the two cats

April 13, 2025April 12, 20251 Comment

Sometimes you have to draw the cats. Fortunately they do enough lying around in one place for long stretches of time that it makes it easier. I drew in my little Seawhite book, using pencil and watercolour, a good way to draw a cat or two. The top one is called Whiskers. He is a bit smaller than his brother Sawyer, who is below. Sawyer is cuddlier. Whiskers likes my desk chair and will often try to trick me off of it. He is lying in it in this sketch. Sawyer loves the couch, and also his perch looking out the front window, where he was in the sketch below, though here he was staring intensely towards the back door in case anything interesting might happen there. Overall they are good cats, they fight a little but mostly are partners in cat-crime, and make sure each other’s ears are clean. They sometimes hiss and growl at each other when they see this one particular cat come into our yard. I can’t pretend to understand cat politics. It’s probably like human politics, which I also can’t understand. Two boy cats who get on well enough, maybe have different views on the placement of the kibble bowl but otherwise share well, then another boy cat who acts all sweet on the outside seems to wind them both up until they fight each other, no I can’t see any parallels to human politics at all. Still it’s nice having cats around, they add a few more personalities into the house, and they keep the mice away. I’m just glad cats don’t have mobile phones, they’d spend all days watching videos of cats, and it would have the opposite effect that does on humans. They would have to watch videos of humans doing what humans do, yelling at each other on planes or whatever, to calm themselves down. Cats, what are they like.

the cats

February 18, 2024February 17, 20242 Comments

If I’m at home, there’s always a cat to draw. I don’t always want to draw a cat, but sometimes they just sit there, and you can’t help it. We have two cats, Whiskers is the smaller, Sawyer the bigger, but they are litter-twins. Well technically they were triplets, but the other kittie lives somewhere else. Anyway above was the last day of January, very rainy, the first of three days when I was home sick. That’s ‘at home sick’, as in I had a really nasty cold, but I’m always a bit ‘homesick’ as well, for London, that’s normal, it’s been a little harder than usual being away from my London family lately. Still we plod on. I was working from home while sick for part of that day and Whiskers was helping, but I had to sketch him looking out at the window. I made him a little bed on the desk from my scarves. There’s another cat that looks like them both who often comes into our back yard and winds our cats up, usually resulting in our two cats turning on each other and spending the next hour or so hissing and clawing at each other. Cats and their politics. That cat is like Fox News, and within seconds of appearing he is dividing our two usually friendly cats up with his nonsense about pretend culture wars or something. I usually have to go out and shoo him away. I haven’t seen him in a while though, since he was nearly attacked by an owl. We get these huge owls around here, and they can pick a cat up so you have to be careful, well our neighbour said they saw one swoop down and scare that other cat away. It must be the same owl that lives in the big tree near our house, I hear it hooting at night. We get a lot of owls around here. There was a superb owl last week on TV.

Sawyer spends a lot of time sleeping on the couch. In fact I think the couch itself gets up and moves about more than he does. I was trying out those Graphitint paints mentioned in the previous post and thought I’d use them to sketch Sawyer. I knew he wasn’t going anywhere for the next six hours, so I had plenty of time to work on it (it took me about 15 minutes top). On weekends I also spend a fair bit of time on the couch, so I can’t talk. I’m not exactly talking Royle Family levels, but those mornings when I get up super early to watch Spurs at 7am, and then suddenly its midday, well what are couches for. I got up this morning to watch Spurs actually, and we lost (I’m still in a bad mood about that), but I did go for a three mile run afterwards, before settling back to the couch to practice guitar, build some Lego and watch a Spider-Man movie. It’s been a busy and occasionally quite stressful week, it’s good to relax.

And here is Whiskers again, sitting looking out the window while seated on my big heavy copy of The Riverside Chaucer. I was at home that day working remotely (had several Zoom meetings and a deadline to meet so was glad not to have the interruptions). That copy of The Riverside Chaucer is always by my desk. If I were a smarter person I would say that use it for inspiration, hoping the Canterbury Tales might unlock the conundrum of campus office space, or that Troilus and Criseyde might help me figure out the teaching budget, but I don’t really read it much at all any more. It still has a lot of little post-it note fragments poking out of the top. I had to study it during my MA in English at King’s College London, and felt it important enough in my life to bring it with me when we emigrated in 2005, this massive heavy book of text I would probably never study again, not that I knew that. However it has been useful, immensely so, in a way you might be surprised at. I keep it on my scanner, because when I want to scan my sketches, this big heavy book can lie on top of the sketchbook and keep it much flatter than just my hands. It’s perfect for that, and even better with a cat sat on top. I drew this with the brown fountain pen, very quickly while Whiskers posed. It was quite a sunny day, and that spot by the scanner gets a good bit of sunshine in the morning.

