cats are our heraldic beasts.
My husband's last name is Serfling and mine is Shepherd. The wave and sheep are probably fairly self-evident (the wave symbolizing the “Serf†or “surf†in my husband’s last name, and the sheep standing for the “Shep†or “sheep†in mine). But you may be wondering about the “bla-a-at†and the style of the sheep, which is different than most of my drawings. The story behind that is a crossword puzzle my husband Jim and I were doing together several years ago. One clue was “the sound a calf makes,†and the word we ended up with (which we are pretty sure is not a real word) after filling in all the squares was “BLAT,†so Jim drew the cartoon below in the margin of the puzzle. The style of the sheep and the “bla-a-t†in our coat of arms is my homage to Jim’s cartoon. And of course our cats are our heraldic beasts. See, it all makes sense now! :-)