Latte Art Tutorial: The Cat

There are so many ways to draw faces in your coffee. We've done dogs, skulls, monkeys, and almost everything else. It was only a matter of time before we would stumble on the kitty cat. If you already know how to create hearts, and you have a burning desire to draw with your metal stirrer, the kitty cat is the design for you.

Remember that this design, just like any other latte art creation, won't be the cat's meow unless you properly steam your milk and correctly brew your espresso. Just remember to use a burr grinder and grind your coffee finely. When you are steaming your milk, tilt the steam pitcher to the side near the end of steaming to get the milk to swirl around and create the perfect foam.

The kitty cat design isn't all that different from a regular heart. You will basically pour a special kind of heart, and then you modify it later with your stirrer. If you already know how to pour a rosetta, you will notice that this new kind of heart is very similar. As you pour your heart, wiggle your wrist from side to side as if you were pouring a rosetta. This creates a multi-layered texture that kind of looks like a cat's mane.

Do everything else as you normally would for this design. When you have finished pouring the heart, lift up the steam pitcher and strike through it to finish it off. With the heart in place, you are ready to begin the next phase.

It's time for some visualization. Imagine that the cleft of the heart, naturally at the top of it, is the mouth of you kitty cat. Get out your metal stirrer and dip it in the brown crema foam on the outside of the heart. Now bring your stirrer back to the kitty's mouth and start to draw whiskers. Be as creative as you want, twisting and turning the whiskers to make a unique kitty shape. Don't forget to wipe off your stirrer every time you draw a whisker. You don't want to mix the white foam with the brown foam unintentionally.

After the whiskers are done, it's time to move on to the nose. Dip your stirrer in the brown crema foam again and draw some semi-circles starting from the cleft of the heart and moving to the top of the highest whisker. You can draw your cat's nose any way you like, but this way helps to break up the mouth section from the rest of its face. Don't forget to add in some little dots on the bottom of the cat's face to represent pores where whiskers don't grow.

All that's left are the eyes and the eyebrows. Using a similar technique from before, draw the eyes on top of the white foam with the brown foam, and make whichever expression you want with the eyebrows. If you managed to pour this design more like a rosetta, you will notice that your design kind of looks like a lion. Some people go the extra step and draw ears and a few curves for the mane. Of course, you can do whatever you want.

The kitty cat is a pretty easy and fun design to do once you've learned the basics. Play around with a few of the variables and see if you can't create a regal mane. We'd love to see it!

Learn more about making Latte Art in our Latte Art How To!