mm, milk and cereal

wikimedia commons [public domain]

This avid kitten made my morning: I was doing a quick search for something with a bit of fire to it, and found this illustration by Boris Artzybasheff. Done for Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak's 1922 book Verotchka's Tales, the piece illustrates "The Story of Little Milk, Little Cereal, and Gray Kitten, Moorka." You may read that tale here at Project Gutenberg.

I can't help but love how Artzybasheff made this creature so sly and so cuddly at the same time. Well, the two are not mutually exclusive. As we all know.