On Christmas Eve, Bean the three-legged shop cat suffered a blockage to his urethra and had to be rushed to the animal hospital. He was in bad shape. His bladder was full and hard, his heart was racing and his bloodwork was troubling.
The good vets and technicians at MedVet in Cincinnati went to work immediately. They removed the blockage and catheterized him. But his blood – particularly his potassium levels – were in the deadly range. For the next couple days they monitored him, but he was listless.
On the third day, a switch flipped in his body. His blood returned to normal at a shockingly fast rate. And he was his normal self. The vets removed the catheter, and he immediately became blocked again. So he went to surgery and got a shiny new…hole.
He’s now home and confined to a bedroom without furniture. Downside: cone of shame. Upside: fentanyl patch.
Bean is expected to make a full recovery in the next three weeks. And he will be back to work as our Walmart greeter, smeller of new people’s shoes and lead toolchest investigator. On the other hand, our bank account’s recovery will take much longer. But this is what money is for.
Long live Bean.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Shoutout to MedVet (it’s a chain of hospitals) and everyone who works there. At every step they did everything right: communication, care, compassion. I hope we never have to use them again.
Misericord from Sint-Petruskerk, Oirschot, Netherlands. Photo from the Elaine C. Block Database of Misericords held by Princeton University.
While sorting through a file of misericords (originally amassed in 2016 for a three-part series on the woodworkers found in misericords), I rediscoverd this photo and decided to find out more about it.
The Message in the Misericord
Part of the study of misericords involves determining which parable, proverb or fable is depicted. With the mouse on the table we know this is a cat and not a fox, dog or bear. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Nederlandse Spreekwoorden” (Netherlandish Proverbs) painted in 1559 is once source used to match a misericord to a proverb. The only proverb in the painting involving a cat is this one:
To “bell a cat” (even if one is armed to the teeth) is interpreted as carrying out a dangerous plan, or a plan doomed to failure. There is also the proverb “while the cat is away, the mice will play” or the alternative “when the cat is at home the mice are afraid.” None of these options apply to this misericord. One writer thought perhaps the cat was reading a Bible which would be an example of “the world turned around” with an animal performing human activities. The reading of this misericord may be to show the stark contrast between a well-fed cat studying in a comfortable setting compared to its normal “job” of being a mouser. This would be a reminder to a cleric or monk that the effort to study should be taken seriously, whereas a cat has no choice but to work continuously for its next meal. Not all scenes can be deciphered to have a particular meaning and this misericord may just show the typical cat trait of curiosity and their annoying habit of taking over their owner’s chair.
The History of This Misericord
The misericord was carved in oak by Jan Borchmans between 1508-1511. He worked in churches in Oirschot, Netherlands, and in Averbode and Aarschot, both in Belgium. The photograph was taken in 1941 by Martien Coppens. In 1943 Hans Sibbelee also photographed the church in Oirschot as part of a war-time effort to document important monuments and works of art. We are fortunate to have this photographic record. On October 2, 1944, Sint-Petruskerk was shelled during the Battle of the Scheldt, the World War II campaign to free Belgium and the Netherlands. The shelling caused a fire that destroyed all the choir carvings and misericords. Twenty-two days later and after tremendous losses, Oirschot was liberated on October 24, 1944.
Although the story of this misericord is poignant, we have a photograph that allows us to appreciate Jan Borchmans’ craftmanship and perhaps his sense of humor. He very kindly provided a footstool to accommodate this well-fed cat’s very large hind feet.
I don’t know about you, but this misericord has three elements that remind me of a workshop on Willard Street in Covington, Kentucky, where chairs are made, books are edited and cats roam free.
–Suzanne Ellison
P.S. If you would like to check out my 2016 series on misericords featuring woodworkers you can read about them here (the woodworkers), here (the carvers) and here (the workbenches). The Carvers post includes these misericord carvers:
Church of Notre-Dame des Grands-Andelys, France, dated 1413.
Christopher Schwarz also wrote something about workbenches and misericords and you can read about it here. Altogether that should take care of your weekend activities.
