cat – Page 58

In Which Boolie Destroys the World

Our cats Boo and Trixie play with an old leather shoelace — It was a major effort to get Boo to accept Trixie, but eventually he not only grew to tolerate her but now even enjoys playing with her. Here they’re goofing around with an old leather shoelace.

A few weeks back I had the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. The earth was going to be destroyed if I didn’t kill Boo and Trixie. They didn’t just have to die, they had to die at my hands. I learned from my mentor that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few — or the one — and since their young lives were forfeit no matter what I did, I agreed to do it. I picked them up and held them in my hands. They gave no resistance.

But I couldn’t do it. I would give my life but I wouldn’t take theirs.

I don’t remember anything else, so presumably the earth was destroyed by whatever malevolent force threatened it. Sorry about that.

A couple of weeks later I had the gentlest nightmare I’ve ever had, consisting of me walking around with my pants pockets overstuffed with pennies. That was the entirety of the horror of the dream, me walking around with jingly-jangly pockets weighed down with worthless currency. As much as I hate pennies, that’s a pretty easy cross to bear.

The Hunger Gaze

One of the things I love about the Canon M is how quiet and unobtrusive it is, which makes it a lot easier to take pictures of the pets without alarming them — despite what Sam’s appearance might suggest. The reason his eyes are wide open and his ears pinned back is that it was nearly dinner time, and he heard a noise downstairs and was at full alert to determine if he was about to be fed, with his ears angled back to pick up any noise coming from beyond the door. He had been curled up in my lap and kept hinting that it was time to be fed, starting about two hours before his actual dinner time. That’s Trixie back there on the bed, we were all hanging out in the room with the air conditioner with the door cracked open so the cats can come and go. Another nice thing about the M is I could put it down by my side to take the picture, so that I could include not just Sam’s hilarious expression (he was staring at the wall, not at me), but also my legs to show he was curled up on my lap, Trixie as a reminder we were all up there, and the slightly open door to show the real reason he was on Red Alert.

This record-shattering summer gave us one last weekend of cruel, hot weather and we had to retreat to the bedroom once again, but this picture is from a month ago. The weather was much cooler today and should stay nice from here on out until we are firmly in fall’s embrace.

Sunshine Sam

A break in the heat allowed us to open the windows during the day, so Sam took advantage to climb to the top of the cat tree to enjoy both fresh air and sunshine.

Lazy Weekend

Not the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, spent much of it with at least one of the cats (and sometimes all three) curled up on me. Sometimes I may have joined them in a nap. Saturday I spent much of the day in our air-conditioned room as the high winds and occasional rain made it hard to keep the windows open and the house was still pretty hot from the past heat wave. Today brought more (much needed) rain but less wind so we could keep most of the windows open, but the wind had stirred something up that upset my sinuses as I was a bit loopy and woozy today.

This picture of a sleepy Sam in my lap is from this afternoon, but he’s in the exact same spot as I write this late at night. I held the camera down at his eye level and over to the side so my legs and feet would be visible, emphasizing that he was curled up in my lap. The ability to move the camera away from my eye is my favorite thing about mirrorless cameras, I do it constantly for my pet pictures. It’s not a stable way to hold the camera though, which is why I’ve been thinking of switching to a camera system that builds stabilization into the camera.

The Angel & The Stained Glass

I loved Boo’s angelic look as he watched birds outside our picture window, with stained glass windows hanging behind him. I believe the windows may be homemade, they were there when we bought the house, I like the flair they add to the room.

Beat the Heat (and Smoke)

An unusually hot and dry summer in the Pacific Northwest has led to many troublesome wildfires, and the winds shifted this weekend bringing smoke from fires far to the east into Portland. We kept the windows closed to minimize the smoke coming into the house, and spent the entire weekend in our bedroom with the portable air conditioner keeping things nice and cool.

