Cat: Issue No. 18

no . 18 cat

feline AURAS Drawing outside the lines

MEW TUBE

The allure of the internet cat

CAT CAFÉ Stories, Art, and Design Quarterly

ISS 18

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Anticipating Vancouver’s first cat café

Hanna Dorothy

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NO . 16 /17 SUBURBIA

LIFE IN THE WOODS

with queer painter Shelley Stefan

RAFFI

yes, that Raffi

HISTORY OF THE ‘BURBS Stories, Art, and Design Quarterly

sights unseen just out of town

SAD Mag is a volunteer-run, registered Canadian non-profit that has been featuring the work of up-and-coming Vancouver creatives since 2009. Your annual subscription fee allows us to create, print and distribute this magazine; we don’t keep a penny. Subscribe to keep the arts alive in second-most expensive city in the world!

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CONGRATULATIONS TO MISTER CASUAL 2014

Phil * *

May you reign in total relaxation.

make a cat happy

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featured contributors

sherwin sullivan tjia is a

andrea hooge is a Vancouverbased artist. Her art has been included in many group exhibitions throughout Vancouver. She has had two solo exhibitions at Hot Art Wet City, titled Dolly and Scratch.

Andrea uses a variety of mediums, but focuses mainly on oils and scratchboard on different surfaces including wood and canvas. Find her online at andreahooge.com

jennifer truong is actually an

elderly one-eyed cat who wears a toque.

This extremely dexterous feline is currently completing her BFA in Photography and Imagery at the Art Center of Design.

She splits her time between Los Angeles, Vancouver, and grooming. Find her online at truewrong.com

genevieve anne michaels

editorial staff

contributing writers

contributing photographers

sad cast: the sad mag podcast

Kristin Cheung

Jackie Dives

Dina Del Bucchia

Angela Fama

Jackie Hoffart Producer, Co-Host, Editor

Alice Fleerackers

Robyn Humphreys

Jackie Hoffart

Shane Oosterhoff

Megan Jenkins

Sarah Race

Adrienne Matei

Rob Seebacher

Kaitlin McNabb

Katie Stewart

Genevieve Anne Michaels

Jennifer Truong

Montreal-based writer and illustrator with a knack for creating stunning RorschCAT Inkblots. You Are a Kitten! is the final book in his Choose Your Own Adventure–style trilogy from the point of view of a cat. Tjia’s latest project, E-ZPurr: The Virtual Cat!, is a full-length album featuring over an hour of cats purring for your listening pleasure.

Katie Stewart Creative Director & Co-Publisher Michelle Reid Editor-in-Chief & Co-Publisher Pamela Rounis Lead Designer Jackie Hoffart Managing Editor Sara Harowitz Contributing Editor Robyn Humphreys Designer Camille Segur Designer Kristin Ramsey Proofreader Amanda Lee Smith Web Editor Emily Ross Web Editor David Mayoh Ad Sales Coordinator

Nina Paula Morenas Pamela Rounis Rebecca Slaven Farah Tozy Jennifer Truong Daryn Wright

contributing artists Portia Boehm Kristin Cheung Andrea Hooge Roselina Hung Pascale Laviolette

contributing stylists Leigh Eldridge Makeup Artist Jenny Lynn of Oh Hey Style Hair Stylist Monika Koch Waber Stylist

is a freelance writer, art gallery worker, and Creative Writing BFA student. She is the Visual Arts Editor for BeatRoute BC, and her work has appeared on websites including Thump and xoJane.

She enjoys gin and tonics, and has a badass collection of loungewear. Find her on Twitter @GenevieveAnneM

Stu Popp Co-Host

board of directors Sean Cranbury Megan Lau Mac Lugay Amanda McCuaig Amanda Lee Smith Pamela Sheppard Daniel Zomparelli Sad Mag is published four times per year by the Sad Magazine Publishing Society, 846 East 14th Ave Vancouver, BC V5T 2N6

contributers to sadmag.ca

Email: hello@sadmag.ca

Alexandra Bogren

Contents ©2015 Sad Mag All rights reserved.

Cianda Bourrel

ISSN 1923-3566

Alice Fleerackers Kyla Jamieson

Jayme Cochrane Web Designer

Coreena Lewis

Megan Jenkins

Aili Meutzner

Shmuel Marmorstein

Deanne Beattie Founding Editor-in-Chief

Sherwin Sullivan Tjia

Lise Monique

Ola Volo

Cole Nowicki

Brandon Gaukel Founding Creative Director

Carrie Walker

Shannon Waters

Distribution coordinated

by Disticor sadmag.ca facebook.com/sadmag twitter.com/sadmag #sadcats

LETTER FROM THE publishers The SAD Mag editorial team is particularly fond of cats, since we tend to spend a lot of time in their company throughout the entire creative and production process. They are regular (albeit passive) contributors to almost every issue: winding around our ankles, sitting on our keyboards, and accumulating an orange layer of Hawkins Cheezies dust on their fur as they sit in our laps. They indulge our need for distraction and make us feel intensely productive compared to their resolute lethargy.

As you’ll see, we’re not the only folks in town inspired by cats. This issue features Vancouverites channeling their feline devotion into a range of creative endeavours: from Carrie Walker’s watercolour portraits (p.26) and Aili Meutzner’s aura drawings, (p.20) to Kristin Cheung’s zines and Michelle Furbacher’s plan for the city’s premiere

table of contents

06 08 10 14

cat cafe, the women featured in this issue are proud to claim the title of “cat lady.”

And why wouldn’t they? Experts agree, these furry beasties do wonders for your mood and well-being, and may even outrank your partner in making you feel fuzzy inside (see p.10).

The average feline—to paraphrase Tina Fey quoting Amy Poehler—does not give a fuck if you like it. We agree, and say: embrace the Kanye-esque swagger of the cat. Trust us, it feels pretty good.

— michelle reid, Editor & Co-Publisher katie stewart, Creative Director & Co-Publisher

Dispatches Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan

Room with a Mew Vancouver’s first cat café

Mew Tube Why we love Gumpy Cat

An Ode to Chandler Tribute to an old friend

16 18 20 24

Waxing Pussy The fear of going bare

Photography by Angela Fama & Art

by Andrea Hooge Drawing Outside the Lines Reading your cat’s aura

2015 Lucky Cat Calendar

26 28 30 34

Feline of Beauty Carrie Walker’s pet portraits

Confessions of a Cat Zinester Embracing the cat lady identity Cattoos Cat lovers on their ink

On the Catwalk Celebrating feline fashion

sad mag would like to thank The Cobalt

Keiko Boxall Lily Ditchburn Rommy Ghaly Yuriko Iga of BLIM Lizzy Karp & Rain City Chronicles MAKE

on the cover

on the back cover

Madeleine Michaels + Luna the Cat

Cover model Tilly the cat poses with her human, Katie Stewart

Cat Troubles

by Ola Volo

Mr. Diva

Photographed by Rob Seebacher, 2008 (Hasselblad H2D)

Mixed Media

Teresa Watling + Enoki the Cat

Patrick Winkler VOKRA Bijou, Nico, Frankie, Mr. Darren Lovenstuff, Indy & Eliot (SAD Staff Cats)

36 40 44 45

Glamour Puss Photography

Name Redacted Inspired by true events

Person, Place, Thing Becki Chan, Toronto, Feline Design It’s Cashmere A cat will pee anywhere

cat to person ratio in this issue

: Dispatches

D I S PAT C H E S illustrations by coreena lewis

R O M E , I TA LY The cats have seen the end.

Slinking around crumbling columns, curled up on thousand-year-old platforms, sunbathing before camera-ready tourists: these kitties rule Rome, our past and future. Sunken two storeys below a Roman intersection is a remnant of a world past. The cat sanctuary houses several dozen feral felines who pose for onlookers and lick their paws daintily.

One languishes on the sidewalk in the public eye, deflecting the paparazzi with sharp, darting paws.

She is a complete diva; you can see it in her eyes.

I think this must be their queen.

Two thousand years ago, this was the site of the Roman Republican victory temples, a place wrought with history. Julius Caesar was killed here in 44 BC. The cats now seem to have an ancient bond with the place. It is said that Cleopatra initially brought cats to Rome as a gift for Caesar, but as it turns out he was allergic. Once the site was excavated in 1929 the cats rushed (back) in, haunting the place. This smacks of revenge for his rejection.

This is only one of many corners of the city where cats have formed their own empire. In the ancient ruins at Palatine Hill they curl up on fallen columns like thrones. They have a sense of authority over the

place, as all cats seem to have over their own domain, be it the corner of the couch or the temple, and it seems they know something we don’t. Cat lovers stop by to pet them through wrought-iron bars. The cats move gently just out of arm’s reach, with that look in their eyes, the knowledge that we are really the fools, the pets.

They know that once we all go, fade away by our own doing, they will move in (again) and make a home in the spaces we left behind: the bedrooms, the city streets, the parliament buildings. The cats will be there, waiting.

—daryn wright

On om i ch i, Japan My favourite Japanese expression is neko jita, which translates to “cat tongue” and refers to a person who is sensitive to hot foods (as in temperature, not spice). I was unable to slurp my boiling hot ramen the moment it arrived, and instead of feeling a wave of cultural incompetence crashing against me, I could stand proud in my cat tongue. It was like a magic card, a medical condition, a relevant and cute shortcut to comfort.

