The girl I married, Mami, loves cats, so it was inevitable that I made lots of etchings of her cats. In the early years of Two Bad Mice Sleeping Tom, above, was our top selling card.

In the 1980s, when I was selling my etchings at Covent Garden, we owned an Abyssinian (Perdita), Somali (Jocasta) and Manx cat (Taro). We chose the Abyssinian because of its elegant stature, and it made a good model for my drawing exercises.