented the paper. And here I was thinking they were quite well trained to stay off of there, but I guess that's just while I'm looking!

The good news is it was totally fixable. I took the drawing into the laundry room and spritzed it with water til the whole thing was damp and "limp" and then put it between blotter papers and put a stack of large books on top. It's flat now, just needs to finish drying. Since the pencils are wax-based it doesn't hurt them at all, not that I recommend wetting artwork, that's one of those things that should have a disclaimer "do not try this at home!"

But that totally freaked me out at first. I would have been mighty unhappy if I would have needed to redo it! Time to start covering the art at night!

In other somewhat cat related news, I bought a black light at the pet store today. Did you know that one of the recommended uses is to "check for sanitary conditions" in a motel room? OMG, I think if I shined that around a motel room I would probably be scarred for life and never stay in one again. Yuck, I don't even want to think about that!

Here are some cute pics of the dogs I took when it was raining (took them through a glass door and screen door, hence poor quality.) Well it's been raining pretty much forever, I should clarify.. I took them yesterday I think.

"Let sleeping dogs lie!"



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Ya!
Cute doggie pics :-). BTW, I called the Animal Friends Connetion yesterday, it was really hard to do, but I have officially started to look for a new home for our dog, Tonks. I am hoping we can find a great new family for her, one that will love her as much as we do :-). OH MY GOSH about the drawings...I would have freaked as well! Very clever about the wet & stack method!
--CS

Katherine Plumer said...

Aww, I know that's hard to have to find a new home, but it sounds like Tonks just isn't a good match for you, you need a more mellow dog that wants to kick back and relax and not run away! I'm sure the rescue can help you find a good home for her. Sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you hope with pets, but there will be someone else out there for whom she would be the perfect dog. Just like there is surely a more mellow dog that would love to go home with you!