The cat tail wraps around the wearer’s left. If you are hand knitting your sweater, the chart is just fine. If you opt to machine knit it, it’ll probably be easier to flip the chart since you spend all your time staring at the back.

The chart was originally made to fit a gauge of 16 stitches x 22 rows. My sweater was actually knit closer to 16 stitches x 24 rows. If your gauge is closer to 22 rows, your cat will be a little taller and closer to the sweater’s collar.

The white and purple bars mark out every 5 stitches. The cat’s body excluding the tail is an odd number of stitches wide (use the eyes as a guide). The thick black line indicates the center of the pattern if the sweater body is knit with an even number of stitches. Ignore the tail when centering the design.

Do the front part of the sweater first. That way you will know whether you need to complete the tail on the back and where that extra white patch can be placed. Make the first and last stitch of each row the same color as the one next to it. Those edge stitches are used for seaming. Continue the chart on the back side.

If you are using a plain sweater pattern as a base, do not follow any instructions to increase the number of stitches after finishing the ribbing. Do not cast on the number of stitches recommended for ribbing. You want the number of stitches for the body. The cast on stitches count as row 1 on the chart. I recommend doing a long tail cast on. Cast on x number of green stitches, drop it, cast on x number of white, drop in, then cast on x stitches with a new green ball. If you know how to do intarsia and how to overlap your yarn, you’re going to be fine. Use the tails to close any gaps on the bottom on the sweater if needed.