The majority of these cats began their lives as strays, but all have found their forever homes with distilleries.
Catching a glimpse of the local celeb-kit-ty has become a standard on a visitor’s to-do list. These days they will also welcome tour groups, pose for photos, and some even become inspiration for gift shop merch. In his book, Parsons’ notes that the role of these distillery cats has evolved beyond a lowly mousetrap kitties earning their keep have also become full-fledged members of the hospitality team. Distillery Cats: Profiles in Courage of the World’s Most Spirited Mousers, by Brad Thomas Parsons. The authority on this four-legged subject is Brad Thomas Parsons, and his book Distillery Cats: Profiles in Courage of the World’s Most Spirited Mousers, catalogues kittens from around the world working hard in distilleries and breweries alike. The cats snatch up the mice (or birds-anything smaller than they are, really) drawn to these stockpiles of snack food, building a mutually beneficial relationship that still exists today.Īnd because these perfect pest control pets have been around for centuries, we’re not the first to write about them. Brewers and distillers throughout history have kept large amounts of grain on hand, and have welcomed cats as natural rodent repellent. Though you may have only recently seen their celebrity grow in the form of instagram accounts, these workforce felines are by no means a new phenomenon. The whiskey world is always quick to recognize the contributions of its master distillers, but today we’re recognizing an equally loyal, omnipresent force in whiskey making: the distillery cat. It is a black and white hardcover counting 80 pages and retails for €16,95.Sugar Maple surveys her kingdom at Nelson's Greenbriar Distillery, where she's affectionately known as "The Queen." Credit on Instagram. Sugar by Serge Baecken is published in Dutch by Blloan and in French by Dargaud. Though published in January, Sugar is already on its second printing and comes highly recommended! The reader can lay back, enjoy the ride and marvel at the stunning and inventive applications writer and artist Serge Baecken comes up with. This love is translated into a magnificent exploration of the 24-panel grid forming a gateway for the space and time experience of a cat. Drawn in glorious black and white, Serge Baecken explores the life of cats with a keen eye and clear love for his subjects. I can’t emphasize enough how stunning this OGN looks in terms of storytelling. Luckily we can stop our reading process and marvel over the way Baecken plays with chronology and location. As a reader, you try to keep up with the intuitive senses of these cheetahs put down on the page as Baecken conveys space and time in this innovative approach. The 24-panel grid is used in such a way that we get a feel for the sharp instincts of cats, often intersecting multiple panels in a big panel, overlayed with a lot of smaller panels. In order to tell the story of all these felines, Baecken often lowers the point of view of the camera and comes to a dynamic point of view where the camera tracks all the tomcats while they are making a mess of things, nag for food, lounge about and go on their everlasting insect hunts. Though Sugar is not the only cat present, he does get most of the pages devoted of the many cats Baecken has owned, who have colourful names like Tim, Jeff, Milk, Igor, Maya, Pogo and Rikki. What you get on the page is a veritable tour de force graphic novel. Sugar analyses the life of his cat, the titular Sugar, down to the smallest detail in a 24-panel grid – yes, you have read that right: a 24-panel grid – and does not deviate once from this template. Apart from comics, he does illustration work for a variety of serious magazines and Sugar is his second graphic novel in nine years. Having been on the comics scene for over 30 years, Serge Baecken is known as one of the hardest working creators in the Belgian comics scene, obsessed by the directness of his linework and a perfectionist up to the smallest detail (the published edition is actually the third version redrawn entirely). It’s turning out to be quite a good year for Belgian comics, March has just started and already we have seen the psychedelic paintings of Dieter VDO in Snow and the highly graphical architectural approach of Pieter Rosseel in Stumbling and now there’s Serge Baecken’s Sugar. Belgian graphic talent Serge Baecken puts down a a stunning graphic novel that is as much experiment as a melancholic ode to his cat Sugar, published simultaneously in French and Dutch.
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