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Meet Blind Kitten Odilia, Win Her Sketch and Support Fostering for Shelters!

Bernadette 54 Comments , , , , , , , ,
"Odilia", pencil, 9" x 6" © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
“Odilia”, pencil, 9″ x 6″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Included in the joy of creating my art is putting my art to use for the good of causes I believe in. Today’s featured artwork is a sketch of a very special kitten, and you have a chance to own this sketch by bidding on it and sending the winning amount as a donation to the shelter she came from.

woman with cat
Connie with Odilia.

At BlogPaws last weekend I had the chance to meet in the flesh fellow bloggers whose blogs I read as well as a few of the animals I’ve read about on those blogs, and I was thrilled to hear little Odilia would be there and to actually meet her and her foster mom, Connie, from Tails from the Foster Kittens.

Odilia was born blind, but like most “special needs” or “differently abled” animals this doesn’t slow down tiny Odilia. You can read more about Odilia in Connie’s post today, but in brief, Odilia is not only blind but she has no eyes at all, was simply born without them. Her sibling had died and her owner felt the mom cat couldn’t take care of Odilia properly, so turned Odilia in alone to the shelter where Connie, as a skilled long-time cat foster, was asked to take the tiny kitten, thought to be only about three weeks old. In Connie’s care Odilia has thrived and bravely explored her world, learning to eat and play like any kitten, and is also quite social and happy to be handled by people.

Wherever Odilia appeared all through the weekend hands were reaching to hold her, and at breakfast on Saturday morning she was not at all bothered by being passed around the table from one person to another. I had a chance to cuddle her, getting my kitten fix for the moment, then she settled on Amy Palmer’s shoulder next to me.

After being able to hold and pet and nuzzle an animal, my next means of expression and communication is to render them creatively in photographs and art, and drawing from life always adds to what I do rather than working from a photo—it’s one of the reasons I sketch my own cats every day—and my hands were itching to draw with all I was taking in. Could I capture this perpetual motion kitten whose little face was so different, and could I sketch in public which I rarely had the chance to do and am not always confident about? Whether or not I could or should I was visualizing her face and fur in pencil, she would be a challenge, but I already had my sketchbook out.

gray kitten
Odilia from today’s post on Tails from the Foster Kittens.

Connie was about to put Odilia into her carrier for a break and I asked for just a couple of minutes, since Odilia had actually slowed down a bit. Odilia gently explored Amy’s face and walked around on her shoulders, occasionally settling back on the shoulder next to me.

Typically when I sketch anything from life part of the way I capture details quickly is from my own knowledge and memory of the subject generally like a type of shorthand, remembering the details of landscapes or cats and kittens I’ve seen before and lightly blocking in an area to be filled with actual detail as I work, at the same time studying the subject at hand for those details.

Sketching subjects different from what I’m accustomed to gives me a chance for a little creative growth, as when I’d sketched hairless Sphynx cat Disco on Friday. Odilia does not have a typical kitten face and I knew this would be a challenge, my brain visualizing one thing, my eyes seeing another as Odilia continued exploring, her tiny face moving to follow noises and scents in the noisy room filled with breakfast smells.

woman with cat
Amy Palmer with Odilia.

I quickly drew a gentle outline of her draped on Amy’s shoulder and her face in a position where I could capture both her delicate kitten self and the details of her uniquely-shaped face, her tiny nose and narrow muzzle, the underbite, and of course the area where her eyes should have been, quite the different experience from sketching the usual kitten.

As I do with most animals when I sketch I used my pencil to return her face to the position I’d chosen, but where I typically only have to wave and move my pencil in front of them to get an animal’s attention, I gently touched Odilia’s nose then moved the pencil slightly away where she could still smell it, and she followed it with interest while I studied her facial details.

After a few minutes I was pleased seeing it would turn out well, and mentioned to Connie that what I often do with my sketches, publicly or privately, is donate the selling price to one of the organizations I know locally by simply having my customer send the amount directly to the organization so they can claim it as a donation, and I’ve also “auctioned” prints on The Creative Cat to increase the selling price with the winning bidder sending their winning bid directly to the organization, and I send them the artwork. She readily agreed to the idea and she and Amy and Lisa Richman of A Tonk’s Tail photographed me working on the sketch and posted about it right then. Love social media!