I lived in Japan for four years, two of which I spent in the sleepy coastal town Onomichi, halfway between Hiroshima and Okayama on the southern-ish east side of the main island.

Onomichi is famous in Japan for being legendary director Yasujiro Ozu’s choice to serve as the idyllic hometown for the aging characters in his classic 1953 film, Tokyo Story. But Onomichi is famous for more than its charming temples and shops. It’s also home to such an impressive number of stray cats that it’s something of a photographer’s destination.

A Flickr search for “Onomichi cats” never fails to impress.

There is also a “path of cats” that leads to a strange museumhouse full of about 1,500 maneki neko (beckoning cats). The artist-owner also hand-paints cats onto round rocks and places them all over town, on rooftops and paths, some decades old and worn, some fresh and bright red, white, and black. My Japanese house (so cool, so retro) was also so infested with rats that I bought cat food to lure some cats to my house, hoping they might notice the rats and eat them too.

Sadly, it seemed like most of the Onomichi cats just spent their days on the sunny hillside temples, being fed by monks and living carefree, nap-filled lives. Their tongues were probably too sensitive for my rats anyway.

—jackie hoffart

A s t a n a , K a z ak h s t a n Cats are not visible in Astana. It’s the second coldest capital city in the world and so they all stay indoors and any strays would not survive the winter. The only animals I see here are crows, quails, the occasional pigeon, and the pack of wild dogs that chases me when I cycle home from the grocery store.

My apartment allows cats but I wasn’t ready to be a cat owner in Canada, nevertheless Kazakhstan. A cat is a bigger commitment than most people think. A lesson I took from my parents.

We had so many cats growing up that once I woke up with a cat giving birth on me. Two kittens in. Or out, I should say.

My parents still own a lot of cats. They live in Chilliwack and would like to move cities but options are limited because they now own a lot of servals, African wild cats that aren’t allowed in many municipalities.

On my second day in Astana, I met my co-worker’s cats. Her former roommate took in a stray that turned out to be pregnant.

She kept two of the kittens and found homes for the rest. Both of the cats were wearing harnesses and I asked if she took them for walks.

“No,” she said. “They wear them all the time so that when we move they’ll be used to the harnesses and can walk around the airport during layovers.”

“Oh, when are you moving?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

The cats are still wearing their harnesses and my co-worker has no plans for her departure date.

—rebecca slaven

7

: Interview

room with a mew A cat-centric community space is coming to Vancouver by farah tozy artwork by andrea hooge

warning: many cat puns below Vancouver cat and coffee shop lovers can rest easy knowing that come 2015, a cat café will be opening up in our city. With a simple crowdfunding page, entrepreneur Michelle Furbacher gained enough public support to create her dream space, Catfé. The concept for the cat café is quite simple: it’s a place where you can enjoy a cup of coffee while a snuggly feline sits on your lap. It is a place that provides a service for those who are unable to keep pets of their own, or who are looking for a unique social experience. And if you fall in love with your snuggle buddy, you can apply to adopt him or her. I had a chance to sit down with Furbacher to discuss her new pawject.

farah tozy: Tell meow a bit about yourself. michelle furbacher: I’ve been a cat lover my whole

Paska! Platz! Pluma Moos!

Roll Kuchen!

Oil on birch panel

life, from the magical moment in the first grade when I met my family’s new kitten, through my fastidious collection of Garfield books and the “Punk Cats” poster that adorned my preteen bedroom wall. (FYI I would never condone dressing kittens in leather jackets and ripped jeans with guitars now, but my nine-year-old self thought it was the coolest thing ever.) But only after volunteering for the West Vancouver SPCA and the North Vancouver Animal Welfare Shelter did I really start to understand the complexities of cat behaviour. After my own cat, Peanut, passed away two years ago, I started a live-in cat-sitting

business so that I could spend quality time with kitties again.

Business was good—so good that I barely slept at my own home last year. Through cat sitting, I got to know a lot of different cats with different kinds of personalities, and learned even more about the feline mentality.

I want to provide others with the same experience I was looking for through cat sitting—a space that offers feline companionship for those who don’t have a cat of their own, or just really like hanging out with kitties. At the same time, I have a good understanding of what cats need, and their welfare is of utmost importance to me. I will work hard to create a safe, happy space that will feel like home to the cats until they find their forever home.

ft: Would you describe yourself as a cat enthusiast? mf: Yes definitely! Though I wouldn’t think of myself as a crazy

cat lady. I really appreciate cats and think of them as little people, with their own personalities. I wouldn’t say I love every cat, because they’re all so different. They’re little furry people to me.

ft: Why did you decide to work towards opening a cat café? mf: At first because it was a place I really wanted to go to, so I was waiting around for someone to announce they were opening

A purring kitty in your lap can be beneficial in so many ways— [cats can] lower blood pressure, improve motivation, decrease anxiety, ease loneliness, and ward off depression. Some quality kitty time can improve mental health and increase compassion towards animals, and in turn, towards all creatures. Basically, Catfé will result in peace on earth!

ft: Sounds very pawsitive! What can a visitor to Catfé expect? mf: As per discussions with Vancouver Coastal Health, we

need to have food service completely separate from our kitties, and so Catfé will be almost like two businesses side by side: a café and retail boutique for cat lovers, and a lounge space featuring eight to 12 resident foster cats. Customers can order food and drink from our take-out menu, and bring it with them into the kitty lounge. Access to the cat area will be free with purchase from the café. To make the spaces more interactive, we plan to build some window perches connecting the two spaces.

I want to have a rotating artist showing his or her work, maybe make space every few months to put up a new cat-related artist.

ft: Unfurtunately, I don’t own a cat. What kind of atmeowosphere should I expect?

mf: Some people think cats are antisocial, but there are as many

different personality types of cats as there are of people. We’ll choose cats with more outgoing and social personalities for Catfé. Being out of a cage and free to roam about (the space will be equipped with “cats only” retreat areas for when cats don’t feel like basking in attention and adoration) will also allow the cats’ personalities to flourish.

We will have a cat handler there at all times to answer questions about cat behaviour and ensure harmony between human and cat folk. “Dog people” may find themselves crossing over to the other side after a little feline companionship.

one. That wasn’t happening. I’ve heard that the ones in Japan are hourly rates for you to hang out with cats, whereas the European ones are cafés with cats hanging out; you can stay as long as you want. I actually visited a couple of cat cafés in Europe and I believe that vibe is more fitting for Vancouver.

ft: How do you envision Catfé being a part of the social furrabric of Vancouver?

mf: Because a high percentage of rentals in Vancouver don’t

allow pets, Catfé will be like a home away from home for cat lovers in need of some quality cat time [and] a getaway for cat lovers who have allergic partners, or for tourists and travellers who miss their cats at home or students who aren’t able to keep pets of their own. We want the kitty lounge to feel like an extension of your living room, with board games, WiFi, and a library of books. We’ll host art shows for feline-inclined artists, movie nights, readings, and more. We are building Catfé for the community—a new space for animal lovers looking for a unique social experience. A place to learn about cats. A new way to facilitate adoptions. A place to spark discussion about the feline homelessness problem in the Lower Mainland, and where cat owners can learn about cat behaviour and proper cat care.

“ I want to provide others with the same experience I was looking for through cat sitting—a space that offers feline companionship for those who don’t have a cat of their own” We’ve assembled a team that is working on plans to make this “the world’s most sustainable cat café.” Employment of sustainable design and construction will align with Vancouver’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan.

ft: Purrfect! When will this furrbulous place open and where? mf: We are currently in negotiations on a lease. We are hoping

we’ll be able to open in the spring, but it all comes down to two things: approval of our lease proposal, and then approval of our development permit by City Hall. The combination of these takes several months, before we get to start on construction and design. So, fingers crossed about the lease!

Additionally, there are therapeutic, stress-relieving benefits to spending time in the company of four-legged creatures.

9

The

Allure Of The

Cat Video by alice fleerackers rorschcat inkblots by sherwin sullivan tjia

: Feature

33,900,000 videos of cats eating watermelon, falling off chairs, and having adorably miserable kitten nightmares.

Only after I’d peeled my eyes away from my third musical “sushi cat” video did I recognize the magnitude of what I’d just discovered: 33.9 million cat videos? To put this number into perspective, searching “Canada news” barely hits 4,760,000.

Even searching for “Canada” can’t compete with the cat craze; at only 13,500,000 videos, our home and native land produces less than half the YouTube frenzy that our feline friends do.

How—how?—did sushi cats gain a larger media presence than our entire nation? Not sure whether to be awestruck, shocked, or disgusted, I turned to three experts—a short-film director, a media studies professor, and a renowned cat researcher— for the scoop on society’s cat video obsession.

Award-winning director Nicholas Humphries isn’t surprised that cat videos have become so successful.

“Short content is extremely consumable,” he explains, “viral videos—like six seconds of a dramatic hamster—get play because they are short and on a very accessible platform.”

Though Humphries hasn’t worked on any hamster blockbusters that I know of, he has written and directed for the hit YouTube channel Geek & Sundry, showcased his shorts at film festivals around the world, and now teaches Direction at Vancouver Film School. When it comes to short, quality content, he’s kind of a big deal.

Like an indie-horror-film-making Justin Bieber, Humphries first gained professional recognition through sharing videos on YouTube. In 2009, he worked on a web series called Riese: Kingdom Falling, with a team of other would-be filmmakers.

