Wow! You are actually interested in how this all started? Well read on and be enlightened

The very first 'Cat Basket' was programmed in 1998 when I was in the 11th grade. It was a computer class assignment to create a web page that featured pictures, music, and text animation. It was also used as a tutoring tool to some of my fellow classmates who had trouble with HTML, I would help them out by showing examples on the Cat Basket.

Then name 'Cat Basket' came from the basket that my two cats Snowball and Cuddles slept in, and most of the pictures that I scanned for the site where pictures of them sleeping in it.

The first published photo on the original Cat Basket

I received full marks on the page, I was quite proud seeing as it the very first one I ever made. Since then I wanted to make a web page about my personal interests, but I did not have a computer or the knowledge to put a site online during the time.

Fast forward to 2000. I got a computer, but not a lot of online experience in web design. I spent most of my time surfing and looking at the different layouts and styles of websites. In 2001 I took the multimedia course at college and gained access to a lot of graphics software like Photoshop and flash. I also began to learn basic HTML programming in notepad, it was a new experience seeing as I have used a program called HTMLed to make the original Cat Basket.

I used what I learned to make my very first hobby site to go online 'Chibi Neko's Gundam Wing Rest Pad', a fan site to the anime Gundam Wing, a show that I became a big fan of. I did the basics of what I have seen on other sites, such as using a guestbook and email. I then tried to make it unique by having a site mascot. I made an alias of myself called 'Chibi Neko' which was Japanese for 'Little Cat'. I was called cat a lot in school, and I was often called little or tiny by adults. I drew her wearing a poncho because I loved wearing one, and it was easy and time efficient to draw.

The first 'splash' image made with MS Paint

The first day after the site was launched on Geocities, I got a email asking for advice on how to start making a webpage, looking back on my first design it was quite basic, but the person who emailed me must have been in the same boat I was in back in 1998. After a few months the site gained in popularity, I was getting many emails with site submissions and the guestbook was filling up, so much so that I had to create a second one.

The Rest Pad was entered in numerous Gundam Wing 'Top sites' lists. It ranked number 1 on the non-yaoi list, number 3 on the top 50, and number 10 on the top 100. I interacted with other Gundam Wing site owners and became good friends with some of them, getting and giving advice to many people. The Rest Pad had a total of 5 different layouts. As the show's popularity died down, so did the Rest Pad, but it still had loyal fans that continue to visit to this day, I then decided to make another site on another anime that I became a fan of.

After the summer of 2002 I moved away to work, a friend of mine did the same and we both got the same job. Seeing as we where both fans of the anime Yu-Gi-Oh we both including his girlfriend learned to play the game, and began to run the tournaments. I created a section on the Rest Pad called 'Card Corner' to see how it would do, the popularity grew to the point that I had to create whole new site for it. I began to create the site 'Card Closet' that had input from all 3 of us, Chibi Neko being the owner, R'syrah Chiros doing Card of the Week, and Rabid^Duck doing card stats.

The first Card Closet splash image

Like the Rest Pad, the Card Closet gained in popularity fast, because we where members of a real tournament, I hosted a section dedicated to it, it included photos, performance stats, and a forum for all the participants to chat and trade cards there, in a way it became a community of the duelists in town. The Card Closet lasted much longer then the Rest Pad, it stayed strong up to 2005. I even met one of the fans by coincidence, I was checking on the site stats at a firend's home and a guest asked 'Is that your site? Are you Chibi Neko?'. When I said yes she said 'Wow! I have your site bookedmarked!'

It was after the completetion of the Card Closet that I revived the 'Cat Basket' name, it was simply a web page that links to both sites on it.

During the same time of the Card Closet's popularity, I changed the layout of the site only once, and became a little bored of doing only updates. I wanted to make a new site, but nothing to large that would take my time away from my main projects.

Main logo for Neko Land

Neko Land was a small site that was meant to be a online resume to advertise my web design and graphics. The only updates that where made to it was the additional graphics that I made for my main sites. All together the Rest Pad, the Card Closet, and Neko Land became the Cat Basket Network for 2 years.

First splash image for the Cat Basket Network

Second splash image for the Cat Basket Network

The website 'The Gathering' was to be a site that focused on myself and my friends, but the site never got completed due to my busy work schedule.

Neko Land was online for about 2 years, but it was a part of the Cat Basket. As I was taking Neko Land offline, I decided to make a new gallery in the Rest Pad that consisted of the graphics that I made for my sites. My graphics became the main signature of my style and most of the emails I received where simply comments on them.

After taking Neko Land down, I began to think of a design for a website that would go back to the reason why I wanted to do web design... and that would be a hobby site about my personal interests.

In 2005, I wanted to make a hobby site about my interests. This site became the Cat Basket and it was returning to the format of the very first site I created back in high-school. The site featured photos, music, rants, and links to sites that I liked.

Cat Basket splash

The Cat Basket site included links to the Rest Pad, Card Closet, and a new site called The Rainbow Bridge, which was a database of the pets that I had that passed on. The primary updates that the Card Closet would have are new rants called 'Chibits', or any new photos of my friends. After a year I wanted to take the Cat Basket into a different direction, and began to treat it as a network. I took down the music and photos section, and updated only the Chibits.

In 2007 I became a work widow when my fiancée left for Alberta to work, I would update the site as much as I could so that he would know how things where going back at home. In one Chibit written on May 29th, I added two comics to illustrate the rant better, the people who viewed them liked them a lot which drove me to draw more comics to suit the rant, but I began to draw comics that did not suit any rant I had, so a branched off a small site called 'Cat Basket Comix'

Bit by bit I took down the branch site and made the comics the main attraction to the Cat Basket site. For a year the comic strip was known as the Cat Basket yet the rat characters where present more then Chibi Neko. In mid 2008 I decided to give the comic strip a whole new name and convert the Cat Basket site to that name.

Spilt Milk logo

As of May 4th 2008, the Cat Basket became a network, the page itself is now a gateway to Chibi Neko's sites and the main page is now 'Spilt Milk'. The name came from the proverb 'No use crying over spilt milk', the character Chibi Neko lives with her pets and nothing ever seems to go right, and no matter how bad or weird things get, she doesn’t let it get to her too much. Many of the comics are parodies of my real life or just making fun of daily events and pop culture.

In the course of 10 years the Cat Basket went from how it was programmed to be to what it is now. In the end I did what I wanted to do from the very beginning... and that was to create a hobby site about myself and interests. I am pretty proud on how it turned out. Enjoy the fruits of my labor.

<= Return to Basket