Reprinted with permission, CFA Almanac, July 1995
How many times have you looked at your Almanac cover and thought "What a gorgeous cat"? I have, many times, and when the month was over and a new Almanac with yet another picture arrive, the old one with the lovely photo got put away in a box ... sometimes never to be seen again!
Recently, I became the proud owner of a new office, built for me in the basement of our home by my husband, Roger. As my involvement in the cat fancy grew, I needed a central place (other than the dining room table) for all my computer and cat paraphernalia. An office was a great idea and is now the central point of my cat related activities, which includes running numerous shows a year, entry clerking quite a few shows, and acting as an extension of the CFA Public Relations Office for Canada.
I wanted something really special for the walls in the office ... a border with cats on it. Hah! Try and find anything in a wallpaper store that even remotely resembles a purebred cat! After weeks of searching, I had resigned myself to either a cutesy, cutesy cat border, or just walls covered with photos. No exactly what I had in mind!
In the course of sorting and moving all the cat "stuff" (amazing what one acquires over many years!) into the office, I cam across the box of olds Almanacs, and though "What a pity these couldn't be on my wall." Then immediately, "Well, why can't they?" So, as I moved the Almanacs into the new office, I tore off all the colored covers and set them aside. Hey, the important information was all on the inside pages, anyway, so what the heck!
Next, I proceeded to carefully cut out the photo of the cat itself from the covers, and started a file of these pictures. I still wasn't sure what was going to come of it, but I had an idea in the back of my head to somehow intermingle all of these pictures into a border on the walls. Also, while I was sorting through stuff, I found a colored picture of two cats and the words "CATLAND" above them (found out it was a Louis Wain drawing). I kept this, too, as I thought it would make an ideal starting point for the border.
The biggest problem was ... just how was I going to put all of these pictures on the walls? I spoke at length with the girl in the wallpaper store, and am convinced she thought I was totally obsessed with cats! We quickly ruled out glue(would never get it off the walls), wallpaper paste (color from photo would probably be ruined, gluing pictures to a plan border background and then applying it (it'd just never work). I almost gave up in complete frustration until she mentioned a tacky putty that could possibly be used. We hit pay dirt! This putty comes in a bar and softens when you roll it in your hands. When applied to the back of a photo, it sticks the photo securely to the wall. you can even move it around without leaving a trace of it on the wall. I was in heaven! Exactly what I needed!
I put up my CATLAND starting point, and proceeded to use this putty to put the cats' pictures on the wall. I had laid the whole border out on the floor first, just to get an idea of how it would look. I spent quite a bit of time working with the photos to get them intermingled to look "just right",
![[Finished Border]](border.jpg)
Now, when I look at the walls of my office, I feel right at home .... surrounded images of past National Winners. What more could a cat person ask for?