They initially promoted the show by posting each 10-minute episode online, free of charge. Riese quickly rose above the million-view mark, landing a distribution deal with space channel Syfy along with NBC Universal. Humphries attributes much of his later success to his initial YouTube popularity.

“As an indie director,” he tells me, “the internet has only helped me get my work out there.”

Dr. Christopher Schneider, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, thinks YouTube fame

might be one reason that cat videos have become so popular. “We all want to feel important,” he tells me in a phone interview, “we all want our individual selves to be recognized. Publishing, posting, and circulating the relatively mundane details of our lives accomplishes that task.”

Schneider researches mass media, culture, and technology from a sociological perspective, so he’s got some pretty radical ideas about the whole cat video thing. YouTube, he believes, doesn’t just feed human vanity; it also builds what he calls “relatability” between ourselves and others.

“Watching cat videos or other mundane details of our daily lives is kind of boring,” he says. Seeing that others are doing exactly the same thing “normalizes the boredom, and in some ways makes people feel less guilty about wasting their time watching cat videos.” The basic logic is simple—if everyone is doing it, it must be okay.

Schneider also wonders whether these videos might be a kind of coping mechanism, a way of dealing with personal hardships. By “plugging into the relatively mundane details of cat videos or other people’s lives, we can unplug from the difficulties of our own daily lives,” he argues. Like drugs and alcohol, cat videos can offer temporary escape when we’re feeling low—and they do so at a much better price, with fewer health risks.

Although it seems a bit far-fetched, it turns out Schneider’s ideas about kitty-based emotion regulation aren’t far off the mark, at least according to cat researcher Dr. Dennis Turner. “We have many studies showing that cats are relaxing,” he tells me over Skype. Cats create “a more natural environment [in which people] lose their fears.”

Turner is the director of the Swiss Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology (I.E.A.P.) and has been researching cats and the cat-human relationship since 1982. His book, The Domestic Cat, is recognized in his field as the “Bible for cat researchers.”

He and his colleagues have conducted a series of studies comparing former and current cat

owners, with some surprising results. It turns out that even just being near a cat can improve a bad mood, decreasing feelings of depression, fear, and introversion.

The real kicker, though, is that cats might—at least in some situations—be even more effective at making us feel better than our own spouses are. In a study conducted in 2003, Turner and colleagues pitted cats against significant others to see which was the better mood fix. Turner chuckles as he recounts the results of the study: “A cat can have the same positive effect on a woman as a man [does].”

Both cats and husbands will make the woman feel better. For men, however, the reverse seems to be true; women do a much better job of improving a man’s mood than cats do. “In some sense,” Turner summarizes, men “could be replaced by a cat when it comes to improving negative moods of women.”

Certainly, taking care of a cat—or watching a video of one—requires a lot less time and effort than maintaining a relationship with a living, breathing companion. Schneider believes that the relative ease of accessing these videos is one reason they’ve become so popular. “We live in a state of advanced capitalism where most things are immediate or instantaneous,” he explains. “You want some ice cream or some cookies and you don’t have it? You walk down the street and you’re in a convenience store in two minutes.” In the same way, Schneider believes that “the internet, YouTube, and smart phone technology exacerbate this sort of instantaneous gratification.” We feel low, we want to feel better, and we want to do so as quickly and as effortlessly as possible.

Even after more than 30 years of passionate cat research, Turner urges us not to dump our human companions just yet. “Cats can’t improve already good moods,” he explains. “That’s probably in the prerogative of a human partner.” Looks like we’ve still got one up on the cats . . . at least for now.

: Dispatches

A cat can have the same positive effect on a woman as a man does.

: Essay

An Ode to Chandler The cat of a lifetime by kaitlin mcnabb artwork by roselina hung

I grew up in London, Ontario. I know.

Don’t hold it against me.

When I was eight, our family pet, a Satanic Siamese named Riley, finally kicked the bucket (on Halloween, I might add). The grieving period was short.

Tears were not shed for the cat that used to chase us down the stairs, biting at our ankles. I wasn’t upset over the fact that I would no longer be attacked at night while sleeping.

howling like he had just swallowed a bucket of nails with his eyelids half-up.

He cartoonishly stumbled out of his cage, crossing each leg over the other, until he finally collapsed and curled up by my feet.

I started high school a week later as a completely new kid. My new classmates scorned my (apparently) Ontarian accent and my lack of lacrosse knowledge.

Needless to say, I made zero friends in Grade 9.

Eventually, Chandler turned 15; I prepared to move across North America. Somewhere, I knew it might be the last time I saw him.

You know that feeling when you know something awful is happening, but you just can’t acknowledge it?

I had been out with friends and had a great night—one of those totally fun, totally gluttonous evenings. On the train ride home, I glanced at my phone in a half-drunken stupor.

Luckily, I had Chandler.

After a month, my parents decided that my sister Kelly and I were ready to have our own cats, and we adopted a pair of spotted Ocicat brothers. I promptly named mine Chandler (it was the 90s).

People often asked me, “How did you ever get Chandler to behave like that?”

They meant: a cat that slept with his head on the pillow, didn’t leave my side, allowed me to lift his paws to make him dance, fell asleep belly-up in my lap, greeted me at the door.

The short answer is, if you give an eightyear-old a cat, and they do nothing but devote their entire life to it, then it will end up Chandler.

I cannot stress how great Chandler was.

Yes, I said was. Yes, this is a sad story.

Growing up in London was great.

I liked hockey, swimming, applepicking, and other wholesome outdoor activities that were popular in the 90s.

I had friends, I went swimming, I could make a snowman. All that changed when

Missed call, missed call, text message: For a whole year, I sat at home on “Chandler is…” weekends, hanging out with Chandler, wondering why I had no friends. In I knew what it meant but I couldn’t retrospect, probably my preference for process it. “Wait until you get home,” a cat above any human is a clue. Even I kept repeating to myself. after my social life improved, my family life took a dive, and Chandler was there I feigned happiness until we walked in to sit with me while I sought solace in my the door. I glanced down at my phone, forced myself to read the message, and room away from all the noise. collapsed into tears.

When I left for university, the only thing Chandler was sick and he would be going I was sad about leaving was Chandler. to the vet tomorrow to be put down.

My dad always joked I could take him with me. But I knew he didn’t really mean Tomorrow. it: he loved Chandler as much as me.

Abundant evidence exists in the form of A night full of agony for him. A night full all the oversized photos of Chandler and of agony for me. his brother Fischer, beautifully framed and prominently displayed throughout On the phone, my mom, surprisingly stead, assured me he would “get lots of the house. pats” and that they had laid out his cat My dad’s penchant for blown-up pet basket extra-nice. photos as home decor extended into his My disastrous sleep that night was gift-giving habits. punctuated by sobs and whimpers.

Every year for Christmas I got a massive framed photo of Chandler. I don’t think My mom called me the next day to say at I will ever live the vet’s office Chandler had laid down down displaying and started to purr as everyone gave him one of those a pat and he slowly drifted off to sleep. photos on the fireplace mantle The desk where I write was covered in of my shared flowers sent by my friends when they rental house in found out that Chandler died. A picture university. My of Chandler curled up with his brother hangs above me as I type. Far away in roommates gently teased me, Port Moody, his cat basket sits empty. knowing full well I would disown them if they ever spoke When I visit my parents’ house for the first time since leaving BC three years ill of Chandler. ago, Chandler won’t greet me at the door.

On holidays, I would visit my parents’ home and resort to the habits of my And that seems the strangest of all.

14-year-old self, with my door shut and music blasting, Chandler at my side. But What remains of his legacy are several as time went on, I came home and saw gigantic framed photos, a basket with a my parents less often, trying to become leopard-print blanket my parents can’t the adult I wanted to be. My efforts went bear to throw away, a couple stains on unnoticed by Chandler; no matter how their rug from times he tried to get my long it had been since I last visited, he attention, and the indelible mark on my heart. never failed to greet me at the door.

“You know that feeling when you know something awful is happening, but you just can’t acknowledge it? ” I was 14 and my parents decided to move across the country to Port Moody, BC. Again, please don’t hold this against me.

I still dream about you Coloured Pencil & Digital Collage

My parents tried to drug the cats for the flight, hiding the pills in their food.

Chandler’s brother was suspicious, and we didn’t notice ever-trusting, everhungry Chandler wolfing down his own serving as well as half of his brother’s.

Nine hours later, a disgruntled Chandler shot out of the special baggage department

15

: Essay

waxing pussy Getting over the fear of going bare down there by nina paula morenas artwork by pascale laviolette

I was 30 and I had never been waxed—down there. I don’t know when it happened but all of a sudden I noticed friends talking about going for a wax like they were picking up dry cleaning. It’s just a regular thing that apparently every woman does and I missed the memo. When was a Lady Bic and a soothing wet cloth not good enough for everyone? While I nodded in agreement about how I needed to go for a groom too, I wondered if I needed to finally get over it and just let a stranger rip the hair off of the most sensitive area on my body.

My anxiety on this subject has many facets. For one, what if I fart? That would be embarrassing and it’s not like you can excuse yourself to the next room when you’re half naked spread-eagled on the table. And nervousness always exacerbates flatulation so even if you feel fine right before who knows what those butterflies will do. Secondly, what if I get an STI? You never know how well people sterilize all their stuff and as ironic as it would be to contract a sexually transmitted infection doing the very thing to prepare you for hot sex, it’s not something I need. Lastly, it’s expensive. This is a $40­­­–$60 event––and people do this regularly? As a person who trims her own bangs I object to this kind of, um, fleecing.

