Ekphrastic April 2019, Day 13: "Cat Hiding in a Laundry Pile"

Millions of Cats is one of my all-time-favorite picture books. I remember it from my childhood and these lines will always be accessible to my aging brain: "Hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats." Today I have a pen and ink sketch by Millions of Cats author/illustrator, Wanda Gág.

"Cat Hiding in a Laundry Pile" (date unknown) by Wanda Gág [1893-1946].

clean laundry

the smell of wind and
sun in oft-washed fabric

the sharpness of fresh folds
too tempting to a cat who
lives to distract her owner

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

The artist uses an abundance of curves--it provides a comfy feeling in the viewer, don't you think?


A cherita is a haiku-like poem of three stanzas that tells a "story." The first stanza is one line and sets the scene. Stanza two is two lines, stanza three is three lines. A cherita terbalik is a cherita with the order of the stanzas rearranged.