Cats are incredibly iconic. They are cute, mysterious, devious little creatures. I love cats. Characters and iconography relating to cats are very comforting to me.
I often find myself wanting to draw very simple little people. Like the ones you see on bathroom signage or like stick figures in kids drawings. I find cats are great for this, because you can put pointy ears on any simple figure and it becomes even better than a regular little guy. It becomes something like a cat. It doesn't take much to resemble a cat.
Of course, these aren't cats. They barely resemble cats other than their ears, whiskers, and tails. Even the weird little popcorn paws don't immediately invoke images of a cat. They're really more like my cat-homunculi. Representations of little animal people. Sometimes they represent my own thoughts, feelings or experiences, and other times they just exist on their own.
where did they come from?
This way of drawing cats actually did stem from an attempt to make a cat persona (above). This is why I often still represent myself this way, especially with an apple on the head. Usually the design is more simplified than this.
After this inital design, though, I found that I liked this style of drawing cat-people. Very simple, very easy, quite stylized and amorphous. I made a character, Ruby, who you can see in my personal portfolio. Instead of an apple, Ruby has a cherry on her head. Her cap obscures it here, but it's visible in another drawing. Unlike the cats I've drawn previously, the cherry doesn't come off.
Later, I expanded this idea of cats with fruits on their heads to create a fictional genus/species. This is also in my personal portfolio. These are not cats at all, not even animals, but fungi. This also explains the weird design features not seen in either cats nor humans.
Confusingly enough, this does not mean that all cats in this style are of this fictional genus. It also does not mean that any that aren't in the genus are a representation of me. These cats are not tied to any single identity. They share souls with each other and with the wider world. My little homunculi. :-)