I was at a bachelorette party when a friend of the bride started talking about waxing. Since she was only an acquaintance I decided to finally fess up that I had never been (the first step is admitting it). She then went on and on about how I need to see her waxer, “she’s Russian, and it’s virtually painless, best

Maybe my subconscious was trying to get me out of it. I finally made it there just a few minutes late.

I expected a spa but what I walked into seemed more like a poorly staffed doctors’ office. Natalia was the only one there, which actually put me at ease. She knew it was my first time and told me to relax, “no one is dying here.” I was led into a little room with nice lighting, a detail that I really appreciate.

I was relieved that she was an older lady. Something about a perky 20-something looking at my v-jazz doesn’t sit well with me. Perhaps I feel like she would see my butt cellulite and judge me. Then I’d want to qualify the cellulite with a warning like the ghost of waxing future that it will happen to them too. Just.

You. Wait. An older woman in this profession would have seen enough not to judge. She seemed like a warm lady/mom type, like after she would give me a cup of hot cocoa before sending me on my way.

Once naked from the bottom down and lying on the table she asked me to spread my legs “like women on TV who give birth.”

I did as I was told and she got to work. It wasn’t painless and it wasn’t the greatest feeling but it was definitely tolerable. She made small talk to distract me, name-dropping celebrities that she had serviced, including Gillian Anderson “from the X-Files TV program.”

After we finished with the main event she put on some secret formula cream that’s supposed to help with the redness. I thought we were done but wait, the butt IS included! I never understood how this would go. But I only needed to roll on my side and hold up my butt cheek. It felt kind of humiliating but not as humiliating as getting on all fours would have been.

“ As a person who trims her own bangs I object to this kind of, um, fleecing.” of all, no double dipping.” It took me a moment to realize she meant she doesn’t dip into the wax twice which means it’s safer.

She texted me her information immediately. So this woman is supposed to be some sort of magician waxer who is clean, and pain-free, and she was delivered right to my pocket? All signs pointed south.

I called her. She said she could fit me in right away. Right away is too soon and I booked it for two days later, giving me time to mentally prepare. She said to make sure the hair is one quarter inch. She asked if I wanted a Brazilian. I said yes, as this was what I had heard mentioned on Sex and the City but I didn’t fully know what it meant. Does that include around your butt hole?

Or does that just mean more than just the bikini line? I was tempted to Google it then got distracted by Tippymoo Cat and fell into an internet hole. The day finally arrived and I couldn’t tell if my hair was “one quarter inch.” I took the scissors to try and trim a little and I cut myself in the process. Fuck, I’m supposed to be there in 20 minutes! I held tissue after tissue over the wound it finally started to clot. I hurried out the door and somehow ended up going the wrong way and got a little lost.

Sphinx with Marbles Oil on Canvas

As I walked home I felt kinda puffy and sore but the next day it was like a brand new vag. I kept sneaking a peek every time I used the bathroom. But after a couple weeks I started to feel itchy––it was growing back. It’s too soon! Damn my European heritage! On the one hand I’ll never be one of those poor balding women but surely there’s some middle ground. What a production for only a couple weeks of smoothness.

I still haven’t gone back. Part of it is the cost for sure but I also have developed a bit of a resentment towards it. Why do I feel pressure to do this like it’s expected of me? My boyfriend is a fan so now I feel like I should keep it up. But I don’t want to, it’s kind of a hassle. And I realize the main reason I never hopped on the wax wagon before wasn’t fear. It was apathy. I just don’t mind the bush.

17

: Photography ——Angela Fama

Hat, Used House of Vintage Model, Patrick Sherwood (Family Management)

Kodak Portra 400

: Cat in Plaid ——Andrea Hooge

Oil and acrylic on birch panel

19

: Interview

Drawing outside the lines A cat lady and her cat auras by pamela rounis artwork by aili meutzner photography by robyn humphreys

Aili Meutzner is one of Vancouver’s premier cat ladies. And while the term “cat lady” may have once conjured images of a loner or a hoarder, it’s got a very different meaning these days. Cats are hot. Loving cats a little more than most just means you’re a bit eccentric, probably into reading, baking, and/or making kombucha from scratch. You’re sensitive. You’re interested and interesting. And Meutzner is nothing if not interesting.

at you, you take your hand away, you know what I mean?

And so people who are like “This cat’s mean” and I’m like “No, that cat’s just telling you ‘stop petting me’.” Though I must say that I do grab my cats all the time whether they like it or not (laughs).

One of my first memories of Meutzner is from high school. She was passing out copies of her zine Celery Wax––she was an industrious person, even then. On the cover of the zine, of course, was a cat donning a jaunty crown. So her admiration of cats isn’t just some trend––it’s a long-standing love affair. One that seems to be mutual, too, because cats seem to love her right back.

am: I have a 14-year-old long hair, grey and white lady cat

pamela rounis: When did you first notice the spiritual connection

the other and they figured it out. She’s a Scorpio, like myself.

So that’s Aggie and then I have Phil who’s a four-year-old, very handsome, classic tabby. He’s a polydactyl so he’s got thumbs and he’s a Cancer. He’s semi-feral so when he likes people he likes them but 99.9% of the population he’s terrified of. But he’s pretty cute. He looks like a little ocelot and he’s got wide eyes.

you have with cats?

aili meutzner: [laughs] It’s pretty loaded, it’s pretty

emotional for me. Cause it started as a child. I’m from a long line of cat people . . . I always felt really connected to cats and enjoyed their company. I didn’t realize it was weird how much I liked them until, I think I was in Grade 5 and someone flat out said to me, “You really talk about cats a lot.”

pr: Oh no! Did that stop you from talking about cats? am: I felt pretty self-conscious for awhile about it. That was

a hard time too in child life and I maybe talked about it a bit less for a while, but I also came out when I was 12 so I was pretty okay with who I was in a lot of ways. I didn’t just come out as gay, I came out again as a cat lady [laughs]. I was a very

pr: So you have two cats? What are their names? named Aggie. She’s a Scorpio, which a psychic told me recently, which is not why I called the psychic . . .

pr: Did they know you had a cat or did they just bring it up? am: I mentioned knowing one of my cat’s birth dates but not

pr: When did you start drawing cat auras? am: My friend Caroline Ballhorn (who runs the Tin Can) and

I were having coffee one day—she’s one of my favourite artists working in Vancouver and a lovely very supportive person— and we were joking about how I could make some money doing something I really loved. How I could make money hanging out with cats was basically what we were brainstorming without going into cat rescue, because I do cat rescue already and it’s a weird thing, and you spend money. I have a colony that I feed and I spend lots of money on them but they’re great. Anyway, we were joking and I was like, “I could start drawing their auras, ha ha” and it became this kind of joke but then it became very serious and I went straight home and drew Phil’s aura and then started drawing lots of people’s cats and just putting it out there and I was stunned that people actually wanted me to come over.

“ A lot of people who are cat ladies have obsessive behaviours, have anxiety disorders, or are depressed and cats are a way to not feel judged and to feel companionship and often to have a routine.” anxious child and cats, they didn’t really care. People found it a little stressful to be around me I think at times because I needed things to be a certain way. Cats didn’t care. That’s nice. Also I was a total night owl as a child, as are cats, so I spent a lot of time in the yard at midnight with the cats.

pr: Spooky. am: Being spooky, I also came out as a witch. So in terms of

spirituality that would be actually a big part of my life now as an adult. I grew up with very agnostic parents and being queer, distressed of religion—I have a grandmother who’s very homophobic and my grandfather was Catholic in this weird guilt way. So organized religion never really worked for me until I got older in life and moved to East Van and met a lot of witches and that made a lot of sense.

pr: So what’s the process of becoming a witch? What do you do? am: I think you just start identifying that way and you start Pictured right: Meutzner drawing Frankie’s aura

relating to nature differently, and for me a part of that is relating to animals and appreciating their autonomy and that’s why I like cats mostly. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t like cats, and I’m very distrustful of people who don’t like cats based on their need for autonomy. You’re petting a cat and it starts growling

pr: Well they’re beautiful. Did you know what they were going to look like when you started?

am: No and they looked very different in the beginning,

they’re basically contour line drawings (I went to art school), they’re like blind line drawings. So they’re very simple but they’re very . . .

pr: They’re elegant. am: Yeah! I was shocked, there’s some very blocky first ones that I did and very sparse. A lot less dense than the ones now.

pr: Maybe that was just the cat’s aura. am: Yeah, I did a super sparse one the other day. Tabbys

draw really differently than like, a black cat, too. Black cats are just hard to draw. All the black cats that I’ve drawn move a lot. Which is nice, I like that, I like to follow them around. When they sit still for the whole time that I’m there it’s actually kind of boring.

Fuji Superia 400

21

: Interview

pr: Did you recently get a dog?

pr: What?!

am: That’s on hold right now. I don’t believe in being purely

am: I know it’s a weird thing, eh? Like, that does not benefit

a cat person even though I feel that cats get me and I get cats.

