All posts filed under: animal portraits

Petsitting in Bernal Heights

Published by

After being told that this cat didn’t like being petted and that she is rather moody I was ready for snappy attitudes and a lot of aloof ignoring. Yet within days she was purring on my lap, sleeping in my arm and resting her paws on my right arm as I typed emails and social media posts.. We made best friends! And this just has to be one of the coolest cats that I have every had the pleasure to be friends with! I teasingly called her ‘Zippy’ because I (wrongly) assumed that she would be slow and laid back.. Instead she had so much beans and it was a lot of fun seeing her chase invisible mice from time to time and bounce up and down the bed. I truly fell in love with ‘Zippy’. If we had a San Francisco home of our own, an owned one, I would have pleaded with her family to allow her to come and live with me. What a super, super cat! Daisy the dog was much …

When the dog and I saved a baby groundhog on Land’s End Trail, San Francisco

Published by

We are house sitting in San Francisco, pretty close to Land’s End Trail and with that pretty close to the edge of the world, or so it feels. The air is amazing here, the silence only broken occasionally by soft voiced fog horns. On a recent walk with the dog that came with the house, dog and I discovered a Groundhog laying in shock, exposed by the side of the trail. My theory is that another dog had previously dug the groundhog baby up and now it was petrified to move. Our house sitting dog pointed her gentle nose at the groundhog and then walked away, leaving me to scoop it up in my XL sized sweater sleaves. J and I took a couple of photos of it while I checked out if it looked hurt. And I then carried it to an area with deeper grass, just meters from the finding location, and let it walk off the little impromptu wooly nest that it had been sitting on. Groundhog baby walked without a limp …

Dogs of Oakland & Berkeley

Published by

We went to the Actual cafe sitting somewhere not far from the borders of Oakland and Berkeley, it near Berkeley Bowl actually. Actual Cafe is actually another cafe without functioning table service, but we enjoyed having a late breakfast here twice. It isn’t the best cafe in the area but definitely ok and a safe enough bet if you are hungry nearby. However, we won’t be making a detour to go back. We met this quirky dog outside and it’s even quirkier owner, too.

Sometimes I sit and work / Draw in Cafés

Published by

  I have several commissions to finish drawings for and am running a little behind schedule. I blame the unconventional life for this. We lived in a wild house in Oakland for some time, with a landlord and landlady who were full of life while we were slumped, lacking sleep and therefor energy. It isn’t always easy to rent only a room and try and confine an adult life into this small space. Less easy to do this with two lives. I have lived on my own in a huge apartment that I used to call my castle for over 10 years before relocating to a smaller but warmer apartment instead. Now suddenly we lived in a room. Naturally this created challenges and I have to admit I didn’t succeed in overcoming those challenges as much as I would love to tell you that I did. So now we are house sitting for a family who are on holiday for a whole month and whose pets and plants have needs that require house sitters to …