We were simply overwhelmed by your generosity of so many donations in Nancy Hiller’s name to support The Ranch Cat Rescue – a rescue in Nancy’s adopted hometown of Bloomington, Ind. (and that Nancy continues to support in perpetuity with 10 percent of net sales of her book “Shop Tails”). It’s enough to make me well up (which usually happens only when someone accidentally hits me with a hammer). To everyone who donated: You’re so very kind; thank you. Today, I’m mailing a cashier’s check – for $8,770.85!!! – to the rescue’s director/resident human Alison Zook. The raffle winner of Carol Russell‘s fiddleback Tasmanian blackwood cat (I’ll miss this gorgeous little carving!) is Melinda in California; the winner of the book we used as “cover art” for the audio version of “Shop Tails” is Jay in Virginia (both have been notified via email).
Alison asked me to share the paragraph below –
Y’all. To say I don’t have words for this generosity is an understatement. These last few weeks I’ve been thinking I want to do something permanent with these funds, something that really honors Nancy. So I had an idea. While some of your donations will go toward medical care, food and supplies, I’m putting a portion aside and starting the Hiller Fund (working title). This will specifically be used for building projects and improvements made at The Ranch Cat Rescue, with a focus on empowering women and girls to pick up tools and get some sawdust in their hair. While these projects won’t hold a candle to Nancy’s woodworking skills, I know that she would have loved to be a part of them. This way she always can be. Thank you, new friends, for being the beginning of this.
As soon as Alison schedules that first building project, I’m clearing my schedule. I’ll be there.
Editor’s note: Here’s the backstory for “A Visitor Comes to Covington: A Fairy Tale,” a delightful handmade book that Suzanne sent me in March. I have made a video reading of the book you can watch here. Enough of my yakking. Here’s Suzanne:
Back in January, I sent a New Year’s card to Chris and Megan. In return, I received a handwritten thank you card and three stick chair badges. According to the Stick Chair Laws I was required to make a stick chair. Not being a woodworker, only a user of wood-based products, this presented a problem.
My first thought was to make a collage featuring a stick chair and I played around with that idea with digital renderings.
This example was sent to Chris as a joke. Stick chair art on the wall, including a wedding photo, wallpaper and a John Brown chair.
Eventually, I went with the idea of a small book centered on a quote by my favorite 16th-century essayist, Michel de Montaigne, “Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant choux, mais nonchalent d’elle, et encore plus mon jardin imparfait.” In the story, a fairy tale, a Grim Reaper, arrives to escort a chairmaker to the great beyond. Having been given three stick chair badges the story would have a series of threes. I also wanted the book to be interactive with instructions to open, untie and unfold different items. I mined the Lost Art Press blog, Roubo’s “The Book of Plates” and other sources for the illustrations.
The prologue about the start of the visitor’s journey opens by lifting the planing stop from Megan’s workbench. The underside of the stop is lined with part of Randle Holme’s 17th-century tool kit. Somewhere in the chart is a stick chair badge.
All journeys begin with a map, and pirate maps are the best and most useful for constructing an alternate history of Covington and surrounding areas. The street map is from 1877, the decorative frame and the visitors skiff are from an Australian map.
The map was aged with the usual things: tea, water, dirt, curling, crumpling and folding. The manicules on the map point out where the story starts and will end.
The visitor’s arrival in Covington opens the main part of the story and and it is fairly clear he is a rather stylish Grim Reaper (I felt no need to depict him as a skeleton wearing a hooded robe). After hearing “Werewolves of London”on the car radio I added the line, “Under his hat his hair was perfect.”
The visitor has arrived well before the appointed time with the chairmaker and spends the first part of his trip visiting three old friends: a turtle, a cat and a queen bee. The idea for the animals as the visitor’s friends began with an old street name. On the 1877 map Covington still had a Bremen Street (now known as Pershing Street, probably renamed during World War I). A cat was one of the four musicians from the Brothers Grimm tale, “Town Musicians of Bremen.” The cat was a night singer (or yowler) and in one version of the story was named Burlόn. The image used is a sculpture by Gerhard Marcks, who also sculpted a statue of the four musicians that stands in the city of Bremen.
The three friends are representative of life cycles. Old Turtle will live for over a century; Burlόn, the cat, will live for less than a quarter century; Honey Tart, the queen bee, will live for a year or two and her worker bees only a number of days. They are also symbols of human characteristics: wisdom, independence and curiosity, and the industrious worker.
