The last couple of weeks have been a sad time for us here at Kitty Cat Crafts. Our much loved, beautiful white cat, Grizzly passed away at the age of 18. He had been with us since we adopted him from the Cat Haven as a tiny kitten in 2000. Not just a beautiful cat, he was very curious and a sociable cat, helping me with all of my indoor tasks. He especially liked to be involved in my crafting ventures.
Grizzly loved to examine all of my quilting projects and would wake up from a nap in time to examine the next step of each project. He was very good at checking how well embellishments were stitched to a quilt or wall hanging. Of course he would "test" my sewing tools and notions any time he got the chance! One of his favourite tricks was to wait until I wasn't looking, jump on my sewing table and push spools of thread onto the floor. Apparently, if you use cat logic, any item that falls on the floor immediately becomes a cat toy.
As many of you will know, no quilt is complete until it has a liberal sprinkling of pet hairs on it. Grizzly loved the feel of quilting cottons and would lie on any fabric or quilt that he could possibly get to, even if it meant that he had to wriggle under the pillows on the spare bed!
As a white cat, he had a very serious duty to sprinkle white hairs on any black fabric that he could find.
His favourite time of year was Christmas. He loved to sit on my Christmas quilt and pretend that he was one of the Christmas ornaments. In addition to this he would spend many hours underneath the Christmas tree, stress testing all of the ornaments. He was always very excited at the beginning of December when the oversize cat toy was set up.
Grizzly was a very important part of our lives and was the inspiration behind the name Kitty Cat Crafts for my pattern line. In 2016 when we had the opportunity to move to the USA, we had to make the difficult decision not to bring him with us as we thought that the long journey and 3 changes of planes would be too stressful for him. He has spent the last 2 years living with my Mum and being very spoiled by his Grandma and Auntie Shanan. I am so sad that I did not have another chance to give him a cuddle before he went. Time was just not on our side. So rest in peace, my dear Kitty Cat and I will sew on in your honor.