I took a quick picture of Ellie in her dog bed and Boo behind her in the cat bed, Sam was with my wife on the bed and Trixie I think was playing elsewhere in the house. We keep the bedroom door mostly closed to keep the cool air in, but open enough that the cats can come and go as they please. When Ellie walks in she swings the door wide open with a dramatic swoop of her head. It makes me laugh every time, our sweet-natured goofball making such a grand entrance.

Gamera vs. Emma

Emma was sitting on my love seat and I put her favorite toy beside her so I’d have a portrait of the two of them. She loved this turtle and would sometimes carry it with her around the house. Sometimes she’d run with it, murmuring as she went, I suppose pretending she was on a great hunt.

Or maybe she was just a big Gamera fan.

I didn’t sleep well for months after she died, having recurring bad dreams. Not nightmares in the traditional sense, but the one that occurred most often was me visiting my favorite refuge in my car and I’d end up accidentally driving into the water. The car would slowly fill with water as I drove it around trying to find a place to get back onto solid ground, but I wasn’t worried about drowning, and my steering wheel could somehow direct the car even when floating, but I was worried about ruining both the car and the refuge yet didn’t know what to do. Being in an unfamiliar and deteriorating situation was the common refrain to all the dreams.

It’s not too surprising that I was haunted by such dreams, given that she slowly slipped through our fingers even though no tests identified why she was sick, and she died even though we tried everything we could. The nightmares slowly faded as I came to grips with her death.

I haven’t been out hiking since she died apart from a quick trip to Ridgefield right afterwards, initially from a mix of not feeling up to it emotionally or physically. But as I began to get more sleep, and as time healed wounds, the desire to get back out on the trails slowly returned. Unfortunately some chronic stomach problems also returned, and I even stayed home from work today, but hopefully with the return of cooler weather things will return to normal (it’s been a blistering summer here in Portland and heat is one of the things that can trigger it).

I’ll start planning my fall hiking trip this weekend, so the Tom Bihn travel bag I ordered in December will finally get to come out of its box and be put to good use.

Trixie Finds a Loophole in the ‘No Cats on the Counter’ Rule

Clever girl.

Decision Time

Back in June I pre-ordered Sony’s just announced A7R II mirrorless camera, guessing that its ground-breaking features might otherwise make it hard to come by in the early days, but also knowing that I had plenty of time to cancel before it shipped in August. I got an email from Amazon that the camera is going to ship in the middle of the week, the first date they are available in the US, so it’s time to decide if I should cancel or not.

I expected there would be plenty of reviews by now to help me make up my mind (the camera is already shipping in the UK for crying out loud) but the non-disclosure agreements must not be up until later in the week because there has been little information available since the initial announcement. I think Sony is even holding a press event here in Portland on Wednesday but reclusive cat bloggers must not have been high on their invite list.

I’ll sleep on it but I’m leaning towards canceling the order given the expense (I’d switch all of my non-wildlife shooting to Sony’s system). But I’ve been flip-flopping all over the place the past week as while there is much I like about my little Canon M, there is much I don’t, and the Sony solves some of my biggest complaints with the M.

For example, I grabbed the M this afternoon when I saw Boo stretched out and about to fall asleep on top of the cat tree, as it nicely contrasted how differently he sleeps than tidy little Scout who preceded him, but I had to stand scrunched in the corner of the room with the camera near my heart, snapping pictures before he changed his pose. The camera’s buffer fills quickly so I couldn’t take a shot when he yawned, not that the slow autofocus could have tracked him, but without image stabilization even this static shot yielded a bunch of unsharp pictures and thankfully one sharp one.

The Sony has built-in image stabilization, a high-res full frame sensor that would allow faster shutter speeds, is more responsive, and has a much better autofocus system. It can also do nice video (4K even).

But that price tag …

Little Lover

Trixie is probably a little over a year old now and weighs in at about 7 pounds. She’ll fill out a bit more with time but the vet’s prediction when we adopted her is proving itself true, she’s going to be a pretty small cat. She’s our first tortoiseshell, some claim that torties have a lot of attitude but so far our little lover has been sweet and affectionate and particularly enjoys rubbing noses. Fair warning, biting them too.