R.I.P. Pat Whitacre

I took this photo at PS 11 in Chelsea a couple of weeks ago; it seems appropriate for this post.

I'm heartbroken today, after learning that animal behaviorist/advocate/friend Pat Whitacre has suddenly passed away. He was an incredible human being who shared his talents and his time with utter selflessness. Over the years, via his work at Best Friends and Pets Alive and beyond, he changed the lives of countless animals and people with his compassion, his kindness, and his almost preternatural wisdom. I only met Pat once, but I'll never forget it because that's the kind of person he was; he left an indelible mark on you, as though you'd just come into contact with someone otherworldly, someone in touch with a higher level of ... something. That's the only way I can describe it, which is probably surprising to those of you who know me as the least spiritual person in the world. It was the day that John and I drove to Pets Alive in Middletown to pick up Mimi and her babies. As we started to leave, I noticed Pat working with Robert, the dog that had been hit by a car and left for dead, only to be rescued by the shelter from the ACC kill list. I had been following Robert's progress online, and was thrilled when Pat invited me to come over and say hello, handing me some treats and showing me how to approach Robert—who might have been partially paralyzed, but still had full control of his sizable jaw. I'd known about Pat for years, ever since one of my best friends wrote an eye-opening story about the rescue work at Best Friends, so for me it was like meeting a celebrity who actually matters. Pat was wearing his trademark safari hat and long bush jacket—and walking away, I laughed to myself that it had been like meeting a plainclothes wizard; a real-life incarnation of Gandalf.

The world has been a terribly sad place lately, as stories of senseless violence and cruelty fill the news and make it almost impossible to have much faith in humanity. Losing Pat makes the world an infinitely sadder place. But like I tried to explain, a soul like that leaves an indelible mark. In his memory, I have hope that many of us will try harder to treat others with a little more kindness and a little more compassion.

Block Shop

Sisters Lily & Hopie Stockman work with native artisans in Bagru, India, to make these scarves for their company, the Block Shop.

Captain Calamity

This ain't no party, and that ain't no party hat: Check out the 6" self-inflicted wound visible on Huddy's tail.

"Even though I did this to myself, I am still the saddest dog in the world."

"IS THAT A SNACK?"

What Do You See?

Although this post might appear incredibly lazy—be it that I can't take the time to write much and so in the spirit of "kids these days" I'm just going to throw some Instagram shots up in here and then get on with the rest of my day, which includes a story deadline and working on the store website and managing a dog with anxiety-induced OCD who has almost chewed off his (guess who?) own tail and therefore is stumbling around the house (boom! crash!) with a cone on his head better fit for an elephant—it's not. I'm thinking about you and wishing you well and hope you like these pictures of Anthropologie's beautiful Rorschach-like window displays at Rockefeller Center. Thanks for coming here to check in and I swear I'll have more to say soon xo

The Little Sisters

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fun and relaxing holiday, and that you're looking forward to a new year filled with health and happiness. I can't believe 2012 has already come and gone, leaving us to consider the resolutions we only just made. Did I keep my promises? Did I try my best? With some things yes, with other things no; but I know that John and I never gave up on our most important goal: working on Sadie's aggression issues. I think this photo—of our Sadie Lou sitting next to my parents' dog, Maggie Mae, over Christmas—says it all. (What these two girls don't know is that they were both rescued from high-kill shelters in the South. Watching them now as they run through the house and play and give kisses feels like kismet.)

Sadie: "I'm embarrassed to admit that I behaved rather badly when we first met. I'm terribly sorry." Maggie: Psychoooo.

So now it's the third day of 2013 and already there is too much to do, so much going on—not least of which is that we've found a retail space for the store and plans are coming together rapidly for an opening in early spring. It's scary and exciting and, above all, an incredible privilege to see one of your life-long dreams begin to come true. (Well, I guess I'm not just sitting around watching it happen; there's a little bit of work involved.) It's also quite funny to see a dream realized, and to compare reality with how you always thought it would be. For example, way back in college, when my friends and I would imagine what we saw ourselves doing, I'd often talk about one day having a shop filled with special, lovely things. Everyone used to tease me that it would have to be called Neutrality and contain only items in an infinite range of beiges and browns, since that's all I used to wear—and decorate with. And although there's nothing wrong with getting down to basics—call it the backdrop, the starting point, the blank canvas—I'm really happy that I've since developed a deep appreciation for the mood-lifting properties of bright colors and cheerful patterns.

A stack of kantha quilts, ready to head into the city to be magically turned into pillow covers by my wonderful seamstress.

In other news, I can say with certainty that John is looking forward to an entire year during which we will not be adopting any more animals ... that walk on four legs and are covered in fur. (Calling all turtles!) There was Alfie in 2010, and Huddy and Sadie in 2011, and now, after much discussion and the possibility of a broken heart (whose? hers? mine?) we've decided that Mimi might as well stick around. Was I the last to know? When we first took her in, I had only the best intentions of the totally temporary variety. But there are so many hundreds of thousands of cats that need homes, and we went through so much with Mimi, that the idea of bringing her back to the shelter just didn't make sense to me. To others, she would be just another cat—and a particularly skittish one at that. Every day, in shelters around the world, people say "I'll take that cat over there; the one I can't get close to because it refuses to be pet or picked up" approximately never. (That would be as likely as people adopting a crazy-ass dog who jumps around like a kangaroo and quacks like a duck and comes as part of a package deal with a compact yet ferocious attack beast ... wait, that did happen.) In our local no-kill shelter, Mimi would be safe, but she wouldn't stand much of a chance of finding a forever home. Besides, we gave her a nickname. She is our little Peanut. That's 2012, done.

