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The Perks of Being an Artist

Category Archives: cats

Meet Hinton

11 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by emilypageart in cats, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

cat names, cats, jazz, jazz musicians, kitten, kitties, tuxedo cat

So, if you know me, you know I have little to no impulse control when it comes to furry critters. Within 24 hours of Dizzy’s death, I was ready to find another kitty to add to our family. Luckily, S was on board, so we headed out to our favorite shelter, Second Chance Pet Adoption, to get our snuggle on. Within seconds, we found a floof who was perfect. We looked at a few others for awhile (I thoroughly enjoyed sitting in a room and having kittens climb all over me, and if I could have just moved into the room with them, I totally would have), but kept coming back to this one little tuxedoed-up guy.

Hinton

Clearly, it was love at first sight for both of us. It’s scientifically impossible to say “no” to this look.

So we put in our application to adopt him and went home to fight over what to name him. So far, I’ve named all of my cats after jazz musicians (Ella Fitzgerald, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Keely Smith, and Madeleine Peyroux) , so I was pushing hard to continue the tradition. S kept suggesting random, old-fashioned names that had nothing to do with anything: Barnabus, Thaddeus, Elridge, etc. But I held out for a jazz name, and the more he pushed for some rando-name, the sillier I got with my suggestions. Here is a list of the names I suggested that S shot down:

1. Thelonius Meownk
2. Charlie Purrker
3. Jelly Roll Meowton
4. Artie Paw
5. Wynton Meowsalis
6. Sonny Pawlins
7. Bing Clawsby

In the end, though, we settled on a name that S suggested that he didn’t know actually had a really great association for me: Hinton. For me, I associate that name with 2 things: 1) Milt Hinton, the jazz bassist and photographer who I met in high school and whose calendars I used to buy every year, and 2) my favorite cocktail from a restaurant in Charlottesville (bourbon – of course – spicy ginger ale, and muddled mint). So basically, we named our new kitten after booze and jazz. Seems appropriate for our house.

Hinton 3

Did he get into the bourbon already?!

Thus far, Keely is maaaaaaaaaad and Maddie is slightly miffed. Keely was not on speaking terms with any of us for awhile, but has already decided that it’s okay to speak to US as long as HE isn’t anywhere around. Progress. And Hinton is settling in nicely. I had forgotten how hard kittens play and then how hard they conk out, all floopy and floppy:

Hinton 2

This is some grade-A floopage.

I had also forgotten how much they fart. If he wasn’t so damn cute, I’d be tossing him from my lap every half hour.

I’ll get back to posting tattoos soon, but for now caaaaaaaaaaaats, because really:

View this post on Instagram

This little guy. We've named him Hinton. I'm in love. The other kitties are not. #cats #catsofinstagram #tuxedocat

A post shared by Emily Page (@emilypageart) on Nov 8, 2018 at 1:19pm PST

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RIP Dizzy

03 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by emilypageart in cats, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

cats, death, dizzy, pet death, silly cats

I came home last night to discover that, Dizzy, the weirdest kitty that ever was, had died while I was at work. He’s was only 5 years old and had appeared totally healthy, so the vet suggested that he might have had an undiscovered heart condition and had had a heart attack. We’re not doing an autopsy, so we’ll never really know. But I’m so sad that I wasn’t there for him in his final moments.

A cat with that much personality deserves a fitting send-off, so I’m reposting my past posts about him. Please wear a belt today in his honor, and strut around confidently showing it off.

The Uni-baller

The Pitten Strikes Again

My Cat Is Defective

The Terror Within

He’ll Lick the Sick Right Out of You

Seriously, This Cat is Defective

My Cats Are Broken

Auf Wiedersehen

Someone Really Likes My Book

Dizzybutt

And one more video from a few days ago:

I’m gonna miss you, little boy. If there’s a heaven, I hope it’s full of wires and hair to chew on, and all the belts you could ever want to wear.

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Gertie

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by emilypageart in art, cats, painting, sip and paint studio, tattooing, Uncategorized

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Tags

commemorative tattoo, Emily Page Art, Emily Page tattoo, pet portrait tattoo, pet portraits, pet tattoo, Ratatat Tats, tattoo, tattoo studio, watercolor tattoo

We used to do Pet Portrait classes at my sip and paint studio, and one of my customers (who has since become a friend) came every time and painted one of her cats. She did a bunch of great paintings of her furry friends, but her favorite kitty, Gertie, was a fluffy, black, little thing. She was Sarah’s other half.