the helpful cat

January 18, 20241 Comment

I worked from home for a couple of days after getting back from Maui, just before the new academic quarter began. I don’t think anybody wanted this quarter to start. I’m still in two minds about whether I want this year to start. You cannot stop the progress of time, hold it back though we try, it keeps on crashing through. As my old boss in Finchley two decades ago used to say, “What I can do?” We just get on with it. I had a companion while working at my desk, our cat Whiskers who likes to keep us company whenever any of us work from home, he needs to be right there supervising. He’s a pretty quiet supervisor. I definitely prefer working from the office, but taking a day from home every so often can be nice, and oddly more productive with no (human) interruptions. My laptop screen is pretty small though, and occasionally a cat will sit across the keyboard. Here though he was just keeping the laptop case warm for me, a useful task. He and his brother were very happy we were home from Hawaii. We arrived back after dark, and it was pouring with rain. I always unpack my clothes right away when returning home, it’s a habit of mine (yet when I do laundry and hang up my wet clothes in the bathroom, it can be a week or so before I put those clean clothes away after they’ve dried, it’s funny). I drew Whiskers in pencil and watercolour.

“it’s lights out and away we go!”

December 10, 2021December 10, 20212 Comments

A Sunday afternoon sketch at home from October, drawn on the iPad with Procreate, a slice of the life. Watching the Formula One, this was the United States Grand Prix, which seems like a million races ago now. More on that later. There’s my increasingly-tall teenage son on the couch stretched out with his favourite cat on his lap (apologies to the other cat, no he loves you both equally), while I draw. Outside was a massive rain storm. They called it the “Bomb Cyclone” because everything has to have a gimmicky name now. The “Atmospheric River” and the “Moisture Firehose” were also terms used by the weather news people, who frankly are just having a laugh now. Moisture Firehose indeed, do me a favour. We had such little rain this year, the drought in the west has been very worrying, but then all this rain came along on the same day and provided a perfect backdrop for staying inside, which we would have been doing anyway, especially with this race going on. I was worried that we would lose power, the lights were flickering for a bit, and not get to see the race (it really would have been “lights out and away we go” as they say at the start of the race). And boy, was it was exciting. The young Dutch buck Max Verstappen beat seven-times legend Lewis Hamilton in the end with them being close right down to the final lap of the race. This whole Formula One season has been one of the most exciting in years, with Max (we used to call him ‘Waluigi’- MarioKart reference) Verstappen storming about to win loads of races in the Honda-powered Red Bull, maybe on course for his first world title, while the GOAT Lewis Hamilton in the slick Mercedes has pulled off some of the best drives I’ve seen him do to bring it back to level-pegging, and they go into the final race of this season on EQUAL POINTS, a situation that’s only happened once before (back in the 70s), and that final race is this weekend in Abu Dhabi. Lewis has been magnificent in recent races but it all comes down to this. Whoever comes ahead of the other will WIN the title. If they both crash out (something that’s been done before), Max will win, because he has one more race win than Lewis. To say I’m excited for this grand finale is an understatement. I’m a long-time fan of Lewis (and especially after the way he raced in Brazil this year) but more than anything I’m just a fan of the sport and I like all the characters, and it would be interesting to have a different champion, and I’m not particularly interested in the arguments and entrenching into different camps and all that, I’m just glad we’ve had an epic season. It’s very much a team sport, and a technical sport, not just about the bloke in the cockpit, there’s so much involved. I think Red Bull need to win it now because Honda will leave the sport next season and they won’t have that great Honda engine. Max will be probably champion at some point regardless, but I’ve said that before about drivers. Still, I’m actually very nervous about this weekend. I really don’t want a ‘both crash, Max wins by default’ situation, that would be crap, I just want good racing, and good strategy. I’m still annoyed about Schumacher and Hill in 94. But it’s all drama, and the big race is this Sunday. I would love if the team principals Toto Wolff and Christian Horner just had a massive punch-up, the psychologicals between them all season has been just as entertaining. I have a feeling that Max will win. Aargh I’m so excited!

