If you’ve ever loved a cat, you’ll know about the magic. Not the fluffy, wholesome kind — though there’s plenty of that too. I mean the other kind. The kind where your cat does something completely unreasonable, entirely inconvenient, possibly a little rude, and you find yourself smiling anyway. Fetching the specific blanket. Moving so they can have the warm spot. Filling the bowl you know perfectly well they’re going to ignore.
You do it happily. Willingly. With genuine affection as if under a spell. Which, if you think about it, is slightly suspicious.
I’ve concluded it’s black magic. Benevolent black magic, cast by creatures so soft and so absurd and so inexplicably wonderful that resistance simply isn’t an option. My two ragdolls, Felix and Sia, have had me completely under their spell since the moment each of them arrived.
I have absolutely no complaints.
It started with a fridge magnet
I’ve always been a painter and drawer. Art was a big part of my life when I was younger, but like a lot of people, I’d drifted away from it over the years — other things took over, the sketchbooks gathered dust, and that part of me went quiet for a while.
Then we got Sia.
I started making little fridge magnets for family members — funny festive scenes with Sia as the star, put together in Photoshop. They made people laugh, and something about seeing that response lit something back up in me. But more than that, the process of making them made me want to go further. I wanted to draw her. To make real art with her in it, not just photos I’d edited.
That feeling — of picking up a creative tool and thinking yes, this is it, this is me— was something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Looking back, Sia was what brought me back to art. And art, it turned out, was the road that had been waiting for me all along.
From Christmas cards to a small business
When Felix arrived — our second ragdoll — I had twice the inspiration and twice the personality to work with. They couldn’t be more different. Felix carries himself with the absolute certainty of someone who has never once doubted his own importance. He will demand food with great urgency, watch you fill his bowl with intense focus, and then… he looks like I completely missed the point or walks away. The food was never really the point. The demand was the point. The acknowledgment of his authority was the point. You’ll notice, if you look closely at his birthday card a little further below, that this maps perfectly.
Sia operates differently — moodier, sassier, deeply committed to her own logic. She will choose a spot that makes no sense to anyone but her and occupy it with complete conviction. She is also smart and knows exactly how to charm us into doing pretty much anything she wants.
I was completely under their spell and wanted to draw them constantly.
My first greeting cards were Christmas themed, which made sense — that’s when I’d always shared my illustrations with family. My first year on Etsy I sold exclusively around the holidays, simply because I didn’t have anything else yet. Then I got more strategic: adding a Mother’s Day, a graduation, a summer holiday and a few Halloween design. The range grew, and so did my little community of cat-loving customers.
But Christmas remained my strongest season, and I kept returning to the same question: how do I create something that sells all year round? Something people would come back for? Birthday cards were the obvious answer. But my first few ideas felt too safe. Too generic. Nothing that felt like me. So I did what I usually do — I let it sit. Kept drawing other things, let the idea marinate quietly, and trusted that something would arrive eventually.
Felix’s commandments
We have a wonderful petsitter called Louisa who looks after Felix and Sia when we travel. Felix, being Felix, requires a fairly detailed handover. His demands update regularly — new preferences about his bowl, new rules about what he’s willing to eat and how, new expectations about the precise timing of his morning routine.
One day, mentally listing everything I needed to tell Louisa, it struck me: these aren’t just quirks. These are commandments. Felix’s commandments. Non-negotiable. Handed down. To be followed without question or delay.
And just like that, the birthday card range that had been quietly marinating found its theme.
The Ragdoll Birthday Commandments. A series of birthday cards, each one a decree that your cat would absolutely, unquestionably enforce on your special day.
Meet the cast
Card no. 1 features Felix — regal, surrounded by an enormous pile of gifts, attended by his little mouse servants, wearing a tiny crown. “You’ll accept all gifts as if it was your divine right. Even if you don’t want them.” Which is, of course, exactly how Felix approaches food, treats, attention, and most things in life. The wanting isn’t really about the having. It’s about the principle.
Cards no. 2 stars Sia dramatically flopped across a giant birthday balloon because she has decided that is where she belongs today. She also features on card no. 3, lounging in a bathtub full of bubbly champagne, demanding refills without judgement and delay — a commandment that feels, I’ll admit, quite specifically British, and very relatable at a birthday.
The mice appear throughout as royal attendants. I’ve always loved them as a supporting cast — I grew up watching Tom and Jerry, and there’s something about a tiny mouse going about very important business that makes me smile. They’ve found their way into many of my cards over the years, and the Commandments series gave them their finest roles yet.
Each card carries a small numbered wax seal — I, II, III — because from the very beginning I knew this was a series. Something collectable. Something to gather over time. They are illustrated front and back and also have funny little poems inside for maximum delight! 🙂 You can see more details in the trailers for the cards here: Commandment I, Commandment II, Commandment III.
Cards that feel like your cat
What I didn’t fully anticipate was the response. The messages from people who felt like these cards had been made for them personally.
“Your Sia looks like my Zara who has a wee tiny bowtie on her upper lip and her chin is white. She too is mitted. Will definitely order more!”
“The cats on the card are just like ours, even down to their expressions, so I just had to get this.”
“The expressions on the cats are probably the best that I have ever seen on a card.”
One message made me laugh out loud — a customer who discovered that she and her husband had independently found my shop and bought cards for each other without knowing. Both of them had clearly thought yes, this is the one. Some customers send me photos of their own cats after they receive my cards. Birmans, Himalayans, ragdolls of every colour and marking. There’s something wonderful about that — the idea that a drawing of my Felix or Sia can make someone across the world feel completely seen.
What’s coming next
Card IV is almost finished, and for the first time it won’t feature Felix or Sia. I want this series to feel like it belongs to ragdoll owners everywhere. The next card introduces a bicolour seal ragdoll — and after that, blue point, blue bicolour, and eventually a tortie too.
Because every ragdoll has their own particular magic. Their own flavour of charm that makes you want to lean into every quirk, every demand, every inexplicable rule they’ve decided applies to you. You’re not obliging them under duress. You’re doing it because somehow, impossibly, it’s a genuine pleasure.
That’s the spell. And most of us signed up for it the moment we looked into those blue eyes.
The Ragdoll Birthday Commandments series is available in my shop and on Etsy — and if your cat has issued a commandment I haven’t illustrated yet, I’d love to hear it. I’m planning ten commandments in total so I might even use it! 😉