After imbibing a very nice Bordeaux and elderberry cordial the visitor mistakenly summons a third manicule that takes the reader to the middle of the story. Was the rogue manicule really a mistake or did it have another purpose? In the prologue it states the visitor has an obligation and here is part of that obligation, to delay his arrival to allow the chairmaker to finish his last chair. This is a mark of the visitor’s admiration and respect for the chairmaker.
The double doors into which the visitor vanishes happen to be from Paris and the curious reader can open them. Inside there is a stern-faced cat blocking the view of a vortex. So, nothing to see here folks, move along. While the reader advances to the wonderful workshop on Willard, the visitor deals with some of the behind-the-scenes bureaucracy of manicules.
Figuring out how to illustrate the workshop took a few days of thinking. The inspiration came from a menko, a square origami packet. The menko opens outward like a flower, and in the middle is a square. The four views of the shop were taken from a video Chris made a few years ago. The middle, or floor, was blank until it became the space for woodworking classes (with students who have broken the laws of time and space to be there). The door to the workshop is a photo of the outside of the building facing Willard Street and is opened by lifting the Catbus. Bean, of course, is in the driver’s seat. The underside of the door reveals the first part of the workshop. The outsides of the remaining three flaps are covered by a marquetry pattern drawn by Roubo. If the opened workshop is held in the right light it is possible to see a few sparkles of purple glitter because it is impossible to totally eradicate that stuff. Somewhere in the woodworking class is the second stick chair badge.
The hinges on the workshop flaps, as well as the hinges on all the doors are a double thickness of heavy drawing paper. Eight sheets of the sketchbook were glued together to support the heft of the workshop, which sits in a recess that is about four sheets deep. I miscalculated the length of the Catbus and ended up trimming back most of the front bumper.
The workshop foldout was not suitable to display the wall of hand tools, or paries manus instrumenta, and deserved its own section. It is a simple four-part foldout. The wooden door is from Türkiye and has wonderful carvings on the central panels. A cat helps keep the door closed, contrary to the usual behavior of opening all doors. The third stick chair badge is in the wall foldout.
The door from Türkiye. I was sorry to cut off some of the lower end to make it fit in the book.
When the visitor returns he resumes his journey to Willard Street. To emphasize the gravity of the task before him and how much it weighs on him the word panels are now grey and become darker as he nears the workshop. As he stands before the building that is both a home and workplace he looks up at the iron cat on the roof and he is saddened. At this point he is the only one that fully understands the meaning of the iron cat.
The story shifts to the chairmaker in the workshop and this shift is emphasized by the color of the word panels and a change in typeface. The word panels are again blue, but a darker shade because we are nearing the end. The photograph of one of Chris’ chairs was turned upside down and put on a black background to bring forward the detail, to see it from the chairmaker’s perspective and to see the “smile.”
When the visitor and chairmaker leave the shop the last chair seems to glow in the darkness. The accompanying multi-layer image started with a black and white photo of the workshop and a overlay of opaque black that left bare outlines of the interior. The darkened frame of creepy vines (stolen from the designs for the Stick Chair Journal) was the last layer before adding the chair. The trail of stars curving up and away from the chair represent ad astra, to the stars.
When the chairmaker leaves with the visitor two cats free themselves from the iron cat, descend to the street and walk through the fog to catch up with the chairmaker. The chairmaker was unaware they had been waiting for him and is overcome when the three are reunited (not to mention the cats can talk). I wrote a backstory that bridges the visitor’s sadness from when he sees the iron cat, to the point in the epilogue when the cats reunite with the chairmaker.
The Backstory of the Iron Cat
The two cats and the chairmaker were constant companions in the shop. In his grief after the second cat died, the chairmaker mounted the iron sculpture at the peak of the roof. He had no knowledge of the cats’ agreement with the visitor. When the first cat died he refused to leave and eventually convinced the visitor to let him stay until it was the chairmaker’s time to leave. The cat agreed to stay hidden, no hijinks, no haunting. The same agreement was made when the second cat died. When the iron cat was put on the roof the two cats decided to enter it and stay until they could reunite with their chairmaker. When the visitor looks up at the iron cat he sees the sadness and grief experienced by all three.The second part of the visitor’s obligation was to free the cats when he came to escort the chairmaker. The red string in the epilogue represents the unbroken connection between the cats and the chairmaker.
