If atoms can be in two places at once anywhere in the universe, you can bet they got that trick from cats.

Drawing from the outline of a tracing of a photo, repeated across the canvas. I had no clear idea where I was going with this, but do I ever? The result at this stage is a line-up of largely identical images across the square canvas, with one reversed at the end. The outline is in fluorescent orange because I had a half-formed idea about firey edges.

The sequence here goes from top left and sweeps down, round, and up to the top right, ending on a rather cartoonish rendering of the cat, which I didn’t like at all. The scrubbed bodies of the figures feels right though, as does the direction of gaze in that second cat. The black background signifies the blackness of space. The flecks of orange in the outlines I’m justifying as an unspecified lighting effect, but it may not last. The cat on the left is looking out into space while the version on the right is doing what all cats do if you question their decision and asking what business it is of yours.

Reduced the cat count to two, messed around with features for a while, then concluded that silhouettes tend to work better for me than translations of inscrutable faces. I may experiment later with collaged eyes to create a surreal scene that’s moveable.

18th July 2026. From yesterday – another of those incremental, interdependent, came-from-nowhere changes. As a keeper – I’m not sure ‘owner’ really applies – of cats for most of my life, I speak with authority when I say I still don’t know where they really came from. I know they’ve been everything to humans from gods to the devil incarnate, rat-catchers to neck warmers, companions to free spirits who don’t phone home when they decide to stay out late. Their facial expressions are inscrutable. They thank you for your service by dropping a dead mouse in your slipper. They howl their displeasure to the world when you take them for their vaccinations. The Egyptians worshipped them, which is probably the safest option. So here we have a pair of conspiratorial Bastets, which are in fact, just the one cat – George.

Black background digitally enhanced to remove shine.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2026