Bird Watching and the Story of Mitsou

Bird Watching
mixed media on cradled board
available here

My cat Mitsou likes to bird watch.  There is a place near a window on the back of the couch where she will bird watch nearly all day and sometimes she can be found stubbornly waiting by the window at night even though the birds have long gone to bed.  She is a mischief, a funny girl, a crazy cat, a ninja, and then she can be absolutely still and sweet.

Mitsou

She was abandoned by her mother as a kitten along with her siblings on my friend's property in the country and when my friend texted me a photo of her asking if I wanted a kitten I was hooked.  Absolutely adorable kitten cuteness.  I had lost my mother only months before, so I had a moment of weakness.  I say weakness because we already had our Golden Retriever Hurley and our other cat Peet.  But I brought her home anyways and there has never been a shy bone in her little cat body.  She made herself right at home and thinks she runs the place.

I love telling the story of how I got her name.  The year before I was in New York City with my sister at the Metropolitan Museum of Art seeing a Balthus exhibit.  Part of that exhibit was Balthus' 40 original drawings of his childhood cat Mitsou.  He drew them when he was only 11 years old probably to process his grief after she ran away.  In the drawings it showed her cuddled up to him when he was sick in bed, his frantic parents as she dashed across the dining table, and himself with a lantern in hand out in the street looking for her.  Their family friend was so moved by his drawings he published them into a book.  I was  moved too and promised that the next cat I took in would be named Mitsou.