Japanese Art Students Made Purr-fectly Bizarre Cat Heads From Felt

If you’re a fan of creative costumes and cats, you might want to borrow inspiration from Japanese wool master Housetu Sato while planning your Halloween ensemble this fall. Sato uses needles and sheep’s wool to stitch together giant, lifelike feline masks that are equal parts creepy and adorable.

According to Laughing Squid, Sato and his students at the Japan School Of Wool Art first created an enormous tabby face in the spring of 2015, complete with detailed striped markings and gleaming, wide-set eyes. Pictures of the project quickly went viral, and the mask was displayed from April 18 to 23, 2015 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.

Undoubtedly inspired by the success of his first felt feline, Sato later made another, this time in black, and posted photos of the kitty head on Instagram. Since then, Sato has created a variety of other cat masks, including ones in white and orange tabby. He uses the masks to stage pictures of cat-people performing “human” actions—gardening, playing the guitar, and wielding a samurai sword—and posts them on a Facebook page he calls “Realistic Cat Head Art Project.”

Sato is an expert needle-felter, and has even published a series of books in Japan on how to make realistic-looking wool animals, Rocket News 24 writes. You can purchase them on Amazon if you want to attempt to make a cat mask of your own, or visit Facebook to view additional photos of Sato's work.

[h/t Laughing Squid]