I wish that the garden center would stop carrying so many cute concrete statues. This is what I came home with this time:

An angry little bird… a cute little kitten…

Another sleeping kitten…

And a cat in mid-stretch.

Typically what happens is the statues speak to me and let me know what colors they are meant to be painted. The bird was an easy one.

With the peak of feathers on the top I knew it had to be a cardinal. I actually bought this to paint and donate to our church as an item for the chinese auction that will be held during our summer festival. The same goes for the sleeping kitten:

I decided that he needed to be a little tuxedo kitten. Except, after I did the initial painting I thought it was looking more like a Holstein cow rather than a tuxedo cat.

Looking like a Holstein or not, I think he’s adorable.

What do you think? Think they’ll get a lot of bids?

I know that I’m going to paint the sitting-up kitten like a Siamese, so I’m holding off painting him. Instead I’ve been trying to concentrate on the stretching cat. He’s been a very difficult piece for me to finish. A big part of it is that I don’t have the talent or skill to do any kind of complicated painting. So, this is what I came up with:

I told you, I’m not very good at this. Jay just wanted me to get it painted because it unnerved him to walk by it and see the gray tongue.

I thought about painting it all black, but decided that I really didn’t want a scary-looking cat. I suppose I could have painted it all white, but I have another cat statue that I’m going to paint all white. I like having a little bit of variety in my cat garden statues.

I can’t buy any more of these, though. I’m going to run out of places to display them in the summer! I don’t like to have cluttered flower beds, so I’m not going to put a ton of these around. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now!