Dogs are a bit more of a wild card for me but I really appreciate animals and I like the simplicity of dogs. I like the dog park a lot. Although these cat cafés I think will be an exciting way to have cats in a social setting.

pr: So you wish there was a more social way to enjoy cats. am: Actually the cat aura drawings are kind of a weird

performance art on that. I go to their house and they’re taking a gamble, they’re paying money to have this weird lady come over to their house and draw their cat’s aura. When I say that out loud it sounds ridiculous right? But I’ve made friends, it’s been super fun and weird and rewarding and I go to this stranger’s house and you have to be on. There’s been a couple times I’ve had to go redo the drawing because it just did not happen. The cat and I did not jive. I’ve been invited over for dinner . . . It’s a bit of a leap of faith . . .

pr: Are you anti-indoor cat?

the cats! It’s a weird thing. I’m in a top secret internet cat club, I can’t really talk about it but it’s pretty cool, they understand.

pr: They understand the plight of the cat lady. am: It’s a been a long process of being okay with being a cat

lady identified person. When I was little we had moved away from up north and I went back to stay with my grandparents for a summer and we had a guy on my grandparents’ property. He was squatting and he was living in these little cabins we built, a super harmless, super sweet guy, schizophrenic I believe. He was native, I’m still doing all this research to find out, but one night the RCMP came and shot him. This is like in rural BC right? And my memories of a child was just of him having a million cats so as a child my take-away from this was “Be a crazy cat person, get shot.”

pr: That’s awful. am: I started to strongly develop an anxiety disorder as a

not let my child out because of danger. And I understand that cats live less of a life time-wise if they are outdoors but there are some cats that just need to go outside and it makes them miserable to stay inside and they develop all sorts of behavioural stuff. Also growing up we always let our cats out. Of course if Phil doesn’t come home I have a fit. I think people need to make that decision for themselves. I understand a lot of the agencies that do adoptions say “indoor only” because when that cat gets lost the people go to that agency and it creates a lot of work for people, actually. It does create a lot of labour and a lot of stress for people. Aggie sits on the window ledge and she sits on the picnic table. She doesn’t really go very far but it makes her so happy.

teenager, or early teenager and then was so into cats. In my brain I was like, “Well, I’m gonna get shot.” Not to the extreme of like I’m-going-to-get-shot-by-the-police, but my life is going to be hard. I think all the tropes about cat ladies are kinda funny but they’re also based on mostly mental health issues. A lot of people who are cat ladies have obsessive behaviours, have anxiety disorders, or are depressed, and cats are a way to not feel judged and to feel companionship and often to have a routine.

It’s like I get up, I feed my cats, I have to get up and I have to get my shit together because I have dependants. And I know it’s not the same as having a child but it is nice. It’s a sense of purpose.

It’s just a nice sense of like, “Life is hard but I have this little buddy who I feel close to and I have tasks and they have to be cared for.” It could lead to serious cat hoarding issues if you’re not careful and then the bathing thing…

pr: Are there any internet famous cats that you would like to turn us

pr: Do you have a maximum cat threshold?

am: I hate to go back to the kid analogy but I would never

onto that are not the regular?

AM: I struggle with the internet famous cat thing. I entered this new stage in my life where I’m wary of the commodification of animals in that way. Like, I do love Lil Bub, that face, and Grumpy Cat who is apparently like a really happy, sweet cat. I like my friends’ cats. On Instagram I’m far more likely to follow a friend’s feed if they have cute cat.

pr: If you have a chance of petting them it’s better. am: Yeah, I like to get to know cats. I’ve even Skyped with some

friends’ cats. I like the average cat on the street too. I’m at a weird place with the internet right now. It’s like a nice tool, you know? But I like to be able to sit near a cat like this guy [pats Frankie] he’s so good.

pr: We’re exploiting cats. am: Yeah a little bit. I would like the dawn of a new era of non-competitive cat lady-ness. I’ve had a few people be really competitive with me about how much they love cats.

pr: Like, “I like them more than you do”? am: Yeah, I’ve actually had a few people recently just be like,

Pictured left: Feline auras by Meutzner

am: For me it’s two. Aggie would have me murdered if I got

another cat. She was really not into Phil at first, she wouldn’t come in the house for like, four months. We also had Phil’s brothers so we had three feral man cats. And then she brought him a mouse when he was a baby and taught him how to hunt.

And she cleans his face every morning and then just slaps him.

They have a funny little relationship. But my first big impression of being this big cat enthusiast was kind of tainted by this violent thing and a very limited discussion of mental health at that time in the 80s when people didn’t talk about that. And also having a very working-class family we didn’t really talk about that. Later in life I’ve come to embrace it and embrace having a mental health issue and that plays out also in creativity.

pr: Often they go hand in hand. am: Artistic, creative cat ladies with mental health issues, I have

a lot of people like that in my life and it’s really nice. So I’ve been able to turn it into something fun that keeps me social, too, because given the chance I would probably just stay at home with them. I mean I have a very social job I really love and I’m really good at it but it’s exhausting.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

“Oh, I’m like THE cat lady.”

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: Profile

FELINE OF BEAUTY Pet portraits for the discerning eye by daryn wright artwork by carrie walker

Cats don’t really give a fuck if they make you happy.

Capturing the independence, rebellion, and exquisite sense of nobility of the feline is part of artist Carrie Walker’s job. We meet at Matchstick Coffee Roasters and she tells me what it’s like to be a pet portrait artist.

“I’ve always sort of resisted drawing pets because I didn’t want to get lumped into that whole genre where I find it kind of in bad taste,” she says. Trained in printmaking at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Walker’s work is heavily rooted in drawing. Her portfolio boasts an impressive array of detailed, lifelike animal drawings and watercolours. It seems only natural that her paintings of wildlife would eventually lead her to take on the domestic pet as a subject.

“I’ve had friends over the years pester me to draw their pets, which I’ve kind of resisted because there’s actually a world of pet portraiture, and a lot of people don’t know about it because they’re not looking for it, but it can be pretty cheesy,” she says.

Images of cartoon-like felines floating among clouds or playing with balls of yarn come to mind. In order to stay away from the campy elements of pet portraiture, Walker decided to set guidelines for herself as an artist and for her clients so that everyone involved would be satisfied with the finished work. “I just wanted to come up with a way, sort of like a plumber, to say, ‘This job is going to take four to six hours.’ I chose the format of just the head looking straight forward and I don’t allow for any customization, as so many pet portraits are obviously influenced by the owner’s vision or dreams: ‘I want my cat licking a paw in the sunlit window.’”

So all of Walker’s cat portraits are done face-on and are roughly the same size. Her dog portraits, however, which she only recently began offering, are done in profile, as dogs tend to vary

or distinguishing qualities can be a challenge in and of itself, too: “My stepmother, when she found out I was doing this, she said, ‘Well I would get one but our cat’s pretty plain so I don’t think it would be worth it.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you actually made a good call there. Your cat is kinda plain.’” She laughs and explains that she finds black cats particularly humourous with their little eyes peeking out from a fan of indistinct darkness.

Aside from the legacy of pet portraiture as a tacky hobby befitting of your kooky Aunt Julie, Walker explains that the element of humour plays an integral part in what she’s doing.

Floating, disembodied heads of cats and dogs jump off the page, not unlike specially commissioned oil paintings of a royal family. “I’m treating them with this kind of dignity that’s reserved for—I mean, in the past you had portraits done if you thought highly of yourself. To me, that’s funny. That is funny,” she laughs. Knowing the tendency of cats to think of themselves in exactly that regard, the revering of the feline in the form of personalized portraits seems fitting.

But there’s also a sense of beauty in the feline form, and Walker explains that her tendency to paint animals, wild and domestic alike, stems from an admiration of their aesthetic quality. She recalls that, as children, we tend to lump animals into gendered categories, often assuming that the graceful, elegant poise of the cat is reserved for the female gender. What happens when animals are flattened onto the page and placed in a foreign context is the removal of gender, but the maintenance of an untamed, wild beauty. As Walker describes, the image of the cat is rife with metaphor, but it’s also just something beautiful to look at.

Maybe we can thank cats’ beauty and spunky attitude for the cat’s clearly carved-out place in culture at the moment. From sweaters with the creature emblazoned on the front to cat ear– inspired jewellery, it seems hipsters are doing everything they can to mimic a cat’s ferocious attitude and swagger.

“Cats are interesting because they seem so self-contained. I think a lot of cats, if they had to, would make it okay on their own. I don’t know if that’s fascinating for people, that kind of independence,” she says. And it’s true; you leave a cat alone for a day or two and it will be fine, likely colonizing the bed and learning new ways to open cupboards. Or as Walker says, “they may have wrecked all your stuff but they’re good. They seem to have more agency than dogs do.”

“ My first client was a writer, then a poet.

There’s a real thing for writers and cats, I guess.” in size and shape more than their finer-furred friends. “I needed to feel comfortable, and I needed to assert my aesthetic as to what looks good.”

