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The painter with two kittens on his shoulders
Caleb paints for a living in Sorano, Italy. He came home one day with Cici and Nunu, two kittens soaked through in the rain after their mother moved on without them. more
For the first stretch they mostly slept. Slowly they came back to health, and within a few days both had their energy back and were tearing around the house.
They were terrified of him for the first two days, and then they were not. From then on, as far as the kittens were concerned, Caleb was their mother. They rode on his shoulder and curled up under his neck, and they even nursed on his chest. "My mothering instincts kicked in," he says.
He often paints out on location, and the kittens didn't want to be left alone. So he started taking them along, to a new part of town for each painting, so they could get to know Sorano.
People always asked if he was afraid they would run off. They never did. While he painted, Cici and Nunu explored, never more than two meters from him, and more often than not they ended up back in his lap. They were like his sidekicks, he says.
SaveSometimes he set them down on the street and followed them, trying to see the world through their eyes. It never got far. They kept looking back at him, he says, as if to ask, "You're the leader. Where are we going?" So up they went onto his shoulders, and around town he soon became known as the crazy one with the kittens on his shoulder.
Like a lot of animals, he says, the kittens give him "this lightness of life." They see the small details a person misses or takes for granted. Some days he would rather play with them than paint. The canvas can wait, and Cici and Nunu are two meters away at most.
