Sarawak Monument

Kuching Cat Icon Monument

Kuching City’s famous Cat Icon Statue recently received a new urban art makeover from a group of Kuching volunteering knitters. The new look of the Cat Statue, now has a new purple with cream and a white hat, as well as a golden yellow purplish scarf that makes it looks like a Boy Scouts team.

 This Kuching City Cat Statue iconic monument wears different costumes for different occasions. Before this, it was the Chinese New Year festival season. The Cat Statue was well decorated with Chinese costume in conjunction with the holiday festival season.

 The art makeover volunteered by the group of Kuching knitters, was led by Crafthub director, Heidi Munan. They stitched a ninemetre strip of yarn into a hat and another three metre into a scarf. To ensure the hat is well placed on the Cat Statue, it was reinforced with metal wires making sure it will last long under the humid weather in Sarawak.

 Materials used were from recycle and unwanted items such as thrown away water bottles and pompoms.

 Miss Heidi Munan, the director and leader of the club for Crafthub, mentioned the idea to start out and decorated the KuchingLandmark Cat Statue was proposed by a group of non-government organisations since last year.

 It took the group 6 months to complete the costume. During that period of time, they met up once a week to do the stitches and some of them who were looking forward to it eventually decided to continue the job at home with the given materials.

 The only cost involved was labour as the beautifully produced yarn was made from recycled items or a half completed work and unwanted yarns.

 Heidi was inspired by the design from the latest urban street art called yarn bombing. Originally yarn bombing was used to decorate trees and benches made of colourful knitted and crotched yarn or fibre clothes.

 “It is hoped that this attempt on urban street art would not only promote the art but also entice city folks to take up this new interests and expand its use in the future as an embellishment to the cityscape and the promotion of the city’s culture and tourism” she said.

 Their hands are currently tight with charitable works at the Children Cancer’s ward of the Sarawak General Hospital, by knittingcolourful patched blankets and hats. After that, they will move on to stitching soft toys.

 Those who are interested to learn stitching may drop by at the Sarawak Museum Café on Wednesday from 10 am to learn stitching from Heidi.

 Kuching South City Council (MBKS) Mayor Dato James Chan advised public not to touch or remove the hat or scarf.