Paws-itively adorable: Vancouver creator will edit your pet into treats

“I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing,” said Christina Lange, an artist who has made hundreds of extremely unusual pet portraits from her home in Vancouver.

All her creations, posted to her Instagram page, depict pets Photoshopped into various snacks, ingredients, and drinks. 

Edible Pets offers everything from kitty cake pops to dog waffles — and for Lange, the ideas just keep on coming.

“I edit at random, so everything I post, I don’t pre-plan. Like, I’ll start editing thinking it’s going to be a cupcake and then it turns out to be a mushroom,” she said. “It’s just how my brain works.”

But no matter what she gets in the end, it’s always cute. 

Take, for instance, the unforgettable cat cupcake.

 

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Lange says she doesn’t know where her ideas come from — they simply manifest as she edits her photos. It’s a natural but chaotic process and she rarely starts with a plan.

For her, Photoshopping a cute pet’s face into delicious treats is stress relief, a creative outlet, and a way to spread joy.

Clients who are “over-the-moon excited” often get their pet portrait printed onto mugs, calendars, or posters — and there are a lot of them, she says.

“Hopefully people enjoy it as much as I do,” she says.

But it all started in Mexico, during a drunken conversation with a stranger. For reasons forgotten, someone challenged her to Photoshop a cat into a taco, and she accepted. When she was really, inexplicably good at it, the whole group noticed. 

She had never Photoshopped anything before then and says she can’t Photoshop anything except animals in food to this day. 

Then, one afternoon, she edited a Doodle into some waffles — and it all clicked. She had to start a business.

“I did it more as a hobby. Like, I was using my own cats and editing just to see, and then I started getting tons of DMs of people wanting to order it, so it was a small business that just happened by surprise,” she said.

“To be honest, I never planned on it ever actually being a business. It was solely for fun. And here we are.”

Now that she’s established, Lange says her favourite part of the job is how happy clients are when they get the finished product.

 

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She recalls when one pet owner called her in tears after receiving a print-out portrait from Edible Pets. 

“She had ordered a portrait and like, two days after she ordered it, her pet it actually passed away. It was a sad thing, but I guess it made her very happy … to see their pet again,” she said.

In another example, teachers put up posters of class pets in their school and told her how overjoyed everyone was to have them hanging in classrooms.

“I think that’s the thing that stuck with me the most,” said Lange.

Our personal favourite is the gelato dog.

 

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Edible Pets is a passion project for Lange and she’s going to keep doing it until she runs out of inspiration or demand. 

So far that hasn’t happened, and she’s excited to keep working with clients throughout 2022.