cat cancer + future collaborations

I had the pleasure of meeting a kindred spirit recently. It doesn't happen all that often, so I was thrilled.

I met her through Kijiji, where she'd posted an antique school table for sale, and I decided to buy it. You never know who you're dealing with when you interact with someone in a buy/sell capacity on a public forum like Kijiji or Craigslist, and I didn't know what to expect when I went to her house to see the table. The neighbourhood seemed a bit sketchy on the surface, other than that fancy Porsche parked across the street from her front door. However, inside her home was a wonder-filled den of curios, resembling but even better than my own collection.

She is also a bone collector, with very old specimens of tiny, mounted antlers, snakeskins, shells and barnacles, and of course bones, bones, bones. She also had a great art collection, most of which was hung gallery-style on one wall facing her staircase. I was enthralled, and she asked me if I'd like to see her collection upstairs.

In the upstairs of her house is a jewelry studio, also filled with an assortment of curios, including a cabinet with the skeleton of her former pet, a Persian cat. She had the vertebrae separated into glass petri dishes, as well as other parts in their own glass containers. The skull was really interesting, since the face was so flat--much different from my cat skull in my collection at home. Things got really exciting, however, when I began talking to her about my work with bone cancer in the lab. She then brought out the jaw bone of her cat, which was bulging with a calcified specimen of osteosarcoma! Here it is, below:

Persian cat osteosarcoma, in the collection of Elaine Ho.

For me, this was the first time seeing a firsthand specimen of a mineralized osteosarcoma tumour--previous to this, I'd only seen it in photographs. Elaine told me that she hadn't known that her cat had jawbone cancer until after its death, when she received the skeleton from the vet. This is osteobiography, the story of a life written in its bones. Osteosarcoma is actually extremely rare in cats, but the jaw is a fairly common place for it to be found (even in humans).

Let me do the official introduction now: My new friend is Elaine Ho, a Montreal jeweler. I looked at some of her work in her studio, mainly cast pieces, which I loved. We made a plan to keep in touch, perhaps for possible future collaborations. She's interested in casting some of my osteosarcoma biotextiles for jewelry, which could be really interesting. Her work is FANTASTIC, just my style, and you can check out her website, here or find her on Facebook, here.