Kitten sketches and a dilemma

I’m torn between writing a post explaining why the calls for ceasefire are utterly disconnected from Hamas’s ceasefire record, the safety of the 240 kidnapped, and the safety of everyone living in the area, and creating an escapist post filled with cat nonsense and pen stuff. On the one hand I want to educate people, on the other hand if people wanted to be educated they’d spend 3 minutes googling before posting fictional maps of the area, calling for “ceasefire now” and ignoring Hamas leadership’s own disownment of their people, saying that they aren’t their responsibility, and having zero qualms about using them as human shield to provoke just the kind of reaction that they’re getting on social media.

So here are kitten sketches, and please take the time to fact check stuff you like and repost on the internet, even if it came from your favourite hairdresser or singer.

Inktober 2023 Day 27

Three rocket attacks today and I’m getting ready for an uneasy night. They’re sending them in large waves so Iron Dome missed a few and there direct hits and more wounded people today.

In better news the stray black kitten that my mom and brother saved is back from her stay at the vet’s (she had to have her tail removed after she was run over by a car). She’s so friendly and fearless the vet thinks that she belonged to someone who threw her out (a common fate with black cats in particular). But now she has a great forever home and she’s having the time of her life:

Adopt, don’t shop.

Inktober 2023 Day 26

Spent a few hours at the office this morning instead of just working from home. It was nice to get to see people face to face after three weeks. Got caught by a siren attack a few minutes after getting off the bus so I sprinted to the shelter in the middle of a heatwave. There was a direct hit near my parents’ house just as they were bringing home a new stray 4 month old kitten that had its tail amputated after being run over by a car. She’s black, cute, and was terrified by the siren and the booms of the rockets, poor thing. I hope she settles in and the other cats there accept her.

One of my parents’ cats, Ninja, bird watching. She’s the mom of my two cats.

Inktober 2023 Day 24

Had a rough day, topped by a serious rocket barrage at 17:00.

Yesterday we had the first quiet day since the war started, and clearly Hamas was making a point (the point being we won’t be allowed to live in peace here, ever, while they’re still around). They are doing everything they can to pull us into Gaza, because they know it will be a bloodbath, and that’s what they want (if you don’t think that Hamas wants as many Palestinian civilian casualties as possible, you have been living in an alternate reality. They’ve done everything they could to prevent civilian evacuation, including threaten doctors with guns, and they’re hoarding food, water, medical supplies and fuel because they’ve planned this for months in advance, they knew what was coming, they planned for this reaction, and they don’t give a shit about the people of Gaza — they only want dead jews, and as many of them as possible. You are welcome to check on their official charter, if seeing what they did on Saturday and the amount of hostages they have, including over 30 children, some of them babies, isn’t enough).

I saw a doctor that I used to follow on social media bother to create a post with graphics on how horrible we are for deliberately bombing a hospital and how that’s inhumane. She spent hours on those graphics. She spent very little time corroborating the information in them (it wasn’t true. The hospital was a victim of one of the many failed Hamas and Jihad rocket launches). She hasn’t retracted them. She has posted nothing about the hostages (not even the children, the women, the disabled, the sick and the elderly in Hamas’s hands). She’s a “feminist gynaecologist” but wrote nothing about the rape of women (some of them dead, raped after they were brutally murdered) as an act of weaponising sex. She wrote nothing about the Israeli hospital, deliberately hit by rockets while it was taking in hundreds of casualties, the vast majority of them civilians. She wrote nothing about the pregnant mother who was butchered and then had her belly carved open and the baby beheaded too. She wrote nothing about the babies abandoned to die in the fields, or the families burned alive, or the “gas the jews” protests, or the paramedics and doctors targeted by attacks while they were trying to treat and evacuate the wounded — including muslim doctors treating Hamas terrorists.

The post is still up on her feed. It has about 40 thousand likes. It hasn’t been retracted. She’s still posting about women’s health, social justice, rights for minorities. Just not all minorities. Some of us need to learn to be butchered in silence, apparently.

I unfollowed her and everyone who liked that post. If you show me or tell me who you are, I tend to believe you.

For those that survived so far, here’s a sketch of my cat being all melodramatic because it was hot and I hadn’t turned on the AC (I was afraid I wouldn’t hear the sirens, but he got what he wanted in the end).

Here he is all like “look, I’m melting!”

The gym opened today after 16 days, but no pool, no showers and no sauna. They blocked the showers just in case people wouldn’t follow orders. We have 90 seconds to get from the gym and into the depth of the parking lot across the street if there’s a rocket attack while we’re there.

We are not amused

My brother’s cat was not amused when he tried to take his laptop back from her.

Sketched with a non-photo blue Pilot Color Eno 0.7 mechanical pencil and inked with a Pentel GFKP Sepia, Uni pin 0.5 sepia fineliner and Zig Mangaka 0.8 fineliner (for the writing) on an Artcoe Frisk Sketch Book. Could have done it all with one pen and no underdrawing but I’m experimenting with my setup at the moment.

Expressive Cats

I’ve had a rough week, hence the lack of posts. Here are some cat cartoons I created for your enjoyment while I get ready for more substantial updates.