Walk into the Happy Paws Happy Hearts (HPHH) room at 10 Lives Cat Centre in Hobart on the right afternoon this winter, and you'd have found something you don't see every day: a gallery opening, curated entirely by the shelter cats (with a helping paw from our incredible participants).

Across July and August, each of our Hobart participant groups spent weeks focusing on animal enrichment in their sessions, building up to a hands-on painting activity—proof, as it turned out, that enrichment looks different for every cat (likewise, every person) and that there's something special about watching an individual (either with four legs or two) light up while trying something for the first time, or simply experiencing joy.

The activity? Small zip-lock bags prepared by participants, filled with blobs of paint and a canvas, sealed shut and finished with a delicate spread of cat food across the top.

Every lick, nudge and excitable boop paw-pressed the colour onto the canvas to create an incredibly unique masterpiece, as colourful and whimsical as the cats who made them.

However, the real magic wasn't in the paintbrushes (or tongues in this case). It was in what participants had to understand about each individual cat in front of them to help the masterpieces happen.

Some of the shelter's older, more reserved cats approached their canvas with real caution: delicate licks at the food on top, minimal interest in the colour hiding underneath.

Yet further down the room, kittens Benny, Bonny and Panda were four paws in, curious and playful which resulted in genuinely striking (and considerably messier) artworks.

Watching both approaches play out side-by-side, participants had to read the room and adjust their levels of engagement with each cat, gently encouraging the more hesitant senior cats to feel safe and comfortable, while keeping Benny, Bonny and Panda's enthusiasm just contained enough that the masterpiece didn’t end up mid air and facedown on the floor.

That's where weeks of learning cat body language and behaviour stopped being theory and started being instinct, as participants practiced their skills in animal care and engagement, responding to what each feline was communicating they needed.

It's a skill that travels well beyond our session walls: reading the room, adapting how you show up for someone else, understanding that the same encouragement doesn't work for every person any more than it works for every cat. It also sparked one of those conversations that says more about growth than any activity plan could—participants noticing that the cats who had to work a little harder for their reward often seemed to get the most out of it.

By the end, every group agreed the masterpieces deserved better than a shelf. A pop-up exhibition went up in the HPHH training room, canvases and all, and the unexpected highlight of the whole exercise turned out to be the debate over what to name each piece.

Even Murdoch, the office cat, wasn't going to let an art movement happen under his own roof without him. Ross sat down and worked on a canvas alongside him, and Murdoch's effort now hangs proudly as an official and unmistakable self-portrait.

Months of enrichment-focused sessions are hard to capture in a single photo. But that exhibition wall managed it anyway: every personality currently in care at 10 Lives, and every participant who learned to meet them exactly where they were, told one gentle (or wildly enthusiastic) lick at a time.