from
Judy Barrows & Charlie Ipcar

graphic design by Charlie Ipcar
© 2011 by Ipbar Productions
www.judybwebdesign.com

There's a story behind our card this year.  A few weeks ago, my husband Charlie was driving our cats Tilahun (black cat steering the catboat) and Tejitu (calico cat sitting in the bow) back from a checkup - and they were complaining mightily (they don't like to travel in the car, and express their opinions loudly).  So Charlie made up a song about two adventurous kitties who went to sea and fought with a boatload of scurvy dogs and admired the flying fish and explored a tropical island - adding verses with each repetition, in the hopes of distracting the kitties.  It didn't work - though they were beginning to yowl in tune by the time he got home.

However....

By then he'd written an interesting song, and had visions in his head of what these various adventures might look like - so now he's busily at work on a children's book based on the song!  He decided three kitties was more interesting than two, so he added his mom's cat Grendel (curled up in the middle of the boat delivering presents, and up aloft in the crow's nest in the second picture, to the distress of the crows!).  And he's been busily chasing all three cats around, camera in hand, to get pictures of them in various positions to place in the various scenes.

He hasn't recorded the song yet - the verses keep changing a bit to match the graphics as he creates them - but it's all coming along nicely.