I have a cat problem in my neighborhood. Or rather, I have a human problem that has caused an abundance of feral cats in my neighborhood. You see, my neighbor has set up a kind of a cat hotel on his front porch. He doesn’t do the responsible thing and make sure the cats are spayed or neutered, but he provides shelter and food for them. As a result, we have a feral cat problem in my neighborhood. They regularly defecate in my vegetable garden beds and my front yard. It’s not as bad as it was a couple of years ago, when the front of my house smelled like the barn I grew up down the street from, but believe you me, it’s still bad. Very bad.
I used to love cats. I even subscribed to Cat Fancy magazine in middle school. But now I have come to loathe them, and I am not the least bit sad when my German Shepherd catches one in the backyard. Really. I still like other people’s cats (okay, except maybe Elsa, who’s just plain ornery), but the feral cats need to go.
Tangentially related, I have launched a project for 2012. Inspired by TubaDan’s song-a-month project in 2011, I have decided to complete an illustration a month for 2012. My plan is to do all the illustrations in pen and ink on high-quality watercolor paper. I have managed to get the first month in just under the wire, and I feel like it needs a bit of explanation. But first, here it is.