And just as a throwback… November 2008, Lewis Hamilton’s second season in F1, and he won the title in the very last race of the season, in dramatic fashion, right at the end when local lad Massa thought he had won it (still feel so bad for him). Back then, we didn’t get the channel that Formula One came on but the cable channel still showed it without sound, and I’d have the closed-captioning on. The people writing the subtitles obviously weren’t familiar with a lot of the names, and would write “Lou Is Hamel Ton”, “Right Gone On” (that was Räikkönen), “Cove Align On” (Kovailainen), and “Along Sew” (Alonso). I would watch it for the subtitles mostly. Those were exciting seasons though, and so I drew this in my notebook back then, Lewis Hamilton’s winning McLaren. I didn’t draw cars much back then…

washed by a dirty orange sky

August 21, 2020August 21, 20204 Comments

We’ve been having a heatwave in northern California over the past week or so, with temperatures hitting up to 108 degrees at the weekend. And then came some storms, at first bringing some drops summer rain, but mostly they brought hot winds and dry lightning strikes. Lots of them – one night was constant rumbling, low rumbling mostly, with flashes echoing in the sky. It kept me awake, fascinated by the electrical storm but nervous about what it might bring to this big dry state. Fires did break out as we could see from the thin layer of smoke in the sky next day, giving everything a dirty orange hue, so I drew from the dining room table before dinner (above). This is where my desk is now, I’ve moved back down from upstairs, much to the annoyance of my cat who has gotten used to sleeping the afternoons in my desk chair. I am not sure I like being closer to the kitchen again, closer to the snacks, but I was crammed into a small space in the bedroom for quite a while and needed a change. I’ll go back up again at some point, if I get bored. I coloured this in using some new fancy Daniel Smith paints, which I’m not really used to yet. Wednesday morning I went outside to cycle to the office, and while there were blue skies, the air smelled dense with smoke. Ash was falling everywhere like snowflakes, and the sky away to the west was filled with billows of dull grey. This was the LNU Lightning Complex fore, which is around Napa/Vacaville and now beyond, a terrible and huge fire that even jumped across Interstate 80 cutting off the freeway. Evacuation zone has gone up as far as Winters, next town over, which is a lot closer than any other fire yet. I didn’t cycle any further than the next block, I went straight back home, and stayed inside. Ash has been falling ever since, and the house is generally filled with that orange/ochre light, turning red as the sun sets. Above is a sketch I did of one of the cats, Whiskers I think, on his high perch by the back door, while the dirty air outside casts an alien glow. This was done on the iPad. Cat don’t care, he sleep. Below, this was a quick sketch of the sun in the sky outside our window, looking like a sore red boil. We’ve had lots of wildfires in California the past few years, and fire season is long and scary, and our skies have been blanketed in unhealthy and hazardous smoke, especially a couple of years ago. But this is the closest we’ve had a big fire that I can remember since I’ve lived in Davis. We packed some bags in case the evacuation zone increased, not a bad idea, though given our location it’s pretty unlikely. Lots of people have lost their homes, and some historic state parks have been seriously damaged by the fires. And more dry lightning is expected over the weekend. The firefighters do an amazing job, they are real heroes, I just hope it doesn’t get even worse.

Yesterday afternoon, clocking off a little early after the smoky air gave me a headache, I sat on the couch watching Agents of SHIELD until dinnertime, my son played on his device, so I sketched him, that awful sky washing in. Step outside and it’s choking, like being in a north London pub in the 90s, I feel like putting the Charlatans on the jukebox and buying a pint for under two quid, then getting some cheap fried chicken and falling asleep on the night bus. My throat is dry, and the ash keeps floating around outside. So when my Apple Watch scolds me for not having my exercise ring further along than usual, I’m like, not now, Apple Watch, not now. There’s a global pandemic on, and it’s election season, and now the world’s literally on fire.

the stay-at-home cats

July 16, 20201 Comment

These are our stay-at-home cats. Stay-at-home orders are nothing new to these two. They probably like having us around more, or they don’t, it’s hard to say. Whiskers and Sawyer. two brothers. However with all of the disruption that happened in our downstairs when we had that flood, what with moving out the furniture and everyone staying upstairs, the noise from all the air dryers and the work, it took a toll on the kitties, and one of them, Sawyer, got very ill with the stress and ended up twice having overnight stays in the animal hospital, poor thing. Not the TV show, but the place. He had to be nursed back to strength, amid all the confusion with the living room, and on top of that his brother started acting as if he didn’t know him. As soon as he came back from the vets Whiskers was hissing and growling at him, Sawyer didn’t know what it was all about, but Whiskers couldn’t get over all the new smells on him, to the point where we had to keep them separated while we worked from home, and it took weeks for them to be ok around each other again. We learned a lot about cat behaviour during this time! Thankfully they are friends again now, but it really took a while.

