Homeless in Vancouver: The cat lies down off Broadway

Yesterday I saw another version of the stencil graffiti of the Cat on a Pedestal, this time in on the edge of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

I was making the first leg of my journey westwards from the bottle depot through the alley on the north side of West Broadway. It was in that lane, west of Columbia Street, that I saw the cat. I’m quite sure it wasn’t there even a few days ago.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat (stencil)

Last September, I posted about the cat’s appearance on a low concrete property wall in Fairview, in the lane on the east side of South Granville Street, between 10th and 11th Avenue. It’s still there. It’s been tagged around but not over.

My friend the Green Guy watched it go down on the wall and explained how the guy brushed on the white paint. Then he applied the stencil of the cat in gold metallic spray paint and finally lined the pedestal with a black marker.

The Green Guy told me the whole thing had been pretty sloppy. But he didn’t tell me before I’d posted a supposed deconstruction of the process all involving spray paint—who uses brushes to tag?

This new version in Mount Pleasant features a shorter pedestal but the cat is probably the same height off the ground because the artist has chosen to begin his stencil above the level of the worst black grime along the bottom of the wall. (I like the way stencil artists “ground” their street art.) The white is again brushed on but this time the black chisel marker line work didn’t come off so well because the white paint was obviously still wet.

On each of the stencils there’s a little “I ♥ statement” in black marker. Aww, that’s cute. 

Click the images to enlarge them.