A Real Wort of Art

A Real Wort of Art

Noel Laflin
November 2, 2014

When you are in need of quick artwork, it's always helpful to  have a blank canvas, a little paint and a cat at hand; no brush is even necessary.

With guests arriving within the hour, Tom thought the house to be ready, with the exception of our bedroom.

"It's that blank space over the bed that bugs me," he remarked, as we scurried about with last minute preparations.

There was an unknown quantity of folks liable to descend on our home that night and he wanted to make a good first impression of our new digs. He was an artist, after all.

"It just needs something," Tom lamented, staring at the open space on the wall.

That's about the time the new kitten happened to jump up on the bed. Little did he know that he'd be a star before the night was through.

You could almost see the proverbial light bulb going off over Tom's head at that moment.  And in that flash of inspiration he instructed me to grab hold of the cat while he went scrambling in the closet in search of a canvas and some paint.

Now, the kitten's name was Wort - you know, the very same nickname bestowed on a young King Arthur by Merlin way back in magical days. Just a week or two earlier we had gone in search of some plants at a local nursery. I can't recall whether we brought home a plant or not that day, but  we did most definitely bring home a kitten, as the owner of the nursery pressed one upon us. The soon to be named Wort was part Siamese with beautiful bright blue eyes. Who could resist?

So there I was holding Wort as Tom carried a large blank canvas and a can of blue paint out onto the patio. The paint was shaken so that there was some on the inside of the lid once it was pried loose.

With great care, remembering that we had a live feline with very sharp claws in our hands, we pressed each paw gently into the upturned lid of blue paint.  Tom then asked me to set Wort down at the edge of canvas and see what would happen.

The cat strode about, naturally enough, meandering here and there until he just walked right off intending to head back into the house.

We stared down in wonderment at the crisp blue paw print design. With a flourish of a final touch, Tom dipped his finger in the remaining paint and signed Wort's name to the bottom of the canvas.

We grabbed our new-found Picasso, walked him to the edge of the swimming pool and carefully dipped his blue stained paws in the water. This turned out to be the toughest part of the entire experiment as you can imagine a cat's  reaction to being held over a large body of water.

So while I went in search of a few Band-Aids, Tom found a nail and hammer and hung the canvas over the bed.

The paint was not even dry by the time the first guests arrived.  But, oh, did folks ever 'ooh-and-ah' over that piece. They all wanted to meet the artist of course. But he had turned into a sudden recluse and could not be coaxed out from beneath the bed.

Any guest foolhardy enough to try and do so was rewarded with a quick swipe from a very blue paw.