Rather than follow my normal formula of telling these cats’ stories and then going into the artistic inspirations behind this piece, I’m just going to have the briefest summary of Faith and instead link to this article on the website Purr-n-Fur. It’s a much better story than I could ever write, and made me cry multiple times the first time I read it. I highly recommend reading it.
The tl:dr if you didn’t want to commit to the article is this: Faith was a stray adopted by the rector of St. Augustine and St. Faith’s Church on Watling Street in London in 1936. In 1940, shortly after having her kitten Panda, she suddenly decided to live in the basement. A few days later while the rector was out, the church was nearly completely destroyed during a German Blitz attack. The rector found her safe and sound, sheltering her kitten in the basement while the church lay in flaming shambles around them. She was awarded an honorary PDSA Dickin Medal for her courage, and when she died at the age of 14 she was buried by the church gates.
This piece had to sit on the back burner for me, which tends to happen when a story hits me especially hard. I knew this was going to be a pair with Simon, so I decided to do his first. Even then, I had to stew for another few months before I could tackle it. Originally I was going to borrow architectural designs from St. Paul’s Cathedral since St. Augustine and St. Faith’s was designed by the same architect. I just couldn’t figure out how to make those grand, classical elements match with Simon’s much more modern composition. I pivoted to making more of a mirror of Simon’s asymmetry and used a warm color palette as a compliment to his cool. The motifs and linework are inspired by wrought iron gates referencing where her final resting place, and the church bell tower stands on the right, the only part of the church that survived the bombing. I don’t know what her medal looked like, but it was described as “a special silver medal”, so I edited Simon’s to reflect that. There are so many small heroes that gave people hope during World War II, many of them close to forgotten. I love that Faith was just the pet of a church rector, but she became a symbol of hope and courage to the Allied nations. I hope this piece does her justice.
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