Essence of Cat « The Braid

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Essence of Cat

October 30, 2008 by Leyla Torres

Origami USA posted on its website a gallery with beautiful pictures of origami models published in calendars of 2005 and 2006. Scanning through the gallery, a photo of a cat created by Hiroaki Takai (Japan) caught my attention. I loved the simple, elegant lines of this model, which evokes the essence of a cat with such few folds.

I immediately set out to fold this cat and was intent on achieving it just by looking at the photograph. But I decided to try my luck first and search for the diagrams on the Internet.

A beautiful origami cat is not found every day, and much less the instructions to fold it, but to my good fortune, I found the diagrams for Hiroaki Takai’s cat. Takai’s original cat is the yellow one, folded from a ratio 2:3 rectangle. The black cat is my variation, folded from a 1:2 rectangle.

My choice of paper color honors my niece’s cats, which are having a birthday these days. The male cat, Tjap, is yellow, and the female cat, Tjoy, is black.

Posted in family stories, origami, origami diagrams, personal | 3 Comments

3 Responses

on February 22, 2009 at 9:09 am | Reply Kike

Oh… those are extremely beautiful… hi from Mexico… i wonder… might it be too much to ask u for a diagram of your variation of the black cat? im not so skilled with origami, but id like to try to do a couple of cats like yours… and that combination of the lying and the sit cats, is just great…

hope so… and again, beautiful!
on July 24, 2009 at 2:58 am | Reply Suzie

I’m volunteering to make centerpieces for a charity event benefiting a cat rescue non-profit (www.duncansplace.org). Would you be willing to give me directions on your upright version, so I can make it for this Oct 2009 event?
- on July 24, 2009 at 9:12 am | Reply Leyla Torres
  
  Hi Suzie,
  
  Thank you for visiting my blog. About the upright cat… I’m sorry I do not have diagrams or instructions to share. All I can tell you is that I used paper whose proportions were 1 unit by 2 units (for example: six inches by twelve inches) and swiveled the head in a way that the rest of the body could be set in a vertical position.
  I’m not too happy about the tail, and I feel I need to work on it a little more to be worth diagramming it… I think this is a cat still in process… I recommend you play with how its head can be moved. By doing this, you can arrive at an upright cat with no tail, but still effecltive. As for paper, I have been successful using Canson paper.
  
  Good luck,
  
  Leyla