UPDATE: You can also read posts about Odilia, the sketches and the photographs of me working on Lisa Richman’s blog and Amy Palmer’s blog, Sebastian the Sensitive Soul. I’ve added the photos they took, below!

person sketching and pencil sketch of cat.
Lisa’s collage of me and the sketch.
me sketching
Amy’s photo of me working on my sketch.
person sketching
A closeup of me sketching.

About Odilia’s foster program

On Tails From the Foster Kittens I always enjoy reading about and looking at the photos of the latest litter of kittens or occasional adult cat Connie is fostering for her local shelter, the Animal Welfare Society in Kennebunk Maine, www.animalwelfaresociety.org, an open-door shelter that according to Connie has done an amazing job getting the word out and getting help from the community and as a result they have near no-kill stats, which is very impressive for an open-door shelter. Often the animals who are fostered would have been euthanized because they had illnesses or temperament issues that shelters often don’t have the time, staff and finances to handle on a day-to-day basis.Their lives are saved by the generosity of volunteer fosters like Connie as well as support of a program that covers the costs of the animals while they are in a foster home as well as when they are in shelters.

About Connie

Connie is a 41-year-old married woman who has had a life long love of cats, and is one of many fosters for her local shelter.

“I adopted my first kitty when I was in the second grade on a school field trip to a local farm. I have been volunteering at the shelter for 20+ years and fostering since they started the program in 2002. I went to the first orientation meeting and took my first litter home that night. I take my responsibility to the kittens very seriously, making sure they are not only physically healthy for their journey in life, but also emotionally. Building trust, exposing them to new situations, new foods, and the such. Getting them used to the carrier and traveling as well as being examined and having their claws trimmed all help them be well adjusted cats for their forever homes. The shelter fosters out hundreds of kittens each year and since fostering I have cared for over 320 of them. I have also fostered a number of diabetic and elder cats who need a break from the shelter environment. I am a foster flop eight times over and currently own seven wonderful cats.”

This is a way you can support Connie and her local program and help raise awareness for the importance of fostering for shelters to help save the lives of homeless animals.

Your chance to bid and donate!

How to Bid

  1. Bidding begins May 22, 2013 and continues through midnight EST on May 29, 2013.
  2. The opening bid is $25.00.
  3. In the “comments” section of this post, please enter your bid amount and any message you’d like to include. Only bids entered on this post are valid so that bids may be kept in order of time entered and be made in public where other bidders can see. Bids entered anywhere else, such as on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google+ posts will not be considered valid bids. If by any chance you cannot enter a comment, please e-mail your bid to me and I will enter it into the comments section according to its time stamp so that all bids will remain in order; please only do this if there is no other way to enter your bid.
  4. At midnight on May 29 I will review the comments for the highest bid and inform the winner immediately via e-mail. For this reason, please use your own account to bid so I know who it’s from.
  5. The highest bid is the winner, not the final bid.
  6. The winner will make their payment directly to the Animal Welfare Society in Kennebunk Maine. I will provide the means to send payment to them, and when the shelter has received payment, I will ship the sketch to the winner.

. . . . . . .

Adopt Odilia!

Odilia is up for adoption through her shelter, so if you are interested in living with this sweet, curious and fearless personality, please contact Connie on her blog or contact the Animal Welfare Society in Kennebunk Maine, www.animalwelfaresociety.org.

About Odilia’s name

According to various sources including Wikipedia and information on Catholic saints, Odilia or Odile was born blind and given up by her wealthy father because she was a girl and handicapped, but in the village she was later baptized and miraculously regained her sight, went on to a distinguished career as a nun and miracle worker and is associated with the eyes and vision. In Hebrew her name also means “brave in battle”, which is the sense of the name Connie liked, feeling early on Odilia would have a life-long battle considering not only her blindness but possible health issues being noticeably smaller than usual and having lost a sibling.  In another source the name also means “little flower”, which I like best.

. . . . . . .

Good luck, everyone! Let’s get those paws bidding!

 

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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.

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Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

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