If you follow me via social media you'll know that last week while I was on holiday in Melbourne my cat Morrissey died. A friend of ours was minding our house/cats, and Morrissey, being forever the wanderer, was hit by a car two streets from our house.


I got a phone call from a stranger at 8am who had seen him on the side of the road and called my number, having seen it on his collar tag. She stayed there with him until my father in law could come pick his body up, even though it made her late for work, because she said she had a cat of her own and she knew she'd appreciate the same kind of care for him in that situation. I've since discovered that we have some mutual friends and I'd like to send her a thank you card.


Morrissey was my first cat and he was very special to me. I paid ten dollars for him to a man who looked kind of Amish and he was probably only about four weeks old when we got him. He was very headstrong and loved to explore and it was impossible to keep him locked up for long - he was feisty and always got what he wanted. C had hoped we'd be able to move out to the country in the next year or two, where Morrissey could go for long walks and explore more safely.


He rarely caught animals, but the day before we left he caught a bird and ran through the house with it, then a few hours later, he caught a rat and ran through the house with it ("Oh, you didn't like the bird I caught you? How about this rat?!"). After disposing of their corpses, we locked him in the laundry for an hour as punishment (I was actually kind of impressed) but reconciled before we left the next morning.



He was a very charming cat with a lot of personality and my heart feels sore thinking about him. C's dad buried him in our yard while we were on holidays and kept his collar for us. I'd like to plant flowers on his grave and make a little plaque.




Morrissey liked:
+ Suckling on C's t-shirts until he left big cat spit marks around the neck
+ Spooning with and grooming our other little cat Dexter
+ Exploring, especially other people's gardens
+ Fake meat
+ Sleeping between us in bed with his head on the pillow
+ Sitting on windowsills
+ Making high pitched screaming noises (he didn't meow, he screamed)
+ Making friends
+ Laying in the sun

Some of my favourite posts about Morrissey:
+ This Charming Cat
+ Morrissey's Photos Pt. 1
+ Morrissey's Photos Pt. 2
+ List: Things That Morrissey Does
+ My Cat, The Artist

01 Arranging comfy little spaces in my house (see above).
02 The patterns inside envelopes.
03 Spirographs (even though I'm not very good at them).
04 Plaits.
05 Listening to records while we cook/while I watch C cook.
06 Planning for having visitors (Late Nov - Grandma & little sister & mid Dec - Ma & step-Dad!)
07 Watching old films in the cinema (this week was Singing In The Rain).
08 Tea that fixes things (eg. stomach aches, bad moods).
09 Pressing flowers to put in a special scrapbook.
10 Late afternoon/early evening walks with C, wherein we fall in love with Launceston all over again. Including; the smell of people's delicious dinners, the skyline, the ambery light, watching people go about their afternoon rituals, a scruffy old street cat, watching a friendly game of cricket and having C explain the rules of cricket to me, finding a sweet new grocers (I want to apply for a job there!) and feeling like a hero reaching the top of the hill home again.

+ Apologies for my iPhone quality photos. I need to show my SLR some love again.

I like giving myself a time limit sometimes when drawing. Otherwise, I get carried away and end up two hours in not really liking what I've ended up with. A ten minute deadline means rough, sketchiness, but the general idea is conveyed. I like long projects that take a few days to refine as well, but time isn't always available for such things. I bought this dress from ASOS a few weeks ago. I haven't bought new clothes in a long time so this was a treat. I find that I tend to fall into that tiny gap between 'regular' sizing and Curve/plus sizing. So I had to buy this dress a size up, there's a bit of room to move - I'll grow into it ;)

Are you familiar with Gemma Correll's little What I Wore Today drawing project? You draw a picture of yourself and submit it to the group Flickr pool.

This semester I kind of lost enthusiasm for my uni subjects, but one assignment I did have a fun time with was for my Drawing: Approaches to Abstraction subject. I became a bit obsessed with patterns, especially tessellating ones. The patterns around my house and on daily travels became very interesting to me. I drew a couple of patterns in Photoshop and did a couple by hand. Below are the patterns I made in Photoshop. It was challenging to perfect seamless tiling in the tessellating patterns - I'd love to try some more. I'd like to turn the colourful patterns into tea towels.







Each pattern was printed at A3 size onto paper to resemble posters. I'm not really sure what I'll do with them now.