Jamie Watercolour on paper

Starting at $375 a pop, the portraits aren’t cheap. The process is long and starts with a few good photographs of the pet, which can sometimes be the hardest part. “Once in awhile someone will send me cell phone photographs that are too small and As for who Walker’s most frequent client is, it seems the literary can’t be blown up. Not everyone understands the correlation woman near 40 has a penchant for having her pet immortalized: between a good photo and getting that level of detail,” Walker “My first client was a writer, then a poet. There’s a real thing for explains. Once she gets a few good quality shots, the next step writers and cats, I guess.” Writers and cats both strike, and seem is going through them, selecting the best one, and cropping it to cherish striking, the solitary figure. It’s not hard to imagine to roughly life-size dimensions. Next she’ll begin the drawing that these pet portraits are, in a way, portraits of their owners. stages, individually sketching out each fur and whisker, followed by a watercolour resist, which “resists paint so you can kind of There’s something about the permanence of print and paint, paint in all the highlights first and then you can paint in all the the recording of beauty on paper that has a hold on us in this colours.” Finally, the resist is removed and the work is finished transient world. But there’s more to it than that: our pets play a up with a few touches on the whiskers and little flyaway hairs large, important role in our lives, despite the fact that they don’t hang around for very long. “No one has had me paint a cat that around the cat’s head. is dead yet, but several of the cats I’ve painted have died [shortly “Sometimes to me those are the most important parts—the little after] or went missing,” Walker says. I wonder if those cats were nicks in the ear, or the tiny little tufts. Some cats have these extra only just waiting for their moment in the limelight, watching us little hairs or crazy whiskers. I think those are the keys to making with disdain from gilded frames. people satisfied with the portrait,” she says. A lack of unique

27

Confessions of a Cat Z i n e s t e r by

kristin

I left my job at Canada’s largest literary magazine to start a zine about cats. Well, not exactly . . . the zine was a commentary on the issues surrounding “digitization,” a late 2000s buzzword in the publishing industry—the process of converting print publications to digital editions. I was working for a quarterly print literary magazine for years and “digitization” was all the rage.

My original concept in the fall of 2011 was to start a series of zines called KC POP, converting material from digital pop culture to printed material in a term I would like to call “analoguing”. It was a snarky commentary on digitization.

For inspiration, I looked towards my favourite medium: YouTube.

The first zine, entitled “I LOVE CATS”, was entirely based off of a YouTube video from a woman named Debbie. She posted an eHarmony online dating profile video where she looked directly into her webcam and talked about what seemed like her dating profile but quickly turned into her love affair for cats. “. . . I love cats, I love every kind of cat . . . Sorry, I just, I REALLY LOVE CATS. I just want to hug all of them but I can’t ‘cause that’s crazy. I can’t hug every cat. I just want to, I want to . . . I AM A CAT LOVER …” – Debbie This lady was obsessed with cats and I loved it! My first zine was a transcription of this cat-induced monologue. From YouTube video content to print zine. The analoguing machine was up and running.

I printed a few other zines including “Nyan Cat: Selected YouTube Comments”, “How to Play Him Off Keyboard Cat”, which included the musical score of how to play the keyboard cat music.

I photocopied, assembled, stapled these zines and sold them online

cheung

through Etsy. I bought a web domain, started an email newsletter list, created a logo, and found zine distributors across the world.

My zine career was taking off.

At Canzine West in Vancouver’s Ukrainian Hall, I decorated my table with cat paraphernalia and KC POP zines. It was the first time I was able to meet members of the public and my adoring KC POP fans. I believed the zine community would truly appreciate my intentions of keeping the zine dream alive and saving our print industry. And my dream of hanging out with indie zinesters and counter-culture capitalists was coming true. I was networking with bigwig zinesters like Broken Pencil magazine and a Vancouver Public Library zine called Librarians. Everything was magical.

But somehow everyone assumed I was some type of cat-obsessed lady. To the public, I was this twenty-something girl who made zines only about cats. CAT ZINES. I had a table full of cat zines, I was wearing a cat dress, I was talking the cat-talk and walking the cat-walk. I was all around pro-cat choice. Random strangers would stop at my table, pause, look at my cat things, and start in-depth discussions about cats. Their love of cats. How many cats they owned. If they ever saw this cat video or that cat video. What their cat ate for breakfast this morning. What kind of cats they are allergic to. How many cats they can fit in their mouth. Everything was about cats. Everyone was about cats.

After Canzine West, all my friends knew about my zines. My cat zine career was taking off. My zines were excerpted in an issue of Broken Pencil magazine. (Dudes! That’s like the biggest Canadian magazine dedicated to zine culture and indie arts. That’s BIG TIME!) My zines were also being mentioned on blogs and reviewed in various magazines.

If it meant one more mention of a cat person talking to me about their cat. I couldn’t handle it.

I couldn’t handle being known as the cat lady.

I was having an identity crisis and something needed to change.

Cats were the problem. I stopped posting photos of my cat on Instagram. I stopped wearing my cat dress. I stopped talking about my cats to co-workers. I stopped posting random cat videos to Facebook. I just had to stop being a cat person.

The next year, I took a hiatus from being a cat zinester and cat person. I just wanted to be a regular normal human person. I was shopping in malls, drinking grande soy lattes, and shopping at H&M. I’ve learned which sushi places have the best bento boxes.

(Did you know some include miso soup and some charge extra?)

The Starbucks treat receipts became my new obsession—after 2:00PM you can get ANY drink for $2. Baristas were my new best friend. I was coming home after work and watching highlights from The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Keeping tabs on who Taylor Swift was dating. Liking all of Justin Bieber’s selfies on Instagram. I was becoming a normal. Life without cats was quiet.

After awhile, I realized that life was becoming too quiet. It took me some time to realize that life as a normal person was different.

Normals are boring.

In those short few months, I made it to the top of the zine world.

How can I top that? The zine fame and zine glory was coming my way and I wasn’t about to stop it.

My friends, colleagues, and cat friends all wanted to talk about cats with me. They just thought that was the only thing I was passionate about: cat zines and cats. I was just that crazy cat person to them.

I thought it was pretty fun at first but after a few more months, I realized that this was becoming my identity. Cat Life.

The next Canzine was coming up and I was ready to develop my next series of zines. Should I make zines about YouTube cats again?

I mean, they were pretty popular. Or should I make zines about digital pop culture? But I had zine writer’s block.

My creativity for zine life was shrinking. I didn’t know which direction to go into. Should I make more cat zines and still portray this image of a crazy cat lady? I mean, I’m more than a cat lady. I’m a real human lady with real human feelings with ideas and thoughts about the world. I’m not just a cat lady! The idea of developing a new series of cat zines was stressing me out and I was having zine panic attacks. I just had to shut it down.

My identity was about cats and still is about cats and I liked it. I want to wear my cat dress. Post my awesome cat photos on Instagram.

Talk the cat-talk and walk the cat-walk. I’ve come to realize that I am a cat lady. I realized I am Debbie from the eHarmony YouTube video. This is my online dating profile: my self-summary

I like cats. w h at i ’ m d o i n g with my life

things I could never do without

Probably cats and cat lovers.

And good cat toys.

Owning a cat.

I spend a lot of time thinking about

I ’ m r e a l ly g o o d a t

Whether or not cats are more or less awesome than kittens.

Petting cats.

The first things p e o p l e u s u a l ly notice about me

Yo u s h o u l d m e s sag e me if

You own one or two cats.

=^_^= And you know what, there is nothing wrong with being Debbie from eHarmony. Being a cat person doesn’t make you a crazy cat person, it makes you an interesting person. Embrace the cat lady in all of us.

I quit the zine world.

But seriously, message me if you own one or two cats.

If it meant one more cat zine. I’m not gonna do it.

: Portraits

T att o o ee

Danica Kasper

T att o o e r

Kelly Barr

“Meow on the inside of my lip, this was VERY impulsive.

I got it while visiting my old friend and tattoo artist in Texas. He did my cats on my feet. It started out as a joke and then I decided why not and did it. What I love about cats—beyond being the cutest always—is their independence, which is a quality I’d use to describe myself as well. They don’t need to be my best friend or hover at my feet but when they do show affection it feels genuine. Whether that’s true or not I don’t need to know.”

C AT T OOS by jennifer truong

T att o o ee

Megan Babee

T att o o e r

Kay Abbott

“I am a Leo and this tattoo is in part a nod to my mother, also a Leo. When she was 18 she also went under the gun for the first time and got the scraggliest lion you’ve ever seen. My cat is the kitten to her lioness, so many of the traits that we share—stubbornness, pride, strength, loyalty—are all Leo traits. It has become a part of my identity, and since it is in a fairly private area, it is a reminder to myself only of those traits that I possess that at times I need to draw on.”

Kodak 200, 400

Kodak 400, 200

T att o o ee

Sarah Thoms

T att o o e r

Jenna Bouma

“People, in general, are concerned with how I will feel about my tattoos when I am older, but honestly I can’t wait to be someone’s grandmother with this particular tattoo. Nine years ago I adopted Steve French, currently a 30-pound black man-cat, but then only a tiny fluff ball, and I felt like I created a home for myself. Almost three years ago my partner and I adopted another black male cat, Sam Cro, to be a brother/friend for Steve. They are very close. A year ago Sam had his leg amputated but is doing great, and somehow there is even more of him to love.”

T att o o ee

Eva Bryant

T att o o e r

Joel Rich

“She’s the kind of cat that makes non cat lovers reconsider their life choices. I brought her on a crosscountry road trip with me back to Vancouver when I was done school. Now I’ve been moving around a lot so she’s been staying with friends and I miss her, so I got her tattooed on my wrist so I could look at her all the time.”

T att o o ee

Lidi Giroux

T att o o e r

Katie Shocrylas

“Lola is my 13-year-old kitty who I adopted close to 10 years ago. She is the sweetest thing and I wanted to get the piece to remember her by as she likely only has a few years left.