I love nothing more than finding Mimi snuggled up warm and cozy, especially when it's so brutally cold outside. She deserves it.

ABC Carpet & Home Warehouse Sale

Strong Feelings

Jelly, how do you feel about radio DJs who make prank phone calls for a living?

Reading Between the Sheets

This is just a quick comment on what has to be one of the most inane essays/rants I've read in recent memory. Written by Lauren Sandler for New York magazine, the piece is entitled No Sex Please—We're Domestic Goddesses and the down and dirty point she's attempting to make is that women who have lifestyle-oriented blogs featuring only pretty pictures of carefully made beds, designer floor pillows, and luscious homemade cherry pies are both sexless and setting women's sexual liberation back a decade or six.

Sexual awakening: Even in this shot of our unmade Friday-morning bed, it looks like I've automatically fluffed my pillows.

The whole thing is based on such an absurd premise—that in order to faithfully represent one's life online, one must share every intimate, imperfect detail—that it's surprising this thing ever made it past the first pitch. In reading it, one wonders not about the hidden meaning of a tidy room—you organized, repressed prudes!—but instead, what in the hell is missing from the writer's own life, that she visits design and cooking blogs in the hopes of catching ... what exactly? A tantalizingly tight shot of a pair of worn undies crumpled on the floor? (Laundry hampers are practical, not shame containers.) A pervy pic of the blogger getting frisky with the gardener? Why stop there, when nothing is too raw for our friendly voyeur. Please bring your Canon to the toilet, and in the event of sudden illness, don't forget your Nikon. "But the blogosphere is about intimacy, not international market share; memoir, not magnates," she writes; a confusing point, since the blogosphere is about everything, not least of which is a phenomenon known as the awkward over-share. Intimacy comes in many forms, and no single blog can be expected to cover every last detail of the writer's life—it's called passion, interest, focus. I happen to focus on interior design, on art, on pets; I'm as interested in incorporating a sex diary into my blog as I am in launching a weekly automotive column. And I like fast cars, Lauren. I really do. I just don't feel like I need to prove that to you. Now. Let's look at my sexy cats.

Do you have any idea how long I had to wait to get all four cats into one shot? That's time I could have spent being seductive.

The sad truth about this photo of Alfie is that the bed is unmade—but I've cropped it to hide my celibacy, I mean, my laziness.

Sometimes I clumsily Photoshop the boogers out of my cats' eyes before I post photos of them. Does that mean I'm frigid? Yes!

Give It Another Coat

With all this talk of merchandising and paint fumes, I felt inspired to update an antique cabinet my mom and I found in Brimfield earlier this year, with the idea of eventually using it in the store once we find a space. Painted a glossy grey, only once it was delivered did I realize that the story I was told—a lovely old couple had brought it directly to the dealer during the show, because they wanted to free up space in a spare bedroom—had been an outrageous lie. More likely it had been locked away in a deep, dark dungeon for decades, used to store weapons or perhaps vials of poison. How else to explain the deep gauges and the odd bubbly texture of the paint? Or perhaps it was inexplicably kept in the middle of a forest, where woodland creatures clawed at its doors and slept on its storage shelves. This thing had been beat up, and one way or another, it had absorbed an ungodly amount of dirt. It was beyond needing a good clean, so after washing it down a few times, I pulled out the paint rollers. I also asked John to remove the inner panels of the doors, which were totally dried out and splitting. Four coats later, it looks like an entirely new piece of furniture; the dings and scrapes and imperfections still evident, but uniformly covered in a fresh coat of white paint.

Here is the cabinet in its original grey color, revealing a faded yellow coat underneath—not to mention a variety of locking devices.

I love the large, ornate handles on the bottom drawer, which I'll need to strip at some point to reveal their original metal.

This is the bubbling I was referring to, which covers an entire side of the cabinet. I tried to sand it down as much as possible...

A taste (no thanks!) of the amount of grime still coming out of the wood after 20 minutes of scrubbing with sudsy warm water.

John attacked the front doors of the cabinet with a hacksaw—and the passion of someone born to refurbish old shit.

Two coats in, and my plan is starting to come together. I used three coats of flat white paint, and finished it with a coat of satin.

I tried every which way to shoot the finished cabinet, but the backlighting was too tricky for my limited skills—hope this is clear.

These guys have bulbous bellies from when they used to gorge on cigarette ash, though now they prefer cleaner diets.

Who knew that one day your grandma's old stoneware jars would be so coveted. Seriously, does she still have them? Call me...

Portraits with Marc

I love all the "portraits with Santa"–style photos used to create the holiday window display at Marc by Marc Jacobs in the West Village—in this case, featuring a snowmobile pulling Santa's sleigh, all courtesy of Bring Into Being. And the best part is that so many people brought their cute dogs to have their photos taken. I'm so jealous! Ok, it's settled; one or more of our animals is going to be wearing antlers really soon...

Robshaw in the City

Things have been getting a little intense around here, with my focusing more on animal issues than design. Nothing wrong with that, I can't be expected to continue painting rooms ad infinitum. Think of the fumes! My lungs wouldn't survive it—and they're already playing with less than a full deck thanks to my years as an enthusiastic smoker. But I digress. Let's do something a little designy today and soak up the beautiful blues (and art and textiles and furnishings) that John Robshaw chose for his apartment on the Lower East Side.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by William Waldron for Elle Decor.

Photo by Wiliam Waldron for Elle Decor.