# A week of him, rewritten into one small icon each morning > A boarding cattery's staff whiteboard resets him to one mark a day — asleep, awake, fed — because that's all the next shift needs, not because it's all there is. August 22, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-cattery-whiteboard-has-him-down-as-quiet Seven small icons run in a straight row across the back, each boxed off by a thin vertical rule — a closed eye, a moon, a paw print, a sun with something rubbed-out ghosting beneath it, a wave, a star, a cloud. Black and blue ink, trading off. Nothing is written in words. Whoever kept this board wasn't describing him. They were handing off a shift. ## What is a board like this actually for? Telling the next person on duty what to expect in the next eight hours, not what he's like. A boarding cattery runs on staff who change daily, and the previous shift's cat can't speak for himself to whoever opens his pen next. One mark a morning — settled, restless, ate well, didn't — is enough to plan a feed round and a cleaning pass around. It was never written to sum him up. It was written to be read once, fast, by someone who hasn't met him yet. ## Why does the fourth mark sit over a faint ghost of another one? Because the board gets wiped and redrawn every single morning, and the marker never quite lifts clean. A whiteboard that's rubbed down and redone daily starts showing its own history under the new ink — a shadow of yesterday's mark bleeding through today's. That ghosting is the part that actually records something: proof that the mark changes, that Tuesday's read was different from Monday's, even though only one is ever visible at a time. ## What's the right icon set for a board like this? Whatever the actual shift needs answered, kept to marks a stranger's hand can draw in under ten seconds. A sleep state, a rough mood, an appetite note and the weather he had a walk in cover most of what one shift needs to tell the next. [A more detailed daily record — sat on laptop, ignored name, came when called — belongs to people who already know him](/stories/pet-behaviour-chart); a handover board has to work for someone meeting him for the first time that morning. ## Who owns a shorthand like this? Nobody — a system of icons for shift handover isn't anyone's registered mark, any more than a tick box is. Drawing your own version, in your own hand, for your own week of him carries no permission question with it. That's different from copying an actual cattery chain's branded form or wordmark onto a shirt, which would be their design to license, not a private shorthand invented for one cat. ## Does this only suit a cat who's been boarded? It fits anywhere an animal gets handed a fresh, temporary read by someone new every day — a dog walker's rota, a daycare shift, a kennel stay. The version that matters here is the reset: the mark from yesterday doesn't carry forward, whatever [the pattern the household itself keeps at home](/stories/where-he-sleeps-by-the-hour) actually looks like. A boarding week produces seven separate, disposable snapshots rather than one settled account. ## Doesn't reducing a week to seven tiny marks miss most of what happened? That's rather the design's point — the board was never trying to capture most of what happened. Whatever actually filled his week — who he hid from, what toy he found, the two hours he spent watching the window — lives with the people who were there, not on a board built for a shift handover. The gap between the board and the week is exactly what the print holds open, quietly, without spelling either side out. ## Does it print well? Cleanly — small flat icons in two colours are about as forgiving as a print gets, even reduced this far. Each mark holds its shape at a size a whiteboard marker could actually draw, and the vertical rules keep seven separate icons reading as seven separate days rather than one busy back print. Washed charcoal, faded denim or stone grey all let black and a single accent ink sit forward without a third colour competing for the eye. ## How do I get one made? Describe his week at [JustOG](/) — the marks that actually applied, in the order they happened, and how deliberately worn the icons should look. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). By the following morning, the board is blank again, waiting for whatever today turns out to be.