My version of Puss in Boots was inspired by Kate Whouley’s cat, Bix mentioned in her book, Cottage for Sale Must Be Moved, A Woman Moves a House to Make a Home

My version of Charles Perrault’s Puss in Boots was inspired by Kate Whouley’s cat, Bix. He appears in Kate’s second memoir, Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words.

A Super Cat is part of the dream sequence and my nod to all the comic book lovers. The model for  my Super Cat is Kate Whouley’s, current cat, Mojo Valentine. Kate and Mojo have a book-in-the-making, with illustrations by John Nez.

The dance party is lead  on the left by Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Cat a Cupcake illustrated by Felicia Bond. In the lower middle is Skippyjon Jones who was written and illustrated by Judy Schachner. Finishing up the dance gang is Fred, my best friend’s cat who I bonded with this past year while we both underwent chemotherapy for our different forms of cancer.

This shows a good representation of the stars that are an homaage to Eric Carle’s Draw Me A Star. On the left is my version of Ursula K/ LeGuin’s Catwings, my version is based on my friend Paula’s cat Isabel who died just before I received the commission for the wall. To the right is my own creation a robot/ terminator futuristic/ or armored cat and is response to the popularity of graphic novels, like the Warrior series by Erin Hunter, George Martin’s Game of Thrones, or The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznik.

The far left of this segment is the wonderful lion Aslan from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the left is the beginning of the dream sequence as the transparent cat leaps into its nighttime adventure. Below and to the left is the cat and mouse from Don and Audrey Wood’s Napping House, silently snoring a harmonious heart of Zzzzs.  In the background lies New Hampshire’s White Mountains with Mount Washington complete with Tuckerman’s Ravine dividing winter from Spring.

What night time sky would be complete without a UFO? My inspiration was supplied by Space Cat by Ruthven Todd and illustrated by Paul Gadone originally in 1952 and went on to be a series of four books, which were rereleased in the 1990s.

The first literary cat I thought of was “Hey Diddle Diddle“ so this is my version of the the cat and the fiddle, however, I decided to turn it into a bluegrass band and a party. The lead guitarist is a “substantial kitty” whose model’s name is Mustard, the happy pet of Joanne Piazzi, who worked as my assistant on the mural.

To the left is a sledding duo by inspired by Rosemary Wells. To the right the well known creator of Busy Town, Richard Scarry. In my homage to Mr. Scarry the mother skiing at the front of her three kittens has the same coloring as the mother and three kittens in the autumn tree. The outfit of the third kitten may look familiar, as I fashioned it on the clothes from Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? The popular character is seen throughout the city in a game played annually in Concord to support local businesses with the help of Gibson’s Bookstore.

His red beret is a nod to both Richard Thompson and Ester Averill’s Cat Club books in which the black cat always wore a red scarf. The other characters in this sequence are from my imagination but I think their was some influence by Marjorie Flack’s Angus books, and George Zion’s Harry the Dirty Dog illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham.