Katy The Magical Flying Dog

What a creative practice actually looks like when life falls apart

I missed writing to you last week. Here’s what I was doing instead.

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Five weeks ago I was in a hotel room in Oaxaca, Mexico, with a sick dog and a binder full of paperwork in three languages.

I would be there for a month.

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Since I left France on a next-day flight to Mexico, I didn’t have anything with me except the sketchbook I use everyday and keep in my handbag.

I had packed a small bag of acrylic markers, but realized they got left behind in the rush when I was at the airport.

I found another set of acrylic markers and colored pencils in town, but after a few days I felt like I needed to paint. This gave me an excuse to stock up on my favorite Mexican acrylic paint and some gouache.

Getting Katy from Mexico to France meant a month of paperwork, vet appointments, microchipping, new vaccines and their waiting periods, and two government appointments before she could legally be exported to the European Union.

I created a binder with every document from both countries, two airlines, the EU, and her ten-year medical history.

It felt like an obstacle course where we could be disqualified on a minor technicality at every turn.

Managing these kinds of logistics doesn’t come with any sense of ease.

Overthinking wakes me at three a.m. with a clenched jaw, stomach ache, and fear of everything going irreparably wrong.

I get up too early after going to bed too late and review my notes and checklists. Download files to print. Snap more documentation into the binder.

My sketchbooks are filled with writing, too. Logistics and to-do lists. Chronicles of things I wanted to remember about the trip.

I empty my worried mind of swirling, repeating thoughts and paint over them later in our hotel room.

Then do it again the next day.

When I tell people that my creative practice is like meditating with art supplies, this is what I mean.

Katy and I spent our mornings on long walks through Oaxaca before it got too hot, stopping for coffee in our favorite pet-friendly cafes.

I drew her in fast sketches at café tables while she slept underneath. The way you might draw from a model in a life drawing class. The subject is always moving.

One of my favorite things to do is layer the different poses with different art materials and techniques. Mixing it all up on the same page.

Her name written over and over, testing out the new colored pencils.

Stuffing all of those new paints, Katy’s dog food, and the few things I brought with me, into my carryon bag, now flying as checked luggage.

Artist Robert Burridge taught me years ago to travel with paint by labeling it “water-based art materials” — never the word paint. It works every time.

The identification stickers I made for her crate proved delightful to the airline staff.

I’m just showing you the part about Katy, underneath each was also my contact info and our final destination address, in case we got separated.

Her collar has an AirTag and a QR code that would send me an alert if anyone scanned it.

We made it to Mexico City for an overnight hotel stay and to finish her export paperwork.

Our first stop after checking in was the Mexican government's animal export office.

Which is really a counter you walk up to with a safety glass window. Communication done through a speaker, like at a bank.

Our soundtrack for the two-hour wait: jackhammers, tile cutting, paint scraping at volume eleven because the Mexico City airport is under construction.

When it’s finally my turn, the clerk’s voice is so inaudible I crouch down to speak and listen through the little slot at the bottom — the one meant for sliding papers. As if getting closer to the glass will somehow help me understand bureaucratic Spanish and the dance steps required to get Katy’s paperwork processed.

I leaned in, squinted as if to hear better, and produced one document after another (original and copies) from my binder, nodding and signing where he pointed.

Long disappearances into a back room to get more signatures. The only indication that things are progressing is the thud of rubber stamps, page after page.

He told us to return the next day, a few hours before our flight. Katy was zero percent interested in getting back in her crate, and we both fell asleep on the king-sized bed watching YouTube painting videos on the giant hotel room TV.

Foreshadowing alert: Katy defiantly refusing to use the airport hotel’s pet relief area for its intended purpose.

The next afternoon the government office did a microchip scan, official inspection, added more stamps and flourish of signatures. Finally, she was cleared.

That’s when Katy squatted for a leisurely pee right in the middle of the terminal floor.

Like a mom with a diaper bag, I whipped out a puppy training pad, which absorbed every drop, followed by disinfecting wipes. By the time a janitor was rushing toward us with the mop bucket, she just nodded at us and walked on by.

My friend Meo kept telling me that this whole adventure would make a great story.

I documented all of it in my sketchbook — not just the drawings, but the thinking and planning. Writing, photos, ephemera, collage, and painting mixed together, the way I always work.

The handwritten label for the paints scribbled while packing got pasted in as a reminder to type up and print out this message for future trips. I’m always doing it last minute in a rush before the taxi comes.

I highlighted a passage that has to do with what creative practice is, because I have such a hard time explaining it:

Creative practice is about documenting my creative process + having a way to warm up into creating, expressing myself. It’s a way to calm my overthinking anxious mind. Capture my ideas.

And then, underneath, something I’m embarrassed to admit:

Caretaking others so much easier than thinking about taking care of myself.

Getting home after our Paris flight, I collaged our boarding passes and luggage tags into my sketchbook — a ritual I do after every trip.

There was a blank space on the page that I painted black, and drew Katy in white pencil from my cafe sketches. That’s when the title arrived:

Katy the Magical Flying Dog.

There’s more to this story — about what I came home to, and what I lost before any of this began. But I’ll save it for another time — if you’re interested in hearing it.

We made it to Paris. Both of us. This was the proof-of-life photo I sent to friends.

Before you go — a question:

When life gets hard, does your creative practice go first?

Or does it become the thing that holds you together?

I’d love to know.

Hit reply if you’re reading in email, or leave a comment below.

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If you’re new here: I’m Lisa Sonora, and I’ve been keeping visual journals for most of my life — not art journaling, something different.

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