"Look What the Cat Dragged In"

Another installment from this previous May's "Month of Moose" - not particularly deliberate but more of a coincidental alignment of material that had accumulated in the production pipeline. The temporary glut of Alces alces made for a convenient theme to explore, okay, flog if you will. Bonus trvia: the Alaska Department of Fish & Game says that our local denizen deer is actually its own separate race: Alces alces gigas.

Nothing really changed in the evolution of this cartoon, just the (hopefully) usual refinement in rendering during the normal process in producing a panel. It did go through the usual channels of penciling out a doodle in the omnipresent sketchbook, then penned in ballpoint, incubated, then hatched out onto a slab of Bristol board in the studio.

The inspiration for this cartoon came from my memories of my first ever cat, the legendary Sneakers. One of many (first of an eventual four) oranges, which are my favorite breed by far - stemming from the original orange by the same name owned by my mother. back in New York. Raised as a kitten from restaurant scraps (I was working as a dishwasher + waiter at the time) the steady diet of fresh fish and other seafood made him into quite the independent and very large companion. Aside from a life on the streets with heavy traffic, he survived a serious mauling, a couple precocious kittens (image here of him and Souchie) and at least a dozen ex-girlfriends, not to mention the usual host of other wild animals in the Alaskan outdoors - one of which took him down in his last winter. He lived to be fourteen years old and survived eight different moves around the Interior, from a tiny one-room cabin, to an apartment, then another complex right besides one of the three biggest roads in the city at the time (he also used to open up the kitchen cabinet drawer under the sink, worm his way through a hole by the plumbing, and make his way throughout the walls to come and go with impunity into several other apartments, including the landlord's place), a Quonset hut, another one-room cabin behind a McDonalds, an A-frame, and another one-room log cabin. It as this at this last residence he had the luxury of a cat door, which meant he quite often would bring home and proudly display his numerous kills. At this time of my life I was still letting my cats be outdoor/indoor ( a return to bird-watching has long since enlightened me about the much safer and saner alternative) and so was treated to quite the smorgasbord of victuals left as offerings upon the carpet or couch, the most memorable one of which was a headless hare even larger than his eighteen pounds. Also I'll never forget him following a moose around the house as he tracked it wandering around by each window, watching with a fierce, guttural growl and hilariously floofed-up tail. So that's where this one came from. I sure do miss that cat, he was a good friend for many years.