Chicken and Tuna in Sticker Form

We are carrying Chicken and Tuna face stickers! What a world we live in.

As someone who runs a stationery shop, and therefore attracts all sorts of interesting stationery people, and who also has a public mailing address (i.e. the shop), we get great mail. I sometimes think we must get better mail than other small businesses because our customers are into writing by hand and on paper and that, of course, is what mail tends to be, but really it’s because pen people are community people, and we all sort of cling together in the sea of technology.*

The other day, someone—Kat Trovato—mailed us some portraits she had painted of our two shop cats, Chicken and Tuna. My goodness, what fun still exists in this world. I love these portraits! They were so delightful to receive and open and ponder. They capture our cats so well: Tuna, so goofy and endearing and a bit dumb (but actually he’s very smart), and Chicken, so displeased and unimpressed and long-suffering.

And it turns out Kat is multi-talented, not only a painter of pet portraits, but also someone who can turn these pet portraits into stickers. And she agreed to make some for us to carry in the shop! I am so delighted.

The stickers are semi-translucent, and sort of washi-paperish, perfect for journaling, snail mail, little notes or decorating, and in various sizes so Chicken can glare at you in tiny form or at large.

If you are interested in getting your own pet portrait, you see all of Kat’s work and reach out to her on her Instagram @kat.t.illustrations. She is so great to work with, and her portraits would also make thoughtful gifts for anyone in your life who has a pet.

***

What a wild and twisty and unexpected journey this has been, opening a shop that sells fountain pens, moving around the city, bringing home a cat (Chicken) to catch mice (he caught none), living through a pandemic, adopting a stray, terminally ill cat (Tuna), and now selling stickers of their faces. Who would’ve thought that this is where I’d be when I quit my extremely stable public school board teaching position with great health insurance?

*I mean, I guess most people are swimming just fine, I’m clinging and thrashing and silently drowning.