Found Out!

Back in 1992 when I was a high school senior, a friend of mine and I were asked to work on a mural for our high school’s cafeteria. Other students were to help us, but we were the only two Honors Art 4 students, so the main bulk of the project fell on us. We were told that we had carte blanche for the design — it was all up to us as long as it was cafeteria appropriate.

By the time that the principal had completely rejected all of our ideas, it became obvious that he had something in mind and that we were going to paint his vision.

So we did.

We did a retrospective of art from the very beginnings of human history. We started with cave drawings and worked all the way to modern pop art. It was decidedly boring to paint. There was no creativity required of us. We simply copied the works of other people. 

We were not at all happy until my friend hid a dead cat under the wheel of the painting of a ’57 Chevy…and no one saw it.

We waited a day or two before I put a dead cat on the side of an ancient Greek vase.

After that, it was off to the races. We put them everywhere. There was a dead cat in the Mona Lisa’s hair and as the Emperor Constantine’s eyebrow. We hid one on the platter in front of Jesus at the Last Supper and another behind one of the faces on Easter Island. In all, there were 143 dead cats in that mural.

It was unveiled in front of the school to great praise, and no one had noticed what we had done.

Until last week.

My nerdy art friend sent me an email last week that simply said “They found one.”

I cackled with joy over the remembered degeneracy of our youth.

Apparently it was a big stink over what to do about that one dead cat in the mural. The new art teacher had decided to simply match the paint and cover it up, but as she scaled the ladder she came face to face with 3 more deceased felines….and she started to laugh.

The people in charge have decided to leave it alone. They have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the cleverness of my friend and I in hiding those cats in the picture. They’ve decided to let the future students think they have discovered a great secret in finding “all eight” of them.

I wish them luck in that. I hope even more that someday someone will look close enough to find the other 135.

The “Dead Cat” Mural