The haunting...

Frosty - and His Best Friend...

acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24"
private collection











This is an old painting and I post it here out of a strange motivation. I think of myself as a very level-headed and pragmatic person, not given to superstition or unreasonable anxieties - and yet - I find that I rarely paint my own cats when they are alive. I rarely even photograph them. Somehow it's as if loving them too much will jinx them. So many times in the past it was always my favorite cat who went missing - or developed some rare disease. Is there guilt involved? Surely. I've been a rescuer and fostered cats all my life and because I've always tried to love them equally - and failed - do I somehow think it's a punishment? No - but...


Perhaps it's due to just missing them, perhaps it's the desire to offer a form of immortality; perhaps it's all of these things and I over analyze. This image of Frosty with a favorite toy says much about my need to think of him as having companionship out there in the great hereafter. And so, like Colette, I memorialize them when they are gone. (Colette used to recite the names of her dead cats - or she wrote of it - I'm not sure.)