British artist and photographer Richard Saunders lived with his beloved gray cat Tolly for 14 years and he stayed by his side in his studio while he was working. After Tolly’s death, Richard decided to pay tribute to him with a series of fantastic collages called The Topiary Cat. It’s an extraordinary project made possible by his incredible ability to photoshop the cat silhouette onto topiaries in his favorite landscapes.
The shots show Tolly in incredible scenes that seem almost real. Saunders explains he received many messages asking him how he was to cut bushes with such precision and detail. He doesn’t shy away from the truth that all these images are a digital illusion which succeeds in involuntary deceiving cat lovers but generally has received a lot of praise, and even some viral popularity.
Saunders’s colossal topiary cats have been seen by over a million people online. Saunders insists he never planned for this project to become viral but after it became an Internet sensation, he launched series of calendars and postcards celebrating the late Russian Blue cat.
