# Two animals who never met the same house

> Two engraved medallions, one aged and one fresh, print the gap between two pets who lived in the same home at different times rather than pretending they overlapped.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/two-pets-who-never-met

Two oval medallions, engraved, side by side. The left one holds a long-haired dog, and the line
work is soft and faded, the way an old print goes soft. The right holds a cat, and the line is
crisp, fresh, printed yesterday. `1998-2011` sits under the dog. `2013-2024` sits under the cat.

The two animals never occupied the same room. The medallions don't pretend otherwise.

## Why age one of the two portraits?

Because they didn't live at the same time, and matching them would say they did.

A household often has a sequence rather than a pair — one animal for years, a gap, then another.
The natural instinct when printing two portraits together is to make them consistent: same line
weight, same finish, same everything, because that's what "matching" usually means. Here it would
be a lie. The dog belongs to an earlier decade of the same house. The cat belongs to a later one.
Ageing the left medallion the way an actual engraving from that period would have aged is the
detail that turns two separate portraits into a single timeline instead of a mismatched pair.

## What do the two dates actually need to say?

Just the years, and nothing about what happened in them.

`1998-2011` and `2013-2024` are enough to establish that one life ended and, after some time, another
began. No connecting text, no "and then." The gap between the two ranges — 2011 to 2013 — is left
for the reader to notice on their own, and they will, because two years is exactly the length of
time a house without an animal in it starts to feel wrong.

### The gap is doing more work than the portraits

Most people who look at this shirt will comment on the drawing. The ones who knew the house will
count on their fingers first. Two years between the dog's death and the cat's arrival is a specific,
checkable fact, and it reads as restraint rather than as an oversight — nobody forgot to mention what
happened in between, the shirt is simply not about that part. It's the same principle behind
[printing a number instead of a scene](/stories/numbers-as-a-design): the fact stands in for
the story rather than narrating it.

## Does the format still work for three or four animals?

Yes, and the ageing logic just extends across the row.

Add a third medallion for a third animal and the same rule applies: the oldest portrait carries the
most wear, the most recent carries the least, and each one's condition places it in the sequence
without a single word of explanation. Four medallions in a row, ordered left to right by date, reads
as a single life's worth of animals rather than a gallery. The only design decision that changes is
spacing — four ovals want a wider chest print than two, and the engraving detail has to shrink to fit,
which is a print question rather than a concept one.

## Is this different from a memorial shirt?

It can include one, but it isn't only that.

A shirt made for one animal that has just died is usually about that loss specifically, in the week
or month it happened — [that's covered on its own terms](/stories/pet-memorial-shirt). This
format is about the shape of a household across time, which might include a loss, might include a
happy overlap that never actually occurred, or might simply be marking that a home had two very
different animals in it at two different points and both mattered.

## What if the two animals overlapped for a while?

Then match them, because the medallions would be telling the truth.

The whole argument for ageing one portrait rests on the two ranges not touching. If the dates
overlap by even a year, the animals shared the house, and identical treatment for both is accurate
rather than dishonest. The condition of each medallion should track the facts of the specific
pair being printed, not a fixed formula applied regardless of what actually happened.

## Whose portraits are these, legally?

Yours, as long as the images they're drawn from are.

An engraved medallion built from a photograph you took, or one somebody gave you, carries no rights
question at all — it's a portrait of an animal that was yours, redrawn in a particular style. The
only place this gets complicated is a photograph taken by somebody else who hasn't agreed to its use
commercially, which is a normal photography-rights question and not specific to this format.

## Does it print well?

Yes — engraving-style line work is close to ideal chest artwork.

Fine hatching below a certain size fills in on fabric, so the medallion needs to be printed larger
and with fewer, bolder lines than an actual antique engraving would use — [detail below the weave's
floor needs simplifying, not shrinking](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric). One ink for
each medallion, in a dark tone against a light garment, holds the age difference clearly: a lighter,
greyer version of that same ink for the faded side keeps the ageing legible without adding a second
colour. Sand, oatmeal and dust blue all sit well behind engraved line work.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the two animals at [JustOG](/) — species, the two date ranges, and which one should read
older. 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).

One oval worn soft with age, one still sharp, and a key hanging beside both of them.