She has enhanced my life in so many ways. She always seems to be able to understand my mood. She is also good for a laugh, being the fattest and least graceful cat I have ever met, sometimes taking multiple tries before being able to jump onto something. She also recently had a tooth removed and now has an awesome sneer.”

31

: Portraits

T att o o ee

Jessica Iverson

T att o o e r

Matt Houston

“I’m proud of my crazy cat lady status! I wear my heart on my sleeve . . . literally. My husband and I have two sweet, curious, and loveable cats, Rick and Wu, and our lives revolve around them . . . Our love of rap music is what influenced their names. Wu is named after the Wu-Tang Clan and Rick is named after Slick Rick, because they both only have one eye.”

T att o o ee

Pamela Rounis

T att o o e r

Shannon Elliott

“Having a cat is like having a best friend that’s really good at keeping secrets. In moments when you need someone the most they’re always there willing to listen and ready for a snuggle. This is Nico, who loves to eat. I liked the sentiment “forever hungry” on a more personal level too, like always striving, never quite satisfied, and always pushing myself to do better.”

T att o o ee

Cara Longworth

T att o o e r

Rick from Fat City Tattoo

“The fish with the mallet is god of the land, the harvest, and reminds me to stay firmly planted.

Owning cats has provided me a constant source of companionship and it’s a unique sort, too, because they depend on me to maintain their wellbeing.”

Kodak 400

Kodak 400

T att o o ee

Kaitey Button

T att o o e r

Moorea Hum

“My beloved eight-year-old cat, Tofu, never returned home after letting her out the morning of April 24. My tattoo is a simple outline of her shape, her tail was always curled at the top like a question mark. I wanted every detail to have meaning so I chose her favourite things. She is framed with catnip, and surrounded by bees, butterflies, and grasshoppers. She still hasn’t come home, but this tattoo definitely helped provide some closure.”

33

: Interview

On the Catwalk Feline fashion & celebrating the cat lady by megan jenkins photography by sarah race

Cynara Geissler is a triple threat: a pioneer of the fat-fashion blogging scene, an accomplished author and speaker, and a kick-ass cat mom. She also has an impressive collection of feline-adorned apparel (and her darling feline, Autumn, sports an anthropomorphic bowtie). Having recently given a talk at the local launch for the essay collection Women in Clothes, Geissler was the perfect person to converse with about the wonders of felines and femininity and what it means to combine those two elements in apparel. megan jenkins: Hey! Let’s talk a bit about your history in fashion blogging.

cynara geissler: Well I started posting outfits

of the day in a LiveJournal community called Fatshionista, and it was exclusively about fat people finding fashion. There’s also a Flickr group called Wardrobe Remix, where people post their street style—that inspired me. It was great, because it was people from all over the world, people of all different races, creeds, and financial backgrounds.

I was always sort of interested in fashion as a community because you’re inspired by other people around you and your style evolves because you’re pushing yourself. I was never really an individual style blogger for that reason, I prefer to be a part of collective groups, because I see it as sort of an artistic endeavour.

mj: Could you tell me a bit about your work with

Women in Clothes, and other projects that you’re involved in right now?

cg: I’m not actually in the book—which is funny,

people just assume I’m in the book—but they invited me to come and just give a talk. So I gave a talk on was something that I call “Toddler-Grandma Style,” and it’s basically just about how toddlers and grandmas in society are the least viewed through the male gaze; they’re not considered sexy. There’s an episode of Glee where Kurt says, “She manages to dress like a toddler and a grandma simultaneously,” and that’s like, the ultimate insult, right? Because she doesn’t know how to sex herself up for a man, or how to be desirable. So in my talk I said that I think more people should adopt this way of dressing, because we all have these weird internalized rules that I think are mostly about dressing for the male gaze. And I think that when you start dressing outside of that, you just start to have way more fun. People would always say to me, “You can pull that off,” and it would leave me thinking, “Well no, I don’t have a VIP pass or something that allows me to do it. I just do it.”

[I also] just sort of encouraged people to wear a million brooches, or wear more than one print at a time—you don’t always have to be wearing a beige suit. That’s apparently what adult women are supposed to be wearing to be taken seriously.

And the thing about patriarchy is that you’ll never be taken seriously. It’s kind of a loser’s game. There’s this idea that if you’re close to desirable, there’s more to lose, or something like that, but the fact is that there’s always going to be people that will ignore you because you’re a woman. So you might as well dress for yourself, and dress for joy and have fun.

I’m also guest editing the Culture issue of [local magazine] Poetry is Dead, so that’s coming up.

mj: Do you remember the first piece of cat fashion you acquired?

cg: [Geissler hands me her first grade elementary

school photo] So I think that was the first one. And of course when I was a baby, my mum had things like kitty and bunny animal suits, you know, when you put babies in little onesies. So I can date it back to being a cat every Halloween.

mj: Do you have a favourite? cg: I really like my “Hooked on a Feline” dress

from Modcloth, because it’s kind of an illusion print.

People don’t often realize it’s covered in cats and there’s a nice little reveal moment after they’ve looked at it. Though it’s a little unusual for me because it’s kind of neutral.

mj: Would you say that there’s been a rise in popularity of cat apparel and related items that correlates with the influx of YouTube videos?

cg: Yeah definitely, I think the advent of Lolcats

especially is tied into the popularity of cat-printed items. It’s great for me, because it used to be hard to source really zany cat prints. I think we’re

Geissler, sporting her cat fashions way back in 1989.

“I still dress the same.”

definitely in a boom for cat clothes, like with laser cats, Keyboard Cat . . . We’ve got a lot of highpowered cats now. Nyan cat, and of course Grumpy Cat, Lil’ Bub. I think it used to be like, Garfield, instead of generic cat prints. I remember there being cats on stuff but it was mostly cartoons, it was not this idea of wearing a realistic cat, which I think was really connected to spinsters. I actually just read an article on how cat imagery was used for suffragettes in Britain, around first wave feminism. Men would compare women to cats to try to infantilize them. So it’s like the existence of cat memorabilia could be found in these little pockets, but now it’s reached critical mass.

I think it could be the tools we have at our disposal now—it’s much easier to take photos, and to circulate them, and at the end of the day, cats are funny, and warm, and they do dumb stuff and try to fit in really small boxes. When I was growing up, I’d

Kodak Portra 160

never have known about Maru, in Japan, but now we get to enjoy the circulation of images and videos from all over the world.

mj: Do you think that the cat lady image has been reclaimed?

cg: I do, actually. I think the whole cat image is

that you’re supposed to be like a sex kitten, which of

associated with that at all, at the risk of your dating prospects, you know?

But I don’t think it’s just women who enjoy catprinted items either now, like Urban Outfitters had put out cat-printed ties and button-ups [for men], so that makes me think that the image is sort of crossing gender lines too. I do think that for a really long time cats were associated with domesticity, and

“ We’re supposed to feel sorry for the cat lady, but I think that we’ve now accepted that it’s better to be happy, and single, and living as a lone woman than just settling for a crappy dude.” course is fine to adopt if you so choose, but then if you’re not a cute cat, you’re a weird cat spinster lady.

Like from The Simpsons.

I think Taylor Swift and her kitten Olivia Benson kind of signals a young, cool cat lady and there’s no longer this automatic association with spinsterhood.

Now I think we can all sort of joke about it, whereas a few years ago you might have been hesitant to be

were feminized, while men would go out hunting with their cool hunting dogs. It’s funny to consider how cats have shifted culturally. I think they’re semiotically slippery. Like you have Hemingway Cats, which are associated with masculinity, because Ernest Hemingway had a bunch.

mj: Is there solidarity in being a cat lady?

cg: Yeah, I think so! Spinsterhood has more pride

associated with it now—obviously it comes from a very antiquated, patriarchal idea that if a woman is not married by the age of 22, she’ll just be a burden to her family for the rest of her life. But we’re maybe shifting away from thinking of women as being most valuable when they’re connected to a man, so I think there’s a bit of subversion in the cat lady idea. We’re supposed to feel sorry for the cat lady, but I think that we’ve now accepted that it’s better to be happy, and single, and living as a lone woman than just settling for a crappy dude. Pet love feels very unconditional and uncomplicated in a way that trying to be with a significant other sometimes isn’t.

There’s a reason Swift is sticking with Olivia Benson, just making music and joking about being a man-eater. It’s pretty great. I’m happy if she’s the new poster girl for being a cat lady. I hope that it represents the sort of refusal to settle for a crappy guy just so that you can feel secure or feel bolstered by male approval. I think we all still sort of seek that validation—I think sometimes you’ll appreciate it more when a man compliments you rather than a woman, which shouldn’t be the case. In being a good cat lady then, I think you just have to care more when a cat compliments you. That’s worth way more.

35

: Dispatches

PHOTOGRAPHY

STYLING

Robyn Humphreys

Monika Koch Waber

Katie Stewart

Gl a mour Puss MODEL

HAIR

MAKE-UP

Chris Carriere

Jenny Lynn of Oh Hey Style

Leigh Eldridge

Necklace, Anna de Courcy Blue shirt, Silent by Damir Doma

37

: Photography

Fuji Superia 400

Necklace, Minori Takagi

39

: Feature

I n spi r ed b y r ea l e v e n ts a n d r ea l cats .

[Name Redacted]

was arrested in spring

2014 and has been charged with animal cruelty for harbouring 107 cats in her 1,100-square-foot detached home in Toronto, Ontario.

