What to call a cat pendant made of clay? – Catlem?

A couple of years ago I found at an arts and crafts fair a potter which made, among other things, cat-shaped clay pendants. I instantly fell in love with one of it, bought it, and wore it quite often.
Sadly it broke some time ago at the tail.

Since then I’ve been searching for a way to create my own cat shaped pendant.
Can’t be that difficult, I thought.
It’s just clay. Rolled out, cut out and burned (hence the coloring). I thought.

Can’t be that difficult

I’m not a potter, and I’m not very skilled at working with clay, but luckily I have a friend, who has a sister, who knows …
Well, what she said was: “ Look at the breakage, and think again.“
As it turns out burned clay is quite whitish, all the way through…
But she said she could make me some white clay cats, and I said yes.
Funnily enough I have exactly that cat shape as a cutter for biscuits, so I gave it to my friend to give to her, to …
Also I handed her some leaf shaped cutters, because it seemed like a good Idea.
Then I forgot about the whole thing. Even searched for the cutters, thought I hat lost them.
A while ago she gave them back to me. The cutters and a bunch of raw, white clay cats and leaves.

So I went to work

Watercolors seemed like a good idea. Watercolors made from natural colored earths seemed like a good idea, too.
To fix the paint I used a generous amount of hairspray. (It’s funny I only have hairspray to fix paint, not hair)

It’s not the same as the original. It looks more solid and more painted, not like something that just happens. But I like it.
I also like painting on clay. I expected the material to absorb the water from the watercolor quite quickly, like a sponge. But in reality it took a while to get the process started. I would paint, wonder about how good it’s working, then realizing that the sponge effect is starting to kick in, paint on, stopping to paint and then waiting some time to see how the color is going to work out once all the fluid is sucked up.
It was fun, it was a lot of try and error, a lot of painting and washing of paint.

With a bit of wire and a small pearl they make nice pandants.
I’ve already given one away as a present.

For one of the leaves I used more greens

What I wanted was ONE new cat pendant.
For now I’ve made two cats, one leaf and have lot of blanks still.
Need to figure out what to do with them. The easiest thing seems to be to bless all of my friends with shiny new clay pendants …