Written on November 18, 2009 – 6:00 am | by maxine |

I am almost embarrassed to say it but I am an artist!  To be honest, my skills came to light last week quite unexpectedly.  You just never know what talents and major discoveries are lurking in the background, just waiting to be exposed.

For instance, the world’s greatest artists did not just suddenly have people snapping up their very first works of art.  No, often their skills were not recognized until they had created hundreds of pieces and often not until long after they were dead!  The same is true of composers.  Authors usually have to endure receiving scads of “rejection” notices.  Plus, beauty is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder.  Mrs. Noah has often said her children painted better pictures than what are hanging in some world renowned art galleries and that had she marketed their kindergarten painting efforts she and they would be rich!  And just last week Mrs. Noah and I watched a small TV clip about a dog who has been taught to paint.  Yup, he has a paint brush with a small ball type thing on the end of it.  He holds the brush with the ball end in his mouth, dips the bristles into paint, then drags the paint across a canvass and voila, he is earning a fortune!

Mrs. Noah feels real bad about what happened to my very first work of art.  She and Andrea had been painting the living room and had stepped out of the room for a few minutes.  As you might already know from earlier blog postings, I am the kitty in charge of approving all kitty toileting stations and I pretty much always supervise the cleaning of the stations.  Well, there was a tray sitting on the floor and I thought it was another one of their innovative toileting station set-ups.  So, I did what comes naturally, I got right to the task of investigating whether it would be suitable or not.  Imagine my surprise when I put one black paw into the tray and it came out very white!  I was NOT a happy camper and left the area immediately to find a quiet spot to clean my paw off.  Yuk, did that white stuff ever taste bad and to make it even worse, the next thing I knew, I had it all over the side of my face and even on my sensitive whiskers.

Mrs. Noah was the first to discover my work of art which was of a series of my personal, should have been soon-to-be-famous, paw prints running the length of the brown hardwood floor in the living room, into the dining room and then a few fainter imprints on the kitchen floor.  Here is where it becomes a sad situation.  Without even thinking to take a picture first, she washed the one-of-a-kind paw prints right out of existence.  Meanwhile, Andrea found me and discovered how I had decorated up my normally black face and head.  Next thing I know, they were saying something like, “Poor Smokey – let’s clean you up!”  My paw was unceremoniously thrust under running water and they were sponging my face and whiskers.  I am just so very glad that it was water based ceiling paint and NOT an oil based paint such as enamel for framing work.  My natural inclination would be to study the genre of water paints and not oils even though I know you can get more texture with oils and acrylics, but the clean-up is so much easier with water based mediums don’t you think?

It really was a shame that no pictures were taken.  I gather they do not intend to provide future opportunities for me to explore my artistic abilities.  They say they are putting me in a closed room with the other cats next time they paint.  What would the world be like if Rembrandt, Picasso and others were denied the opportunity to explore their artistic talents?  What a shame.

By one almost world famous cat artist, Smokey