During her trial the jury heard from many people, but there was one glaring silence: the experiences of the many cats forced to live with [Name Redacted].

Some were in her care for mere months, others most of their lives. These represent interviews with some of her many feline companions.

For the first time, the voices of these cats are being brought to the forefront.

Now hear in their own words how they were treated by their former “owner� and their opinions on the allegations levelled against her.

Their voices will be silenced no more.

b y di n a de l b u cchia

i l l u st r ati o n s b y p o r tia b o eh m

41

: Feature

C at D a m o n I’d like to say we all banded together and made this happen, that we rallied around each other to get someone to take notice, to save ourselves. But that would be a lie. We were all just licking our butts or balls or whatever was left down there. We weren’t proactive. Most victims will say the same.

But there’s shame there. Sure, our butts were clean, but our paws were dirty because of what we let happen to ourselves.

baby It was like she had something to prove. I don’t know what it was. But she didn’t succeed in proving anything. Other than that she couldn’t figure out how to use a DVD player.

clawfoot My therapist has been very specific about the kinds of words I should use to describe my experience. But I’m still not comfortable with those words and I’m certainly not going to use them in front of you.

B l ac k ie

muffin

[Name Redacted] did not understand me. She petted me all wrong. It rubbed against my body in ways that discombobulated my fur. I looked and felt terrible. I avoided mirrors. I still do. I did like sleeping in the laundry hamper.

I am very angry.

Puff’n’Stuff It didn’t matter if you had a name when you got there. She gave you a new one. It was a way for her to exert power.

B l ac k ie 2

B l ac k y

I have problems. Yes, I am addicted to catnip, but also to peeing in women’s sneakers. Not high heels though. Disgusting.

Sometimes I wonder if she thinks of me as lesser than Blackie because of the pedestrian ‘y’ in my name. This is the burden of many animals.

Careless letters. I contain multitudes.

fan cy There were always a lot of cats peeing on or in things. She ignored it. She ignored a lot of things: people knocking on the door, phones ringing, cats crying, neighbours yelling in the alley. The pee.

She really ignored all that pee.

M r . P u r r f ect

Har ry

It always offended me that she pretended to have read Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and only knew half of the words to, “Memory.”

I don’t have proof, but I’m pretty sure she’d never seen Cats either.

She had a habit of letting the newspapers pile up outside and then bringing them in all at once in a big stack and leaving them by the credenza.

And I had a habit of climbing on top and peeing on them. I could never tell if she did that for my pleasure or not, but I sure loved doing it.

ca r a m e l I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that she wore a lot of purple.

43

: Person, Place, Thing

Kodak Portra 160, 400

person

place

thing

Becki Chan

Toronto

Feline Design

by genevieve anne michaels photography by shane oosterhoff

Becki Chan considers her cat Hanna Grey to be her muse. Most of the themes running through the work of this artist and architect—a monochrome colour palette, infinite adaptability, the way beings inhabit their environments—can be also be applied to her Russian Blue.

“I had a dog when I was a kid, but when I got Hanna, I fell in love. I did not know about the whole street cat problem at the time, didn’t know about the puppy mill, or the cat mill thing. I assumed you just buy a pet from a pet store, so I bought Hanna from a breeder,” Chan tells me. “Now I realize a lot of cats need homes. If I had known, I would have adopted one from the SPCA. That’s one reason that [through my work] I want to raise awareness, as well as money.”

Chan’s newest project, Archicats, will use her design skills to work towards that goal. Archicats will team up with Canadian architects to build dreamy cat palaces and then auction them off to find solutions to Toronto’s feral cat overpopulation. The money raised will be going to the Toronto Humane Society and Toronto Street Cats, where it will help fund projects including a bimonthly free spaying and neutering service for low-income pet owners, and volunteerbuilt “winter shelter boxes”—insulated plastic bins that can be installed outdoors to give strays some protection from the harsh Toronto winter.

Across Canada, the feral cat problem doesn’t get much attention—many people don’t know that there are close to 100,000 stray cats wandering Toronto like furry street urchins. “It’s kind of a people problem,” Chan says. “We abandon them, don’t spay or neuter them, and then they populate.” Cats are not the tough, streetwise creatures that many assume them to be. “They’ve been living with humans so long that they have no survival skills,” Chan explains.

smaller and smaller, until I realized if I made them into jewellery, I could wear them all the time and people would see them. If you look at my art, it’s very simple and modular. I wanted the cat ring to have that same logic to it.”

If Chan has learned anything about people throughout her career of building spaces for them to inhabit, it’s that we all have different needs. “Some people want a huge kitchen. Some want a huge Still in the planning stages, Archicats will be living room, connected to different things,” she says. launching for March, and if all goes well, Chan “What I’ve learned . . . it’s cheesy, but almost, you would like to expand and help Vancouver’s league of learn to be a good listener.” orphaned felines, too.

But with Archicats, of course, Chan will be examining The cat homes aren’t Chan’s only project inspired the housing preferences not of humans, but of cats.

by Hanna. She also designed a set of stackable So what has she learned about cats through her cat rings—when worn together, they look like lifelong fascination? “Cats are unpredictable,” Chan the outline of Hanna’s ears. Chan usually uses an says. “You can’t tell them where to sleep or eat. application to sketch in 3-D, then has her designs Except if you put a piece of paper on the floor—you 3-D printed before casting them in silver. She is just know they’ll sit on it.” about to produce another run of the rings in silver metal and jet-black plastic. Like Archicats, the sales After this interview, Chan decided to launch Archicats of the rings will raise money for feral cat population in her hometown of Vancouver to benefit stray cats in BC instead, with a planned launch date of June. Funds raised control and awareness. will support a local non-profit animal rescue organization Jewellery was a natural progression for Chan from committed to TNR (Trap-Neuter-Release). her background in sculpture. “My sculptures are usually quite big. I wished I could carry them around with me all the time, so I kept making them

: Essay

Ilford XP2 400

it’s cashmere This is why you can’t have nice things (and a cat) by adrienne matei photography by jackie dives

My mom’s first house in the city had been a box that gave her bad vibes. Her second was in a suburb; she drove two hours to work, which even then paid enough to finance her ex-husband’s law degree.

Her third was a beacon of reno-potential never successfully realized despite all that hammering.

The penthouse, though, was her joy.

“ Porthos’ sudden passion for unique and exciting bathroom locales was doing his popularity ratings no favours ” Mom hired premier architects and gurus of interior design. She’s exactly 2.7 inches taller than average, and so were her white marble counters. Even after she moved in, she enjoyed daydreaming about herself in the sunset-drenched kitchen, happily caramelizing shallots in a Le Creuset pan.

Mom bolted upright in bed, eyes locked directly with the cat, who froze atop the suitcase mid-squat meeting her gaze with a look that said he found her both intimidating and almost unfathomably rude.

popularity ratings no favours. But I’d gotten him in Grade 2, and he’d shadowed me, wet-nosed, since.

I understood Porthos assailed Mom’s domestic satisfaction. The house was painstakingly zen and its depredation by a million scratches and stains drove her ballistic. “Why always Mom’s stuff?”

I whispered into his scruffy grey ears, “Why not in the potted plants, like a normal cat?”

Porthos was an invasive species I introduced to the penthouse while living there a few months after moving back to Vancouver to start working postgraduation. Like those obliviously ferocious clams that cross the Atlantic stuck to a boat, he destroyed “Untenable!” Mom exclaimed, storming towards the kitchen. “Absolutely untenable!” the delicate ecological balance of his new home.

The cat was my responsibility, and this included seeing to his various excretions and performing rituals of inter-species communication on those 4:00AM instances when he became overwhelmed by the futility of life and expressed such in an interminable series of anguished wails, propelling Mom wildly into my room, as she did that morning, yelling: “FIX IT.”

One morning last December, my mother awoke to the sound of my cat, Porthos, pissing in her suitcase. “I cannot deal with the cat pissing everywhere. He Porthos likes urinating in things with sides, like the has totally lost his marbles. This is the last time, the suitcase or the felt magazine holder beside Mom’s last time, do you hear me? You’re getting rid of him!”

Eames chairs, where he’d soaked straight through a stack of Vanity Fair past issues, staining the blond It was a long-simmering threat reaching full boil. wood floor beneath. Another time, he’d chosen her Porthos was old, and kind of a weirdo, a shedder shearling slipper, which she discovered in the most and scratcher whose sudden passion for unique and exciting bathroom locales was doing his predictably unpleasant of ways.

Mom jabbed the coffeepot on and flung her laptop open to a realtor website. When stressed, she found something wonderfully soothing in browsing home listings, with perfect rooms glowing like Pine-Sol, as empty as outstretched arms at airport arrivals.

I dumped out the reeking suitcase and got ready for work. “I’m leaving,” I announced into the fuming silence. A boxy magenta shopping bag stuffed with outbound dry cleaning sat by the front door: Mom’s designer cashmere shifts in tasteful shades of glacier and dove. I reached for it, thinking I’d stop at the cleaners en route to work, a nice gesture, a distraction from all the cat chaos. “I’ll take the dry cleaning!” I called. Grabbing the bag’s handles, I felt its glossed paper bottom soft-drop, like a stomach, as the cashmere tumbled to the floor with a wet plop.

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11-04-28 7:37 PM

: Dispatches