A non-book project for me this past year has been working on a series of watercolors depicting mostly Northern California native plants, birds, and butterflies. A few of these watercolors may wind up in future travel story books as well.

During this creative endeavor, my cat Calvin has taken much delight in rearranging, biting, and playing with my watercolor pencils and/or brushes and the occasional eraser within reach. The watercolor pencil in my hand remained off limits of course, but I let him have free range of motion so to speak as far as the other implements were concerned. This was often taken advantage of in a most casual way: first by sitting quietly next to me - and then a slow but swift elegant swap of the paw and voilà - a brush, or pencil, or several now conveniently located on the floor to play with at leisure.

The most amusing thing I saw Calvin do though was to dip his right front paw into a small glass normally used as a wine glass. I use it for water when painting. Exactly how good watercolor water tastes remains unknown to me, but apparently it was worth investigating on Calvin’s behalf and he seemed to enjoy it. The paw dipping must be a gesture he observed and copied from a raccoon misusing the water dish outside which is intended for use by the local bird population, a fact clearly ignored by aforementioned raccoon. In the raccoon’s defense, I have seen a ground squirrel, a rabbit, and several “regular” squirrels partake of water from the dish too, however never making a muddy mess unlike the uninvited masked bandit.