Several years ago I used, almost exclusively, squares of paper cut from A4-sized sheets for my designs and for my folding. This left as a by-product a great number of 1:2.45-proportioned strips of paper. This proportion is very close to that of the American dollar.

I designed the cat in an attempt to use these scraps of paper, which would have otherwise be stapled together and made into booklets for writing down phone messages. The first version of the cat did not have fixed proportions for the whiskers. Cats with different faces could be obtained by varying the angles in the first few folds of the head.

The margin for variation is small, but the difference between the resulting cats is great.

Among the models that I have designed, this is probably one of my favorites. This in itself is a good enough reason to include it in the book. I never get tired of folding this cat. Of all my models, for this one I have tried the largest variety of paper types. This is because there is always a paper scrap resulting from cutting a square for folding another figure.

I believe that of all the materials I have tried, my preferance for folding the cat is a double layer paper without aluminum. For example, printing paper glued together with tissue paper makes a good choice.

Once you are familiar with the model, the folding can take about 10 or 15 minutes without rushing. One of the things that I like about this model is that is cute without being corny and it still has a lot of personality.