Kitties

My little break from Creative Splurges has been a bit longer than I originally planned. I’ve used the opportunity to go through my archive and pull together a couple of long-overdue collection posts – that is, posts connected by theme, rather than by virtue of being the result of a single photo trip. I have a few series of photo collections reoccurring on this site: Random Gems, Instagram and Portraits. The former two are more frequently updated; the former is an altogether less common occurrence, it’s been over two years since the last one of those. Of the collection posts I’ve been editing, the next portraits post is one and will be along in due course; the other is one I anticipate becoming a new series in a similar vein, and is indeed the very post you’re currently reading.

Much like Portraits, in which I archive a bunch of the random images of people I take along the way, Kitties is a selection of the random photographs of my cats that I shoot from time to time. Some of them I’ve released in sets, such as New Kittens or Freddie’s First Day Out. But sometimes I just grab a couple of shots of one of the cats whilst I’m otherwise minding my own business, like this shot of Zelda in our living room.

And also this great shot of her looking less than pleased with me.

Much like the portraits, these shots are sometimes one-off, or part of a random batch. So, I put them aside and collect them, until eventually that collection bursts at the seams and you get a post out of it.

When I first hired the 50mm f/1.4 lens I later bought, I made sure to test it on the cats. Freddie was the first.

I also photographed Cookie, who is generally much less cooperative about such things.

One of Freddie’s favourite spots is on the back of my computer chair. It’s sometimes a nice distraction from failing to write a post or square eyes from editing images to photograph him in his natural habitat.

I’ve shot Freddie there several times – the ones above were of an evening, this next batch are from during daylight, which gives much better lighting coming through the window.

During the grey and soggy Christmas break, I took the time to photograph our cats whilst they played outside. This was one of the first times I got to try out the f/1.4 on moving targets.

Freddie at this point was only just over a year old, and is still full of seemingly boundless kitten energy. This time it was Zelda on the receiving end, although apparently all it took was a small sidestep to completely throw off his pouncing game.

Eventually Freddie left Zelda alone to wander the world.

Of course, Freddie was still on the prowl.

Although sometimes, ‘on the prowl’ turned more into ‘on the slink’.

When he walks the undergrowth however, Freddie looks to be the wildest of cats (in fact this couldn’t be further from reality).

I’m slightly ashamed to admit that when we were at the pet store one day we found and immediately bought a clip-on tie for a cat collar. There is only one cat that is cooperative enough to let us get away with such a thing.

I’m so sorry, Freddie. But you must admit, he does look proper and businesslike in his tie.

He doesn’t look entirely happy.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.”

Almost completing the businesscat look, I managed to get a shot of Freddie looking out of the window like he was about to deliver a harsh lesson on the realities of business to a subordinate (presumably me, in this case).

We actually kept the tie on him for about a week before the guilt got too strong and we took it off.

I often photograph my cats in batches, as they’ll come along and distract me from whatever I should be doing at the time – like Zelda when I was editing some of the earlier images in this post. She clearly wasn’t impressed by them.

Still, it gave me the chance to photograph her whilst I had her attention.

I didn’t keep her attention for long.

Most often when I’m working at my desk it’s Freddie who comes to distract me – usually by trying to chew through my computer’s power cables which is not particularly photogenic and requires a prompt response. Sometimes, though, he does rest looking cute when he’s not trying to electrocute himself.

I actually feel quite guilty, because there is one cat missing from all of the pictures in this post. Rambow is as much a part of our lives as all our other kitties, it just seems that whenever he’s doing something that’s worthy of being photographed my nearest camera is my phone, which means the photographs end up on Instagram and then in an Instagram collection post. So just to redress the balance, I’ll end with a cute shot of him.