Meowy Monday: Cat photo of the week

I never posted any pics of our new snow cat during the weekend so instead it's become the theme for this week's Meowy Monday post.

My sis and I made a snow cat back in 2009 -- which you can see here -- and ever since we've talked about making another one every winter. And others have asked if we haven't made more snow cats too. But it's been all about finding a winter day with the right weather (snow and subzero temperatures are not always the case this far south) and for us both to find the time on such a day. We needed the right kind of snow, time and weather than wouldn't change the next day as it wouldn't be fun to make a snow cat just to see it melt away the next morning. But then, last Friday we had the snow and time to make a new cat.

We tried to use Jinja as a model, but she wouldn't sit still -- in fact, she was rather annoyed that we focuse all our attention towards the snow cat instead of her we she was in her best cuddling mood. Not that I think using a real life model would've helped us. The shape of the body and the pose are a bit awkward, especially since we built the snow cat against a stone to keep it stabilized and protected from some of the weather and wind. In the end I gave up on trying to improve on the shape when my sis worried I'd carve too much away.

Actually, we had an odd way of working on the body: I carved one side (the left) and she carved the other. We even made one ear each. So every now and then I had to look at her side to kind of get the both sides symmetrical as we worked at the same time, without any kind of sketch or template to draw from. Probably not the best way to collaborate on a project like this.

This time we didn't have any blue marbles for the eyes so instead my sis wanted to paint them using food colouring. The colour bled into the snow and spead across it on the first try so instead we coloured some snow and then applied it to the eyes. She also painted the inside of the ears and the nose with red food colouring and I diluted the colour by rubbing some snow over it to get a more subtle pink tone.

(My sis added some whiskers out of straw, but I didn't like it so I'm not putting a pic of that here. Working together is a good thing most of the time as you work faster and can focus on different details, but it also means having to compromise -- or fight -- when you have different ideas.)

So there you have it, the snow cat everybody's been asking about. It's far from perfect and from some angles you can't tell it's made by adults, not little kids, but it's our snow cat and we like it despite its flaws.