Animal Hospital, remember that show? I remember the sweet music and the little puppies being nursed to health, I remember also that it was presented by a kindly sweet old man in glasses, my memory isn’t great so I need to google that one, can you guess who it is yet, oh it was – never mind, never mind! I forgot he presented it. Wow, even Animal Hospital memories tarnished. Those guys were creeps, the Rolfs and the Jim’lls and the weather man bloke on the floating map in Liverpool, and all the rest of them. There was another show I remember though, Pet Rescue, I think it was presented by the former Chelsea and Romania player Dan Petrescu, but I may be confusing that one. Before this turns into another “remember this old TV show” post (and I do want to do another one of those), let’s get back to the drawings. I don’t draw animals often, but I really wanted to draw the cats again, after all they’ve been through. They are finally friends again now, maybe not as close as before, but not hissing and fighting as much, they are even back to cleaning each other, and occasionally alternating each other’s napping spaces. Now that the living room is normal they seem a lot more content. Cats are funny.

While I was messing around testing some new paints recently I did try a couple of quick gesture sketches of them looking out of the window. Always fun. They like to look out of that window at the other cats outside, the outdoor cats from down the block, and the birds in the trees. We get a lot of hummingbirds here, they like to come and hover about looking right into our window.

a song with no words and no tune

January 27, 20193 Comments

After a very busy/tiring few days, which included my son having friends over for a sleepover last night, Sunday is quiet and peaceful and the family are all taking naps. I took the peaceful time not to go out and draw in the sunshine, but to sit in sweat pants and listen to podcasts and draw the sleeping cats. Pay no attention to the boxes piled up outside, that’s a job for later this afternoon. I’ve been listening to Adam Buxton’s podcasts lately which have been entertaining in their niceness. I had to paint fast as the colours outside kept changing as the noontime January sun kept shifting position. I’ve had a good idea for a book which I am thinking of spending the rest of the day working on. After I’ve done some tidying up.

’cause I love to live so pleasantly

October 9, 20183 Comments

Meow. This sleepy little beggar is Whiskers, on his chair; well, the chair he has claimed. He was having a good old nap on a Sunday afternoon, so I drew him. His tummy is very fuzzy. Am I a cat sketcher now?

cool for cats

January 4, 2009January 4, 20093 Comments

While in rainless London I found myself in Gough Square (named after a former Spurs player), a tiny back-place off Fleet Street, former home to Doctor Johnson, the man who wrote the first Dictionary of the English Language, an excellent and hilarious book, if slightly disparaging with regards the eating habits of Scots. That statue, that was his cat, Hodge (named after another former Spurs player). I don’t know why he didn’t just get a real cat. Cheaper to feed I suppose, and it never crosses your path or pees behind the telly. LBC used to be based here. I used to listen to LBC, back when I used to stay up really late (he says, writing at 1am).

over there between the land and the sky

November 14, 2008November 14, 20082 Comments

We went to the opposite end of the country this past weekend, to New York. I love New York. I want one for Christmas. I did a lot of sketching in the city, in rain and shine and falling leaves; those will come later. We stayed out in Long Beach, on Long Island.

Above, the view from my sister-in-law’s apartment window, as viewed by max the cat.

Long Beach is really that – a very long beach. I was last here six years ago, at Christmas, when thick snowed piled in on Christmas day, and we were throwing snowballs on the beach on the 26th. looking out at the atlantic You can hear that Long Island accent everywhere, dawgs and pawks and cawffee, it’s so cool (while in New York City, most accents I heard were actually British). It was cold, but not that cold, not yet – the fall leaves were deep red and bright yellow. But you know you’re not in California any more, when you see people wearing coats that look like sleeping bags with sleeves, and the heating in donut shops is slightly higher than the surface of venus. You need the cold sea air to cool you down.

I was watching the Godfather last night; I didn’t realise before, the Corleone’s lived in Long Beach, in the movie.

I do love to be beside the seaside. For us, it was always the North Sea, or the Channel, but here it’s the Ocean, be it the Pacific or the Atlantic – even their seas are bigger in America. It’s funny, but looking out at the Atlantic I felt more of a connection, that home was just over there across this watery desert, rather than on the other side of the world. Then I thought, you do a lot of thinking when looking at the sea. And then I thought about Seinfeld, how whenever he had to do some deep thinking (such as that one where he has to decide whether or not to give up making silly “hello” voices about his girlfriend’s belly-button), he’d come and look at the ocean. All this thinking was making my brain cells nervous, so I met the others, and went and had a burrito.