I think I Could Turn and Live With the Animals

There's a Walt Whitman poem that BD and I read whenever one of our four leggeds leaves the planet:

I think I could turn and live with the animals, They are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.


This past summer my dear soulfriend Karin had to say goodbye to Zack the Cat, her constant companion of 18 years.

This event inspired me to honor the deeply rooted friendship that K had with Z and that we can be blessed to have with the companion animals that share our life for a little or a long time.

Looking through my sketch books I found a series of drawings that I had made of my sweet little LuLu the Cat. She died in 2001. From these original drawings I enlisted LuLu as my cat icon and hand stitched, then stained with India Ink, a series of cat portraits on small flags made of Kona cotton. The cat flags were inspired by Wind Horses also known as Tibetan Prayer flags. Each flag included good words about the nature of cats.

Since then I have continued to experiment and play with materials to gentle the idea of paying 'Homage to Companion Animals'.


Each 5 x 5 inch piece shown here combines Acrylic mono print, gesso, India Ink, hand stitching, and bees wax to create the trio: Spirit Cat I, II and III all mounted on canvas blocks.