It’s been too long since a certain little face has been in my life and I needed to change that.

Working on a recent I Am More portrait gave me pangs of longing for my little troublemaker, Popo Pabu (Lord Puffball). He would have been curled up at my feet as I drew, not because he wanted to keep me company or keep my feet warm but because he liked my rug and didn’t care that I needed to stand there.

I had made one other attempt at drawing him not long after he died, but it made me too sad. Now I decided I was ready to give him the royal treatment he deserved–the best paper, a formal pose, his prized possession, Lambie, to accompany him.

When we talk about Popo these days it’s usually something like, “Remember when he would try to jump up on the furniture and come up just short,” “Remember when he pulled all of the pop-up tissues out of the box in the backseat before we could stop him,” “Remember when we took him to the beach for the first time and he ran to someone’s blanket and rolled all over their lunch to dry off?”

Ultimately he lived up to the descriptive word on his animal shelter report: TROUBLE. And we loved every minute of it.