Three years ago, the Brazilian illustrator and law student Heloísa Nora picked up her pen and drew her first feline after seeing a funny picture of a cat with a piece of bread on its head. Since then, she has sketched hundreds of illustrations for cat lovers all over the world, which she tweets via the popular Poorly Drawn Cats account. Now, she’s giving her pets a forever home in her book Reasons My Cat Is Mad...

Meet the creator of Poorly Drawn Cats

Hi! My name is Heloísa Nora and I’m the illustrator behind Poorly Drawn Cats. I was born in a small town in the south of Brazil. I've always loved cats, ever since I was a tiny me. I remember that my favourite toy -- a cat obviously -- would always be around me, normally being led by a leash made of shoelaces. I would draw constantly, too, and everywhere (including the walls, I'm so sorry mom).

But it wasn't until I was much older, when I moved to university in Curitiba a couple of years ago, that I began to draw my cats again. I took it up because , when I left home, it felt weird to suddenly be without my family and without my mother’s cat Pandora by my side. It was comforting to me. One night, I was drawing and I saw an image of a cat with a bread on its head. I thought “well, why not drawn him too”. I sketched a poorly drawn version of that image and I liked it. Cats have such particular emotions and strange poses!

I thought I’d share my beautiful cat-on-a-bread drawing with the world, so I created a Twitter account and Poorly Drawn Cats began its life. I never could have imagined it would become as big as it has.

The bread cat; made me, let's say...internet famous? Afterwards, people began asking me to draw their cats by the dozen -- some of them even got my drawings tattooed onto their bodies. It was insane! I've now drawn more than 800 illustrations for other people. I love that I can make people happy with my simple drawings.

These days, I study Law at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná. I live with my boyfriend and he always supports me, as does my family. And my mom regularly sends me pictures of Pandora’s pictures so I can draw them.

I love my poorly drawn cats and I’m so grateful to everyone who follows the account. Now, I’ve decided to use my illustrations for a book: Reasons My Cat is Mad, which will chronicle all of the strange and wonderful ways in which cats show us exactly what they want. Because they always manage to do that so very well.

I hope this book will bring you the same happiness my account does!

And I need your help

I’m crowdfunding Reasons My Cat Is Mad, which means that we need to raise enough money before we can go ahead and make the book.

If you like the idea for the book, you can support the campaign by pledging for one of the levels down the right hand side, over there. You can even support it by pledging to have your cat appear in the book! You can also support the book by spreading the word online to anyone you think might like it.

Pledge for any of the levels and if the campaign is successful, you will receive your very own limited-edition, hardback copy of the book with your name (or your cat’s name) in the back among the list of patrons.