One of the most important roles any apprentice Studio Cat should learn is how to catch gifts to sneak into the gallery to fill the artist's life with surprises. I showed I was ready to be allowed outside to begin this element of my training and at six months was allowed into the home studio garden. My owner was delighted to have a garden after years of living in shared terrace houses or flats, and had planted her garden with plants she would enjoy drawing and painting. I helped her in this by digging, pouncing on plants to flatten them, and sitting in flowerbeds. Not soon after, I began bringing caterpillars and worms back to the studio as welcome gifts to fill the artist's shoes. At the time, my owner-artist was living in a state of ignorant bliss, believing herself to live in a mouse-free home studio. She decided to try collage, and as she was interested in Japanese art, bought some washi papers to include in her work. She had been given some Chinese brushes by her sister (which are great for chewing on), and decided to learn a little about both Japanese and Chinese brush painting, feeling it might be a new aspect of watercolour painting to explore. She created a series of brush paintings inspired by me, and became really interested in the idea of very simple, deliberate strokes of paint and the use of the brush to create light and dark within one movement. My owner was unsure about collage, and got a bit confused about whether the elements should be cut or torn, applied before or after the colour, and whether they should merge or be separate from ink or paint. So she did some workshops, and while she was out I shredded some of her paper to show her the easy way to do it. She came back energised and relaxed from the workshops, and after several of them realised there is no right or wrong way and that every collage artist seems to have a slightly different technique. My owner created a series of brush paintings, some with collage, and her work was often inspired by my beauty in the garden, and she created a series of images of me with mice for Valentine's day. She also experimented with using brush pens, and produced some pictures which were a great experiment....many of these have now faded so we have learnt that with brush pens it is important to check if they are light-fast. Not long after, I grew so quickly that I progressed to bringing mice to fill my owner's shoes or leave at the bottom of the stairs. It became clear that the home studio was in fact, a mice haven and she just hadn't known it. I have become so good at my job that mice don't even attempt to come near the studio now, so the only animal chewing on the expensive watercolour paper is me!