Sarah Badore

Recently, Gertie passed away, and Sarah decided she wanted to get a tattoo to commemorate her little buddy. She sent me a sheet with several watercolor kitties, so we decided to combine her painting of Gertie with the style of the watercolor kitties:

gertie.jpg

I was so honored to be part of this. First, to get to help her make a great painting of her buddy while she was still alive, and then to help her commemorate Gertie now that she’s gone. This is the kind of thing I was really looking forward to when I decided to learn to tattoo. I love being able to help people document a part of their lives and do something that really means something to them. Here’s the final tattoo:

Gertie III

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Marie Catoinette

12 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by emilypageart in art, cats, culture, humor, painting, Uncategorized

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Tags

18th century fashion, 18th century hairstyles, acrylic painting, art, cat art, cats, Emily Page Art, Emily Page artist, marie antoinette, marie antoinette hair, marie antoinette wig, marie catoinette, painting

I have a friend. She turned 50. I know: quite the accomplishment. In order to help her celebrate said milestone, I promised her a work of original art. She likes cats. And words. And fantasy. And, based on some of the art in her home, 18th century fashion? I don’t know, I could be getting that wrong. But she has a kickass sense of humor, so I decided to combine several of her loves for her very special, one of a kind, original Emily Page painting:

Marie Catoinette.JPG

Marie Catoinette 20″ x 16″ acrylic on canvas

Elle est tres jolie, non? Happy birthday, Laura!

Prints and stuffs available here and here.

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Our Lesbian Cat Wedding

09 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by emilypageart in cats, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

cat wedding, lesbian cat wedding, lesbian wedding, too young to get married

So, this conversation just happened with my husband:

ME: Should we have a lesbian cat wedding and have Maddie marry Keely?

HIM: Absolutely not!

ME (a little shocked): Why not?

HIM: They’re WAY too young and there’s a huge age gap!

ME: But it’s cat years! If they’re 1 and 2, that’s only like a 7 year difference in cat years.

HIM: Exactly. Keely’s, like, 14, and Maddie’s 7. They’re too young to get married.

Sigh. I hate when he’s right.

dizzy laughing 1-9-18

This is neither Keely nor Maddie. It’s Dizzy. But he thinks we’re hilarious. And I suspect he’s secretly relieved that we’re not trying to marry him off. But now that I think about it, he and Maddie would make an awfully cute couple…

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There’s a Fungus Among Us

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by emilypageart in cats, culture, Eerieville, Haunt, humor, singing, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

bag of smut, corn, corn maze, corn smut, elucidate, fungus, gourmet Mexican food, huitlacoche, jack sparrow jar of dirt, mushroom, smut maze

I was hoping to have exciting news to tell you all today about our next big adventure, but it looks like things have stalled. So I’m going to hold off on telling you about it and instead just say that I will probably be bald in the near future as all the stress is causing me to tear my hair out. And my head is kinda lumpy, so I don’t expect it to be a good look on me. Send bourbon posthaste.

In the mean time, I wanted to tell you about smut. Apparently, smut is edible, y’all. Confused? Well, let me elucidate*.

I’m talking about corn. And smut. Specifically, corn smut.  That, apparently, is a thing. Wanna know how I know? We have it at the haunt. Instead of a corn maze, we have a smut maze. And it is creeeeeeeepy! This is what I mean:

corn smut 1
corn smut 2
corn smut 3

Revolting, right? Revolting and edible – like, delicacy edible. It’s called Huitlacoche. In Mexico, it’s considered to be gourmet, like truffles: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/articles/detail/huitlacoche. American farmers have tried everything to eradicate it, but they really should have been harvesting it and selling it at top dollar to Mexican restaurants.

Generally, I’m not very adventurous when it comes to my food, but I figure, if I can eat Francy Feast (that’s what I call fancy French cuisine like snails), I can eat what is, essentially, just a mushroom growing on some corn. I found out a little late that this stuff could be eaten, so I have less to harvest than I would have a couple weeks ago, but that didn’t stop me from forcing the bile back down in my throat as I picked the exploding gray kernels, then gleefully running around with a plastic bag of my pickings singing, “I’ve got a bag of smut! I’ve got a bag of smut!” as though I was Jack Sparrow with a jar of dirt. The neighbors may be worried.

