Why is this website called Life and Lions? Good question! The “Life” is the easy part: my blog on different aspects on life, culture and church culture. Now for the Lions.
As a child I grew up reading paperback books of cartoons: Peanuts (“Snoopy”), B.C., The Wizard of Id. Since then I’ve had a love of panel jokes featuring unlikely scenarios and terrible puns. When I started this website, the plan was to have a go at some myself with a cartoon featuring a cast of lions. Two-foot tall lions, to be more exact.
However, that project has yet to get off the ground. Instead, I’ve been working on cartoons featuring other feline friends. Enter Mewlton, the Origami Cat.
Mewlton and “The Hunting of the White Wheel”
During the pandemic an origami cat named Mewlton came to live with me. Since 2020 he has helped me send many, many jokes to a friend of mine. At first, Mewlton stood on the sofa and told me his jokes – which I translated out of cat, wrote out on paper in speech bubbles, and then cut out and photographed. Voila! A simple kind of panel joke.
Over the first three or four months, he acquired a life of his own, getting out and about in my area and frequently coming back with stories of his adventures out on a raft on a nearby pond.
Then there was a day with lightning.
That evening, Mewlton told his joke from under the sofa. He was “saving his bravery for the pond.” But this wasn’t entirely believed…
So I produced an animated short, to give justice to his bravery. It needed to feature the pond and his raft. And some kind of threat. I put together a poem (very) loosely based on the story of Moby Dick. The title needed some sort of pun. Hence the name of Mewlton’s adversary – The White Wheel.
Enjoy!
Life and Lions 