Wednesday, July 2, 2008

watercolors........

its been a long time since i have painted in watercolors. i prefer acrylics.
this painting is of my old cat named bemstein (slimmer days). a white heavy set cat that lived a dangerous double life - half indoors and half outdoors.
one hot summer night while painting just inside the slider screen door i heard a meaty "kerplunk" into the pool. i thought, of course, it had to be those awful backyard neighbors; these twin teenage girls who both had dated my son jamie at different times, (at least he thought he dated both-----they were tricky that way) - all i know is that there was an embarrassing day (his sophomore summer home from college) when he had to retrieve his watch for a bed stand over there.
anyway, they would throw rocks in our pool or their boyfriends would........
so that night i kept painting. eventually i wandered outside to see what was going on---there was a funny scratching sound.

oh yes, it was big, fat bemstein in the deep end trying to scratch his way out of the pool. i don't know how he fell into the pool, i fished him out and dried him off. his hissed nastily at me as if i caused his problem and ran off.
maybe he was pissed cause i was laughing at him. it was a funny scene, though, as his wet fur head looked so small and his huge white body was magnified in the water.....he had a pin cat head and a white beanbag chair body.

sometimes i wish cats could talk. i wanted to know why the hell he felt like a night dip in the deep end. i imagined putting goggles on him.

he was a tough old cat too. he fought dempsey tooth and nail. dempsey, our HUGE doberman, is a gentle soul and did nothing but stand there like a dog statue as bemstein had his paw stuck on him; his claws were dug deep into dempsey's face. they would stay frozen in that position for 20 minutes. this relationship/ claw war took place may times daily. neither of them learned from the experience or cared to change their position on the subject - day after day, i was always unclawing bemstein from dempsey's face. you would think bemstein arm would get tired stuck like that.
dempsey loved him and considered him part of the pack. aw, dogs. so forgiving.

bemstein lived a long life, but finally met his match with the local coyotes. this devastated the family and dempsey mourned.

about a month later, we got princess fifi from the pound and have loved her since. she doesn't fight with dempsey, she loves him, she parades around him and flops on his nose. he never moves. they sleep together everynight and most the day. which is almost disturbing.
princess fifi would like to go on evening walks with dempsey, but she isn't allowed, she could get eaten by those damn coyotes. so, she sits by the door everynight waiting for her bed mate to come home..........
i love our pets.

2 comments:

Pam Tucker said...

Great story! Cats and water... not a good mix! :) Cats are sometimes just too curious, like the ones who end up in an airplane cargo bin and end up flying to France... I have a calico that I rescued from the shelter. I agree with you: we LOVE our pets!

Isabella

Lisa Bebi said...

i saw your awesome work on your blog......i wish i could have you in one of my classes too.

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