I’m not a cook, so I’ve frozen my bag o’ smut and will be saving it for my friend (who made the mistake of telling me about huitlacoche in the first place) to cook up into something yummy for me when I see him in November. It’s sitting in the bottom of my freezer right now, looking like bag of horrific skin growths. I have to admit that I’m not overly excited at what it’ll taste like, but I reaaaaaaally want to be able to say that I’ve eaten a bag of smut.

I’ll do my best to remember to post about what smut tastes like when the time comes. Until then, seriously, send bourbon. The stress of everything is killing me.

* I can’t hear the word “elucidate” without thinking of this, which cheers me up, so I’ll be playing it on repeat for the forseeable future. My cats approve.

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It’s Not Me, It’s My Head

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by emilypageart in cats, health, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

blogging, cats, cluster headache, cupid, depression, headache, inspiration, jersey shore, kitties, kitty love, mental fog, migraine, postdrome, snooki, tension headache

I know I’ve been promising to get better about posting more regularly again. And I meant it when I promised it. But my head didn’t agree. I said, “I swear I’m going to post more,” but my head was all like, “Oh, but I have other ideas. I’m going to give you a week of migraines, cluster headaches, and tension headaches. And maybe some caffeine withdrawal headaches. And probably brain tumors or something. And then I’m going to give you postdrome, just for funsies.” Apparently, my head didn’t make that up, and “postdrome” is actually a thing. Basically, my head was like, “Hey, you know what would be fun? After a bunch of pain, let’s be stupid!!” And I totally went along with it. Because stupid is awesome?*

Also, I’m heading into that time of year when I go into a depression, and my creative juices dry up. I get creatively dehydrated. Not even bourbon can quench my creative thirst. It’s coming on a little early this year, due in part, I’m guessing, to all the headbitching. So I run out of interesting things to say and paint and instead spend all of my time binge watching Jersey Shore and complaining that not all three cats are snuggling with me at every single moment of every single day. I either need more cats or a smaller house so that there are less places for the cats I already have to sleep that don’t involve directly touching me.

all ma kitties

All mah kittehs on me at the same time. I has the heaven.

On top of that, as I have mentioned in the last two posts, I’m going through a major work transition that’s causing a fair amount of chaos from which I would prefer to hide. I was going to post about that right now, but I’m going to drag this shit out into another post so that I can do the work now, and not have to come up with anything to post about over the next couple days, thus maximizing my binge watching/snuggles time tomorrow and the next day. Fuck you postdrome, I bees smart.

*I was going to insert a clip of Snooki, from Jersey Shore, asking if cherubs were real, but apparently, that little nugget of reality TV gold didn’t register on anyone else’s radar enough to isolate a clip and post it on YouTube. So here’s a transcript I created:

Italian, tour guide, pointing out a fresco: “Cupid, the son of Venus, who will throw the arrow of love…”

Snooki: “So they’re real?”

Tour guide: “What – what do you mean are they real?”

Snooki: “The babies with wings?”

Tour guide: “They are character of mythology.”

Snooki: “Cool.”

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KITTEHS!!!!!

30 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by emilypageart in cats, gratitude, humor, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

angry cats, black cat, cat rescue, cats, Dizzy Gillespie, happy cats, hissing and growling, humor, Keely Smith, kitteh, kittens, Madeleine Peyroux, new cat, orange cat, pitten, silly cats

So, I’ve been a little…gone, lately. I’ve had everything block – writer’s block, painter’s block, cleaner’s block, balancing-your-checkbook block, eating-healthy-foods block, etc. I have been very good at committing to snuggling with the cats and watching too much TV, though. So there’s that. Things with work have been very up-in-the-air and it’s kind of paralyzing me. I’ll explain soon, but for now, I thought I’d at least pop in and give the internet something it doesn’t have nearly enough *cough* of: CATS.

I suffer from a snuggle deficiency. It’s a serious medical condition and they have not managed to make snuggles in pill form yet, and we all know that fresh is best, so I decided I needed to get another cat. Let’s just all agree that, were my husband to die, I would not date ever again. I’d just get eleventy-twelve more cats. This seems totally reasonable. Luckily, S wasn’t against getting another kitty, so he agreed to go out and look since it’s kitten season and all. He’s such an enabler. Meanwhile, my mom was busy screamtexting me that I was insane. I chose to pretend she was wrong and instead texted pics of adorable kittens like these guys that I found at our local rescues:

20170611_141240

Please ignore the cat ass in the background.

