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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Looney Tunes Cat Shrugging

Looney Tunes Cat Shrugging

The plan was to walk to school this morning. Since I knew it would take an extra 20-30 minutes, I got up early. I prepped his lunch and made his breakfast before I woke him up.

"Good morning!" I said gently as I walked into his room. He struggled to open his eyes. After some shakes and some hugs, he sat up. I wanted to get a jumpstart on the drawing, so I brought the iPad with me to his room. This entire week he's been selecting screenshots from Looney Tunes cartoons. I figured he could do the same again today. "Can you quickly pick something from the iPad for the snack sack?" I asked him. He selected a few screenshots that weren't really appropriate. A couple were violent and a few others were odd stills that didn't look like much out of context. He finally picked this cat.

I urged Victor to get ready quickly and got to work drawing right away. After about five minutes, I heard noises upstairs, but he wasn't down yet. I went to check up on him and found him playing with some toys at his bedside, something he never does in the morning. I reprimanded him and asked him to, "...please hurry up." He knew we needed to leave early today, so I'm not sure why he chose to mess around. It's like he times his insubordination for maximum frustration.

I looked it up and this cat is a precursor to Sylvester. He chases and is abused by an early Tweety Bird in the cartoon, "Birdy and the Beast." This shrug comes as a gesture to the audience just before the cat drops to the ground from a great height. When he hits the ground hard, Tweety says, "Aw, the poor kitty tat! He fall down and go...BOOM!" It's a scene Victor's watched countless times. We drew Tweety from this same cartoon when we did Tweety Bird Yelling, "BOOM!" toward the end of the last school year.

This drawing took longer than expected as do all of the ones with black filler and negative space. It was hard to keep the "white" lines exposed for creases and definition, especially those of his eyes and whiskers. The cat's feet don't show in the screenshot or at all in this segment of the cartoon, so I merely drew a bottom border line.

When I was done, Victor didn't say anything but he did shrug in a pleasant way, mimicking the cat.

I was trying to get us out the door, but he refused to get ready. Instead, he sat messing around on our electric piano. When I asked him to get ready he said, "Okay," but continued at the piano with no intention of moving. My patience was wearing thin. I told him he'd lost the use of his electronics for the rest of the day. He's been in trouble all week, so I had him on a short leash. Once I said that, he jumped into immediate action. He was a model kid for two full minutes, getting ready faster than ever before.

"What do you think?" I asked him about the snack sack on our way out.

"Good," is all he said. I could tell he was sore with me.

We left almost ten minutes later than I had planned, but we made it to school just on time. I do love walking with him. He held my hand most of the way which made me feel so special. I miss our morning walks to school. For three years before he started at this new school we walked together nearly every day. His previous school was much closer. Perhaps we'll walk from time to time, but I'm not sure. It's certainly doable, but it is a pretty long walk...and not as fun for me to walk back by myself.

When he came home he said, "Hey Dad, do you know where the snack sack is?"

"No," I replied, unsure of what he was getting at. I went over to the bench. "I don't see it in your backpack."

"It's not in my backpack," he said at the same time. "I didn't see it there. Oh, I might have lost it!" he said with distress. "If I did lose it, I'm really sorry, Dadda."

"It's okay," I said. At this point, we both want to preserve each and every one of the snack sacks. We have the pictures, of course, but the sacks themselves represent something very special to us, something we want to keep and display for years to come.

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