The Endpapers & a Few Other Things
The endpaper inside the front cover is a collage of illustrations from various woodworking books in the public domain. I made it a few years ago and may use it in a future blog post. The facing endpaper is Monsieur Roubo’s opinion of stick chairs. At the back of the book the endpaper is a scene of several creatures, unknowingly being followed by a shark, all of which were made from Roubo’s bench square. The waves are from Roubo’s waving machine. The bench square was also used to make the little horses that were used on a couple pages. The cat on the roof was originally going to be a weather vane, however the iron cat was a better fit. The iron cat was taken from the Black Cat of Riga and you can read about it on the Atlas Obscura site.
Color changes to the word panels were used to express a change in mood or circumstance. Once again, a song heard on the car radio found its way into the story. The visitor’s “the gathering gloom” and the idea of colors fading to grey and white as he looks at the house are drawn from The Moody Blues song, “Nights in White Satin.” The visitor’s panels changed from light blue to grays; the chairmaker’s from medium to darker blues. When the cats and chairmaker are reunited the word panel is a pale yellow for light and joy. Adding layers to certain features of an image provided dimension to otherwise flat paper. Architectural elements on the outside of the workshop and the whole house have three layers on columns, roof ridges and some decorative features. The house also has spacers to lift it from the page. Carved panels on the door to the wall of hand tools were also layered.
The Missing Last Page or The Epilogue -Part 2
I originally had a second page planned for the epilogue, but I cut it, preferring to leave the reader with the chairmaker literally bowled over to learn his cats can talk.
Here is the deleted second page:
Once they had boarded the visitor’s skiff the chairmaker and the cats settled themselves in the stern. On inquiring where they were headed the answer was, “West.” After a while, the visitor joined his passengers at the stern. The cats, snuggled on either side of the chairmaker, were sound asleep. Wally was sleeping belly up, while Bean rested his head on the chairmaker’s knee. Gesturing towards the cats the visitor said, “In all my centuries those two were the most insistent, bull-headed and toughest negotiators about refusing to leave.” The chairmaker chuckled, “Cats always get what they want.” “Oh no,” replied the visitor, “it wasn’t so much about what they wanted, they insisted it was what you needed.”
If you hear the chorus from a Rolling Stones song you aren’t mistaken.
Although there will only ever be one copy of the book, I thought it was important to affirm the originality of the story. On the wild chance it happened to sometimes maybe seem similar to certain people and cats, of course, it must be a coincidence. I used a portion of the painting, “La Bocca della Verità” (The Mouth of Truth, circa 1530) by Lucas Cranach to illustrate my affirmation.
After almost five weeks of writing, making illustrations, waiting for glue to dry and so on, it was time to send the book to the Stick Chair Badge Approval & Distribution Committee at Lost Art Press. I was reluctant and a bit teary-eyed to let it go and thought a proper farewell was in order. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87 fit the bill:
Fairwell! thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou knowest thy estimate. The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; My bonds in thee are all determinate.
Funky Winkerbean kinda looks like the Tasmanian blackwood cat carving.
There are but three days remaining to donate to the Nancy Hiller Ranch Cat Rescue Memorial Fund, and be entered in our raffle to win a gorgeous cover carving from Nancy’s last book, “Shop Tails,” and a copy of the book.
Ten percent of net profits from “Shop Tails” – a tribute to the many four-legged friends (and one feathered friend) whose lives were intertwined with Nancy’s – go to The Ranch Cat Rescue, in Bloomington, Ind., a non-profit run by Alison Zook that is funded solely by donations. To help Nancy’s favorite cat charity just a little more, we’re asking for $5 donations via this PayPal link (while the fundraiser is channeled through my personal account – all donations will of course go to The Ranch Cat Rescue).
Not only are you helping to support Alison’s work in Nancy’s name, with your $5 (or more) donation you’ll also be entered to win one of two fabulous prizes in a random drawing. First prize is the beautiful fiddleback Tasmanian blackwood cat carved by Australian wood artist and teacher Carol Russell for the book jacket. Second prize is the book we used as the art for the audio version of the book (which Nancy performed). The fundraiser runs through March 13; I’ll the announce winners on March 14.
