Not one of our cats, this time, but one of the many that visit our tiny cottage garden. This one often nests in the top of our ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) and can sleep up there for hours. (Click on all photos to embiggen/bigify).
Tag Archive | cat
The photographer’s assistant
To photograph the vintage jewellery I sell in my Etsy shop, I use the windowsill in our bedroom as my studio. It faces south-west, so gets the best of the sun on offer to our dark old cottage. I prefer photos that are taken in natural light, and so am limited by our gloomy winter weather in the times I can successfully take photos. But whenever I do, there is always one constant: Ballou, my photographer’s assistant.
Ballou in her natural habitat: on her (our) bed.
As soon as I get the gear for my photographing together (the board from an old flower press, some sheets of A4 white paper, some blu tack and an old kilt pin), she’s alert and ready to go. She’ll jump on to the windowsill next to my set-up, and oversee proceedings. Every single time.
Had enough now.
Thank goodness for the cropping facility in my photo editing software, because there’s often a paw (or even a sniffing nose) in shot.
She’s even managed to sneak into a couple of the shots I have used in my shop. Here she is reflected on the back of a fabulous N E From amethyst necklace:
Mmmm, comfy: Part 4
Ballou often sits like this:
Mmmm, comfy.
She can spend long periods perched in this way. Strange creature.
Mmmm, comfy: Part 3
This was taken about ten years ago, when Hecate (aka The Humbug, Wabsy, The Piglet, Heckington Schmeckworth, The Wabulizer, Heckers, Tubsy, and any number of other nicknames) was fairly young and keen on finding herself comfy, already-warmed nesting spots …
She only did this a couple of times, but luckily I was on hand to record it. I don’t know whose dignity comes off worse—Hecate’s, or Chap’s. I mean, look at those slippers …
Hecate in her pant hammock. Mmmm, comfy.
Favourite websites: Kittenwar
Kittenwar is another of my favourite websites. It’s a real time sink if you are a cat lover (like me): once you start looking it’s hard to stop.
Basically photos of two kittens/cats are shown side by side, and they ‘do battle’ as you vote for the cutest. The ‘winningest’ kittens and their stats are listed (hint: take a photo with your kitten’s paws and tubby tummy in full shot and you’re in with a chance), as are the ‘losingest’ (hint: if you have a sphinx or angular-headed Siamese, your darling is going to be on this list …)
I put up a photo of one of our two fudsies, Ballou, on 12 January 2006, and in those eight and a half years she has done battle 4,235 times. Her stats are a pretty steady 49% won, 39% lost and 13% drawn. I think she’s the cutest thing ever in the photo I entered, but that’s because I know she’s enjoying having her ears rubbed and is not being tortured, as it rather looks like …
Ballou. Kittenwar warrior. Not being tortured, honest.
Favourite websites: iknowwhereyourcatlives.com
Oh lordy. Now I am going to get drawn into the wormhole of Catblivion.
Catblivion. You are powerless to resist.
A new website called iknowwhereyourcatlives.com features over a million cats, located Google Earth-style to their actual locations. The site’s maker Owen Mundy, an art professor at Florida State University, has taken photos of cats that have been uploaded on to photo sharing websites such as Flickr, Twitpic and Instagram, and used the metadata on these photos (which includes the latitude and longitude of where the photos were taken) to create this cat cyberstalker’s heaven.
There’s also a ‘random cat’ button. The very first one I got was a tiger in the City of Des Moines Blank Park Zoo. Too cool! He’s lying in snow and he looks like he’s got conjunctivitis in one eye. See, I’m already fretting about teh kittehs.
The second was of a lovely ?Bengal cat who lives in Finland.
And now I’m fretting even more—this is also a catnapper’s little black book with knobs on. But maybe I’m just a cynical old bag. Time to click random cat again and de-stress. Kitteh in Gold Coast Australia helps …
Kitteh in the Gold Coast, Australia.
They also have a Kickstarter to get funds to cover the web hosting for the first year. So far it’s on $775 of a $2,500 target; that’s 16 days left to meet the target.
Mmmm, comfy: Part 2
Here’s Ballou. I know it looks like she’s being tortured, but she’s zenning out while she’s having her ears scratched. This photo was taken about 9 years ago, and she hasn’t sat like this since. Strange creature. I love the way she looks like she’s kicking back in an easy chair—beer and takeaway just out of shot to the right.
Ballou. She was enjoying this, honest.
Mmmm, comfy.
The Humbug at her repose.
Now I know why the cyclamen in that particular pot failed to flourish …