You’ve been out and about somewhere in New York or New England and you saw one of these cute little books sitting out somewhere…
Or you received it in a package from Iris Tiger Toys…
Or even stumbled across it at a Burning Man event…
However you received the gift of Failcat, welcome! Failcat is a mini comic book which I print out with my home printer and put together by hand, cutting out and stapling the pages together. I put them in my outgoing sale packages and leave them out for people to find during my daily travels.
Failcat is a big story packed into a tiny 16 page, 2.25″ by 4″ book. It’s a story about failure, the power of love when it comes to overcoming those failures, and learning how to look on the bright side of life in spite of it all. Failcat starts out sitting in the rain feeling sorry for himself until some worms happen to come along. And by the end of the book he has a whole new perspective on life.
Failcat is a deeply personal story for me. I made the first edition of Failcat as a gift for my first Burning Man event at Playa Del Fuego in 2023. For a lot of my life I have felt like an outcast to one degree or another, just watching everyone else living life without really getting much of a chance to participate. I am hard of hearing, so most people don’t want to make the extra effort to talk to me, because communication with me sometimes isn’t as easy as it is with someone who has perfect hearing. So I get ignored and not included in a lot of social things. And after awhile that really starts to mess with your mind, and make you think that you’re a monster that no one likes or wants to be around. Just like Failcat, I tend to live underneath a dark raincloud of all of my past failures when it comes to trying to meet people and make new friends.
I came to Playa Del Fuego as a total newbie to Burner culture. I knew no one there outside of a few people on Facebook who I had never actually met in person. I was not very hopeful that I would make any friends there, because I have failed in this so many different times with so many different people over the years. But instead, I left that long weekend with a whole bunch of new friends. I drove home from the event crying and laughing in turn because I felt just like Failcat does when he exclaims, “Even in the rain… things are GREAT!” The experience changed my entire life and my entire perspective, just like the worms did for Failcat.
I’ve always had a bit of a prophetic gift. I had no idea when I sat writing this seemingly silly little story about a cat and a bunch of worms just how accurate it would be for me when I went to Playa Del Fuego. The funny thing is though, when I sat down to work on Failcat, the story just seemed to come to me, with no struggle and very little need for editing afterwards. The first draft of Failcat was almost exactly the same as the finished book, and it only took me a couple of hours to do that first draft too. And for me, that’s not very typical– I’m not particularly fast when it comes to creating my art and stories, and I tend to fiddle with them for ages afterwards, picking through them and editing them multiple times. But with Failcat, it was like God was moving me to write this particular story. And it wasn’t just for me, many of the people I shared Failcat with at the event were deeply moved by it… I had multiple people crying and hugging me after reading it.
I began to realize that this was my calling in life… that maybe God would sometimes use me to write and draw stories that touched people. Things are pretty dark out there right now. There are a lot of people out there like Failcat, underneath one dark cloud or another. Maybe you’re struggling with something too. Maybe something led you here to Failcat and to this website for a reason. And I hope you’ll stick around with me– I’m doing a lot of great things and I’d love for you to be a part of all of that.
Tell me, where did you find Failcat? And what did you think of it? I would love to hear your thoughts and stories about Failcat.
Except he’s not Failcat anymore… now he’s Wincat.
And even if no one has ever told you this before, so are you.
And I hope you find your own worms who come along and show you that there are good things all around if you take the time to look. Because life’s not always going to be a sunny day, so when the storms come along, you can just let go and dance your way through it.
I hope you take Failcat’s message to heart that even in the rain, things are great.
