I'm still rating this as "general" because it's just animal nursing.

This was an emotional thing to draw, between me and  Furelyse. I love her so much. (In the absence of any conclusion as to what I, as a cat, looked like, we sorta decided I was probably a calico. It's my personality: I try to seduce my way out of trouble. And the poppies are from her namesake's illustration.)

My adoptive raccoon sister and I reasoned that, odds were, before we found each other again in the furry community, at some point (probably dozens, if not hundreds, of raccoon and cat generations ago), if we were sisters, and she doesn't recall a cat mom... what if it was the other way around? If I was the missing orphan kitten found by a raccoon with a great and good (Ozmatic) maternal instinct, and raised among her kits? Raccoon kits die of all sorts of things, so I probably filled a space someone vacated. And just imagining/remembering a kithood of the two of us rambling off on our own, goading each other on, getting into sticky situations, before growing up and sauntering off to find mates...

A while ago, we tried to remember, way back in the "before" times, what our mom was like. I've only seen her, in dreams, once. Still, that dream was emotionally very powerful... hearing an adoptive raccoon mom tell me she always felt I was too smart for my own good, and the grandkits I'd give her, and the little lullaby she hummed. (I painted this before that dream, though, and it looks so little like her. I couldn't draw her justice. I couldn't draw the waves of concern and care she radiated. Forest love. The kind that loves even what you kill for food, that acknowledges death and acknowledges making children. I couldn't paint that for at least five years.)

Interestingly, she really was only about as "intelligent," for lack of a better word, as a raccoon in real life, but I could still parse her languages. Maybe she thought her daughters were intimidatingly smart, but her oddly matte black eyes contained multitudes. (I wish I remembered her name. She told me, and I remember it meant "matte." The raccoon language she spoke in was made mostly of textures, and the way objects respond to both light and touch. It was a great compliment, that an occasional hunter's eyes were black in the night. And her name meant "matte" like her eyes. But I have no idea how to pronounce it. I'd give my claws to speak the language fluently, get close to my adoptive roots.)

It may only be, in some respects, a play-world, but like Puddleglum says, two kids and a marshwiggle can make a play world that beats your real world hollow. (Just because Narnia turned out to be real doesn't make him wrong.)

Also, today I had a haircut, and told my longtime hairdresser about all this cat and raccoon and therian and tulpa stuff, and he was just shaking his head in amazement. He apologized for not having the words, but he... he believed every word. Or at least believed that I believed, which is as much as you can hope for. This stuff is so hard to summarize. But it means so much. And for all the value of play and imagination, it makes me sob. Which is something I needed. Which means it's working.

Maternal philoprogenitiveness is the mainspring of the universe. It can even surpass "likely not even being a real person." Welcome to the wonder that is kin life.

Drawn in Michigan while I was emotional and cleaning out old kitchen drawers of all the dried-up sharpies. This is the cardboard on the back of a notepad, about three by four inches or so - I brushed water over dry sharpie in layer after layer to get the texture of the fur. I think there's like five layers of blue and red and green making up the purple back. It looks way better in person, and if anybody comes up to me at MFF this weekend and asks, I'll show them. Just like mom: It's Matte.