The Puzzle of the Cheshire Cat

I was thinking of making some earrings out of Sculpey today, so I googled, "Sculpey earrings" for inspiration. I clicked on an Etsy site that offered a long list of Sculpey earrings. A list, with no pictures. Lousy marketing... But then a pair of jigsaw puzzle-piece earrings caught my eye. Aha!

I headed down to the basement, storage zone for games and puzzles. I eyed the puzzles, looking for stray pieces. I opened a few boxes, hoping to see pieces that inspired me. But of course I could not take pieces from a complete puzzle. It's a character trait, perhaps a flaw. I could never ruin a puzzle.

So I wandered back upstairs and found a tiny cheshire cat puzzle in a tiny box. And it was missing a piece. Perfect! I love the Cheshire Cat!

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

"Which road do I take?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?" was his response.

"I don't know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter.”

“I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”

The grin without a cat is on one earrings, and the cat without a grin is on the other. Perfect!