evilstrawberry chronicles

I love cats and dogs. I cannot say that I am a cat or a dog person because I love them both equally. After we moved to Belgium and it was certain that we were more or less settled, I told Bas I wanted to get a cat. At first he was not very enthusiastic but later he came around and we decided to adopt a kitten from a shelter. On June 2009, I went to the animal shelter in Schoten ( dierenasiel schoten ). I knew what I wanted: a female cat, preferably a calico. Once I got into the shelter a nice lady took me to in and led me to the "kitten room". As you can guess, it was full of kittens! All sizes, all colors, I felt like I was in a wonderland, I wanted to take them all home! One of them started purring immediately and started climbing up my leg but it did not look anything like the cat in my mind. First of all, it was a tiger, but not exactly a tiger either because it was also black and had white spots as well! It was also a "he" and not a "she".That moment

I spent my childhood in Turkey in the early 80's and by then children's books were not so many in number. Luckily I had a nice library of books since I had an elder sister, and my parents never said no when I asked for a new book. I loved books, the illustrated books and comics the most. I used to read my favorites over and over and some illustrations and images would stuck with me forever. Luce Lagarde's illustrations are some of them. By then I did not know Lagarde's name (also the publishers of those days usually did not include the name of the illustrators of foreign translations) but I had several fairy tales collections illustrated by her. They were small books as I recall and the printing quality was very poor but I loved them. I remember holding those books very close to my nose and trying to dive into their world. I never ever forgot them. Years later, as my interest in children's books illustration intensified following my art education I set out to col