How the cat came to us

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This is a children's nonfiction book about the history of cats and humans. Cats have been our companions for thousands of years. As reliable mousers they were already appreciated in ancient times. One time they were revered as divine, another condemned as demons. They went to sea with us, colonized new continents and fired the imagination of many a poet.

The book takes you on a journey from Neolithic times to the present day across history. It is fascinating how different the relationship between human and cat was, depending on culture and era.

Client: Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim

The process

I wrote, illustrated and designed this book. So before I started, I had a lot of research to do. Next to data and facts I read myths and stories about cats. Every chapter ends with one of those narrations in the form of a one-page picture story.

The illustrations

For some events there were pictures I could orientate myself on like old black and white photographs. Other events were merely described and the illustrated scenes in the book are my own interpretation.