Sleeping tabby cat curled in a wicker laundry basket with a sock, towel, and folded clothes

Tabby Cat Napping in a Laundry Basket

A striped cat dozes in a round wicker laundry basket, tucked among a loose sock, rolled towel, and rumpled shirts.

🎨 How to color it

Color the tabby cat in warm ginger and cream, make the wicker basket honey brown, and give the sock, towel, and shirts mismatched laundry-day blues and yellows. Use sharp colored pencils for the cat’s fur stripes and the basket’s braided rim, then switch to softer fills on the larger pieces of cloth. Try hiding one tiny bright color, like cherry red, on the sock toe so it feels like a secret clue in the laundry.

The story behind this coloring page

Gus and the Sock Compass — Every evening, when the dryers thumped like sleepy drums, Gus tucked the chewed blue sock under his chin and sniffed its peppery wool. Read the full story →

Every evening, when the dryers thumped like sleepy drums, Gus tucked the chewed blue sock under his chin and sniffed its peppery wool. It was not just a sock; it smelled of elevator buttons, rainy sidewalks, and the fish market vent two blocks away. Gus wanted to keep it in his basket nest forever. Until one day, the laundry chute burped, and the sock twitched north.

Because of that, Gus dragged it deeper under a warm towel, but the towel rolled, the basket tipped, and whiskers-first he slid across the laundry-room floor. Because of THAT, the basket bumped the wall, popped the chute door open, and a breeze whooshed out smelling exactly like peppery wool. “Absolutely suspicious,” Gus muttered.

At last, Gus batted the sock into the breeze. It spun, flopped, and pointed to a hidden gap behind the machines, where six runaway socks huddled in lint like fuzzy spies. Gus curled around them all, curious enough to nap on the evidence; next time you spot that lone sock by his paw, can you tell which way the Sock Compass points?