After Dark All Cats Become Leopards

Our cat Boo sleeps slumped over the cat bed next to a clock that says 'After Dark All Cats Become Leopards'

We discovered early on that Boo had no bones, this was a common sleeping pose a couple of months after we adopted him in 2013. The clock with the translation of a proverb attributed to the Zuni I bought at an art fair in Salem years ago. Though it no longer works I keep it out as I bought it for the art not the clock.

Looking Up at Scout

A portrait of Scout as I look up at her as she sits on the dresser in our bedroom in our house in Portland, Oregon in May 2007

Lots of exciting camera news around this time as Nikon and Canon finally get serious about mirrorless cameras. I’m thankful for the capabilities of modern cameras, they make it so much easier to take even simple portraits like this one of my beloved Scout at six years old. But even my basic setup of 2007, the Canon 20D and 24-85mm lens, was so much more advanced than the film setup I started with in the 1990’s. Whatever camera you have, shoot the things you love with it, the memories will mean far more than whatever technical flaws exist in the image.

The Empty House

Our cats Templeton and Scout on the hardwood floors of our empty living and dining rooms

Templeton and Scout on the empty hardwood floors of our living and dining rooms in our house in Portland in 2004. We weren’t moving in, we had been there a couple of years. We weren’t moving out, we’d be there fourteen more. We just never had furniture in the front two rooms of the house the entire time we lived there. It was a bigger house than we needed but all of the smaller houses we looked at weren’t as good a fit in other ways. For all of that this house was much smaller than our previous home in Keizer which was ridiculously large for what we needed but again in other ways was the best home for us from what was available. That house was completely carpeted while this one had hardwood throughout but both cats quickly made adjustments to avoid running into cabinets and walls.

Searching for Meaning

Our cat Boo looks out the picture window of the dining room of our house in Portland, Oregon

Boo looks out from the picture window in the dining room of our old house in Portland. This morning I noticed the door of one of the kitchen cabinets was moving on its own and suddenly out popped Boo. He quickly figured out how to open the cabinets after we moved here and one has become a favorite. Look inside and you’ll see he’s made a cozy space surrounded by reading materials like Catwoman comics and the writings of Heraclitus. I need to put an end to it because you’re not getting back to sleep when someone wakes you up at 3 a.m. to ask you why you cannot step twice in the same river.