Chez Natasha

(Caption: Wow! Via Natasha we’re just one step removed from… Kevin, Steve, Ed, Jim & Tyler!)

The reference is to the members of Canadian band Barenaked Ladies from Toronto, which ironically I interviewed and enjoyed live by the sea in Daytona Beach, Florida on Spring Break back in 1989 or so. Jean-Marc Van Tol said he likes them a lot.

I love the Dutch cartoon Fokke & Sukke and the book I had signed was in Russian, hence the Russian title. French translations are coming up and there was even a Hungarian book for sale.

This all took place during last weekend’s Stripdagen in Haarlem, an entire weekend of outdoor comic strips sales, meeting artists, live interviews, guinea pig races and many other fun events. We had two days of sun and it was just great.

Here below some people enjoying cartoons and one of the many artists of the Nieuw Gehoer ‘paddock’, as they call them in the business. It was also nice to hang out with the folks from Rotterdam cartoon mag Zone 5300 of which I know a few people who draw and write for them. I now have some bedtime reading for a while!

When I was a little girl we had two cats, Ti-Noir (‘Blackie’) and Ti-Gris (‘Little grey one’). T-Noir was a big tabby that just got too old (16 or so) and Ti-Gris had decided to take off into the woods and never come back one summer. My dad had the nasty task of bringing Ti-Noir to the vet to have it put to sleep. When he came back, he told me something like, “don’t get a cat unless you’re ready to do this, too.”

When I got my first apartment in 1987, the first thing I wanted to have that I couldn’t before was cats. At my favourite restaurant, one of the waitresses had kittens she was giving away. I said yes without knowing what the kittens looked like, all I knew is that I wanted a female cat. I got a whiny pitch black siamese cat called Gala (Dali’s wife’s name) and renamed it Pussyminou, roughly French Canadian for catcat. A bilingual joke on my part.

After a few months of whiny Pussyminou, the black stealth cat that sneaked around corners, I met some classical guitarists that had some kittens to give away. I said yes again, without a picture and ended up with the female Moonster.

Both Pussyminou and Moonster came to the Netherlands with me in 1999. Pussyminou got very ill and was put to sleep – how could I forget – on September 10, 2001. She was 14.

Moonster was put to sleep today and was 21, which is a helluvalot for any cat. After some years of kidney pills and recent heart problems, she had a stroke and was paralysed, so it was time to check out.

Long live Moonster.