This post has nothing to do with being a California artist, a Regionalist from Quaintsville, a depicter of local landmarks, Mineral King or Three Rivers.

It is a peek into the heart of a middle-aged, slightly-affected-by-a-cat-disorder woman who happens to have a blog about her work but sometimes just has to talk about other subjects. Try to be polite. It’s called “ailurophilia” and it means “love of cats” and I’m not as weird as you might be thinking.

This summer I lost Kaweah, my sweet little short-tailed black kitty. The cat of my walking buddy went bye-bye. A week later, Zeke, my giant blue-eyed loudmouth disappeared. Around the same time, the cat of my cat-feeding girls was not seen again. 2 months later, the great and mighty Nipper Castro lay down and died.

This leaves me with Perkins, the gentle and quiet survivor of 13 years who has seen 13 of his yard-mates get picked off during his life at my address.

When I first retrieved Perkins from a friend’s barn, he looked so common to me that I had to memorize a few marks on his gray and white tabby self in case he was dead by the side of the road and might not be readily known to me.

Now that I am obsessed with my one remaining feline, I want to show you a few of his unique features, so you can admire his regal, strong and courageous self.

Perkins has pink toes.

If you see him from the side, you think he has a normal tabby type tail.

But, look at his tail from the top side – isn’t this special??

Thanks for sticking with me through this non-Mineral King, non-drawing, non-painting blog post. I’m glad we had this little talk. Perkins feels honored to be the center of attention for a change. And hopefully you will appreciate the new vocabulary word.