animals

I don't spend much time with animals. When I was young, we had a cat. Dad didn't want an "indoor cat", so we had an "outdoor cat". To this day I'm not quite sure what that means. I guess once in a while the cat's path crossed with ours. One day, when I was about 3, I saw our cat, his face bloodied, staggering through our yard. He'd been hit by a car, and he didn't die right away, just slowly, as I remember, before my eyes.

We never had another cat.

My mother and I "insinuated" (we used this word) a few animals into the house over the years: someone's geriatric guinea pig whom we cared for through his last year, ditto a lovely friendly gray rat named Marilyn, and then my first real pet, a young and spry rat, whom I had for 2 years and left with my mom when I went to college. He died that year peacefully in my mom's lap as she stroked him.

The theme over at the sketch blog is "animals" and unlike many of the other artists, I don't have any ready models, no dogs or cats. There are bunnies in our neighborhood but they're much too quick for me!

But there are apparently many creatures in my head, because they tend to pop up whenever I'm doodling. I don't always know what they are. Bear? Cat? Dog? Possum? Bird-like thing? Other?