Julia, R.I.P.

January 5th, 2007

My beloved cat Julia, my constant companion, the small sun I’ve been orbiting for the past eighteen years, died on January 3rd.

I’ve been going through my vast photo archives in order to collect all her pictures in one place. It’s been strange and intense poring over this visual record of my life, sort of like watching a very fast-forwarded video of everything I’ve ever done. I guess the most striking thing is that by far the majority of the photos are work shots—the reference pictures I take of myself posing for drawings. So I’ve been watching not just my real life unfold, but Fun Home evolve, and the DTWOF characters’ lives progress.

But the funny thing about the work photos is that in some of them, Julia just happens to be in the frame. Passing through, or interacting with me, or sleeping.

So I’ve made a little movie of these shots, and posted it on YouTube. I think these incidental images explain better than I possibly could in words the extent to which my life was intertwined with hers, and what a vast, gaping void she’s left.

These photos were all taken between 2002, when I got my digital camera, and 2006. She’s tricky to find in some of them. Actually, not all of them are incidental–there are a few where she’s actually posing for me, or with me. The last shot, strangely enough, is one I took of her when I was working on the strip last fall where Mo’s cat Vanessa dies. There’s no soundtrack on the slideshow, but imagine John Lennon singing Julia as it plays. The last thing I need right now is to be sued by Yoko Ono.