20170611_154755

I mean, really.

But I decided to go home and think about it a little more since my favorite shelter wasn’t open the day we went out to look. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want to get a kitten. Kittens are evil. They lure you in with their cuteness, but you don’t know what their true personality will be until they’re at least a year or so old. So they might be all adorable and shit those first few months, but then they turn into the antichrist, or worse – they turn into my little pitten, Dizzy, who is incapable of snuggling without licking your hand incessantly while insisting that you must not in any way do anything that could be vaguely construed as holding him.

We got Keely when she was about a year old, which was perfect because we knew what her real personality was. The downside to her being about 2 years old now, though, is that her most ardent desire is still to play in between snuggles. Dizzy, being about 4 years old, has outgrown that urge. So there were a lot of battles between the 2 that ended with Dizzy yeowling and trying desperately to get out of Keely’s grasp.

So, while we wanted a cat that wasn’t quite a kitten any longer, we also wanted a cat who was close in age to Keely. Enter Madeleine, or Maddie, if you’re tight with her like we are. Like all of our cats, she is named after a jazz singer/musician (in this case, Madeleine Peyroux). We went to the shelter that had been closed the first day that we looked and she immediately claimed us. She is, without a doubt, the happiest little munchkitten you’ll ever meet.

20170612_150929

Within minutes, she’d snuggled up against me, purring furiously.

20170612_151256

Her tail matches her paws. She’s THAT color coordinated. Watch out, Pinterest.

20170612_151355.jpg

She’s got penny-colored eyes. I’m taking it as tacit approval from my dad. #penniesfornick

At a whopping 6 pounds, she’s teeny tiny. Based on her teeth, the vet says she’s over a year old. Based on her size, energy, mouthiness, and farts, I’d wager she’s a little younger. Those farts are no joke. I’m hoping the vet is right, though, because if she is that old, she won’t grow anymore and we’ll have a perma-kitten. Yessssss. So now we have small, medium, and large kittehs in Halloween colors (and since S’s favorite holiday is Halloween, he’s thrilled).

20170620_162321

She’s actually much smaller than Keely, but it’s hard to tell in this pic, in part, I think, because she has a reeeeaaaaaaally long tail.

When I first brought her home, Maddie and Dizzy bumped noses and were basically like, “You cool? I’m cool. We cool.” Keely, on the other hand, WAS NOT HAVING IT. She was basically like, “Oh, hell no.” She immediately started growling and hissing and carrying on like someone had finished off the last of the bourbon that she’d been dreaming about all day at work (wait, is it just me that dreams about bourbon all day?). After freaking out for a couple hours and wandering around the house hissing at everything that moved or didn’t move or existed or didn’t exist, she ended up hiding behind the curtains.

20170613_164240-e1498856155951.jpg

She doesn’t seem to understand the concept of hiding, as she chose to hide behind the SHEER curtains.

When S came home, she raced over to the front door and started meowing at him, and we were pretty sure she was saying, ” Dad, you will not believe what Mom brought home today. There’s this thing prancing around my house and thinking she’s hot shit with her color coordinated tail and paws. She is not hot shit. I am hot shit. You need to do something about this, STAT. Oh, and the little brat drank all the bourbon, too.” But then she saw him pet Maddie and lost her damn mind all over again. She spent the bulk of the next week with both resting bitchface and active bitchface permanently affixed to her head, growling and hissing at all of us (and the ghosts that apparently live in the house?).

After figuring out that Maddie had no desire to become the new queen, Keely finally conceded that maybe the world hadn’t ended, and maybe it might be fun to play with the cat that wouldn’t scream bloody murder at her every time she chased her up the stairs, and maybe it wasn’t the end of the world to snuggle up to her mom even though the little cat was also snuggled up to her. Oh, and maybe she would enjoy the fact that her parents were giving her more tuna juice than usual in their efforts to make everyone settle in.

So now my phone is full of pictures like this that I text to my mom to prove that this was, in fact, the best decision ever:

20170619_214718
20170626_184737
20170626_202640
20170629_021429

And now Dizzy can enjoy getting an occasional break from Keely’s playfulness:

20170630_134940

Yaaaaaasssss, bitchez.

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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You can view my artwork on Facebook or on my website at http://www.emilypageart.com

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