Cooper.

This koala cloth bag is made for the daily grind: the market run, the library books going back, the fruit, the bread, whatever turns up. Cooper suits it, because his practical side is the one that shows most. On top of the radio, he spends half the day running errands and making deliveries around town: someone who hauls things here and there without making a fuss about it.

In the portrait you only see the friendly face, a koala with big ears and a wide black nose, with the look of a calm soft toy. The rest of it, what he does, how his day starts before dawn, I tell in his story, it won't fit on a piece of cloth. The bag gives you the good humour on show; the rest lives elsewhere.

Here's a koala fact that makes me smile and that fits Cooper to a tee: the fur on their backside is much denser than the fur on the rest of the body. That patch works like a cushion, and that's why they can spend hours sitting in the fork of a branch without moving, perfectly comfy. An animal built at the factory to be comfortable staying still.

On a tote it fits like a glove: it's an object with no pretensions, the kind that puts up with daily use and asks for nothing. You sling it over your shoulder, fill it, empty it, and do the same the next day. A friendly koala up front and the town, unseen, behind. If you like how it works, I've got the rest of the Animal Kinhood bags with other characters from the same family.