Sylvester the Cat

"What are we doing today?"

He thought for a while. He remained silent. "Can you help me pick something like you said you would?" he asked. He's been struggling on some days to think of something new for me to draw.

"Okay, let's think of categories of things, like animals, plants, ..."

He added, "Buildings."

"Yes buildings or places or your favorite shows or characters."

"Looney Tunes!" he shouted.

"Okay. Good. Looney Tunes," I said. I thought about which Looney Tunes characters I had done already. "I haven't done Foghorn Leghorn. Or Pepé Le Pew."

"You haven't done Sylvester," he said jumping in. "Have you done Yosemite Sam?"

"Nope."

"Do Yosemite Sam."

I ran a search and saw lots of the other characters too. I declared, "I haven't done Marvin the Martian."

"Oh, you can do Marvin the Martian tomorrow."

I handed him my iPhone. He took a long time scrolling through the options, so long that I started to get annoyed.

"Pick something, please," I said irritably.

"Here."

"You picked the only one that isn't a drawing," I said, unable to mask my annoyance. "Plus it doesn't really look like Yosemite Sam." It was an odd snapshot directly from one of the cartoons and Yosemite Sam had a really weird expression on his face. I should have had extra time today, but because it was taking him so long to pick something suitable, I'd be feeling in a rush. I don't like feeling rushed.

He picked another option, but this time it had both Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny. "This one."

"No Victor, that's two things. It's Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny. I don't have time to do two things, especially now that it's taken extra time to pick something."

He ignored me and picked another one. It was a classic Yosemite Sam front pose in which he is staring straight out, pointing two guns ready to shoot. I felt that it might be too much for today's schools to draw a guy (even if it was Yosemite Sam) holding guns pointed toward the onlooker. I browsed for something else similar but without the guns.

He noticed my concerned look and asked, "You don't like that one?"

"I'm not sure about drawing the guns."

"But he always has guns."

"I know, but...", I trailed off. Schools today can be very sensitive, and rightly so, about guns. Back when I was a kid, I wouldn't have given it a moment's thought, but now it was worthy of extra consideration.

He seemed to understand. "Okay, then let's do Sylvester." He picked this one of Sylvester playing guitar right away.

"If that's what you want."

"Yeah, because he's being silly and he has a guitar and silly's my thing."

I had to rush through this one, but it wasn't too difficult. "Done. What do you think?"

"Oh cool. Can you put some clouds 'cause he's in the air?" he asked.

He started to show me and I said, "You do it."

He added the ground, the trees, the birds, and the clouds, talking all the while. "'VICTOR' is sitting on a cloud. Cool, huh?" He just then noticed the design of his name and added, "Oh, you made 'VICTOR' out of guitar strings!"

As I was taking the picture I appreciated his additions. It looked pretty cool with Sylvester looking like he was jumping up above the trees. "Nice additions, Victor," I praised. I could tell he felt proud of his work.

When he got home in the afternoon, he brought with him a good bunch of the snack sacks he had taken to school yesterday. "I left several for my teacher to put up in the classroom," he told me.

"A rotating gallery. Nice!"