Meet my assistant

Nothing like a little extra "help" in the pursuit of pottery making. Meet Nips. She found my daughter and I about a year and a half ago. Nips was abandoned by a dumpster in a parking lot. She was so desperate to find someone to care for her that she ran in front of our car to get our attention. Since we are a bird household with two parrots, we weren't really interested in owning a cat but that evening we went looking for her and she came running to my daughter. I am such a sucker for a feathered or a furry face.

Anyway, she's now our house cat (not allowed outside at all) and gets quite bored. One afternoon, while I had my hands full of slip as I was making a pot on the wheel, the cat leaped onto my back and painfully (my pain, not hers) climbed onto my shoulder. She has the sharpest claws I have every had the displeasure to be punctured by. Somehow, in the panic of the situation, her long fury tail made contact with the wet pot as it was rotating. Hence, the wonky rim. You would think that the clay would dry and just flake off her tail fur. Not the case. It was like adobe building mud/clay which becomes quite durable and tenacious with the addition of fibers. Both my pot and kitty's tail got a make-over that day. Nips' tail fur grew back and this pot still needs a glazing.