Studio Life According to Patches the Cat

Published by Bev Taylor at November 28, 2019

Many visitors to Artifacts 302 have noticed our beautiful little calico cat, Patches.  Many visitors want to know how we happen to have such an adorable little cat living in our Gallery.  Patches is a rescue cat and this is her story.

There is an old saw shed in the back yard of our gallery that has been used for storage of miscellaneous items.  Through the years there have been an assortment of feral cats that have called the old saw shed home including a white female calico cat.  One day my husband came in to tell me, “You’d better start feeding that white mama cat under the shed because she has had kittens”.  So I started going out daily to put out food for the mama cat and her two babies.  One baby was white with a bit of color, the other was a tri-color calico.  Sadly, after a couple of weeks the little white one disappeared but the tiny calico hung around and waited for me to bring dinner.  After a month of feeding the mama and her baby I was able to get very close to the kitten and so one day I bent down and picked up the tiny kitten.  I brought her into my studio and she has lived inside with me ever since. 

Because she was a feral cat she was very nervous about being inside and especially afraid of people.  It took some doing but eventually she became my friend and would lay beside me on my table while I did my artwork.  Eventually she began to warm up to the other artists and would even venture out to sun herself in the large front windows of the gallery.  Many times visitors to the gallery were startled by her presence in the front windows thinking she was a stuffed cat or piece of art, until she moved!

Life was good for Patches the Cat until the day Tom brought a DOG to the gallery with him!  Chief, the Collie puppy (the subject of a different post), really wanted to be friends with the little calico ball of fluff with the huge green eyes and the very long whiskers…the cat wanted nothing to do with the overly friendly puppy.  She began to retreat to high places where she could avoid contact with “The Dog”.  She settled into her bed on the top shelf of my studio bookcase and seemed to enjoy watching the Main Street traffic passing by.

Fast forward a few years and Chris, a pastel artist, moved into one of our upstairs studios.  Chris loves cats.  Patches knew that Chris loved cats and began to visit him regularly, out of contact with “The Dog”.  Eventually, I had to move her bed upstairs because she refused to hang with me downstairs anymore.

Visitors to Chris’s studio are truly taken with the tiny calico cat that had now taken up residence in her bed on his studio table.  Too often people forget to look at his beautiful artwork because they are so enthralled with the cat, but she is a great conversation starter.  She is a star attraction to the upstairs studios, well, second star attraction next to the beautiful artwork.  

Now that you know her story you should make a point of meeting Patches, the little calico cat living at Artifacts 302.  If you like cats perhaps you will become part of her fan club, her green eyes will get you every time.