PORTRAITS for PAWS

Willamette Primary School first-graders painted portraits of

By Kara Hansen

The West Linn Tidings, May 21, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

During a routine afterschool visit to the PAWS Animal Shelter, first-grader Jamie Kiley displays a portrait he created of his family’s cat, Dawson, adopted about 10 years ago.

KARA HANSEN / West Linn Tidings

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When Jamie Kiley’s family selected a homeless cat to join their household a decade ago, the West Linn boy wasn’t yet born. It was before the PAWS Animal Shelter even had its storefront on Willamette Falls Drive.

But the 7-year-old still feels his orange tabby, Dawson, is the cat’s meow. His portrait of the feline, now featured in an art show at PAWS, proves it.

Kiley and his classmates in Willamette Primary teacher Willow McCormick’s first grade class created portraits of cats imaginary and real to sell as a fundraiser for PAWS. The 20-plus originals, prints of each and small watercolored note cards are on sale at the shelter through Saturday.

“They need to feed the cats and buy cat litter,” Kiley said during a routine afterschool visit to the shelter last week. “All that stuff costs money.”

Kiley said his portrait of Dawson took a couple of days, one to sketch the cat and another to color it in, along with the tiger-striped background. Students primarily used chalk pastel and Crayola markers for the portraits.

McCormick was ecstatic with the results. She felt the project’s success was in part because students have been aware of animal treatment issues since last fall, when the shelter founder visited the class, bringing a cat with her to talk about the animals at PAWS – where they were found, how they had been treated.

“The main reason the art turned out so well is that the class has been building a relationship with PAWS all year,” McCormick said. “First-graders have an innate sense of justice. … They were deeply affected by stories of little cats being treated so badly by big humans.”

And they wanted to help, which is how the portrait project began.

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