cat – Page 66

Samwise

Sam and our oldest cat Scout used to sleep on me every night and I’d fall asleep to the sounds of their purrs as the two friends snuggled in the darkness. Scout died almost a year ago and it’s been a tough year for Sam without her. Even many months after her death he was tense and easily disturbed but he has started to relax more and more, and even gets playful at times. He curled up on me as I watched football this fall, but he only sometimes joins me at night, but at least now he sometimes purrs with abandon when he does come. I don’t know if we’ll ever fully get back the happy-go-lucky snuggle fiend he once was, but time is slowly healing his wounds.

While he’s worn this bewildered expression many times over the past year, this picture is from a year and a half ago when Scout was alive and well. He had been sleeping on our bed and the noise of the camera woke him, which he was understandably not too happy about. Thankfully now I have a quieter camera for shots like these.

Boo, Stealer of Beds

Our master dog bed stealer on Christmas Eve. My wife made this bed years ago out of pillows when we first got our dog Ellie. It is also a favorite of our cat Sam who likes the crevices the pillows create.

Boo at One

We don’t know Boo’s birthday but he was probably a little over one year old when I took this picture of him as he snuggled in my lap in early December. He’s doubled in weight since we got him but more importantly, the once terrified little fellow is now a happy part of our family.

I got the Canon EOS M mirrorless camera specifically for pictures like this, the little snapshots that won’t mean much to most but mean a lot to me. Composing through the screen instead of a viewfinder meant I could put the camera where I wanted it, so the camera could be at Boo’s eye level instead of mine. The compact 22mm pancake lens is also surprisingly good, although the lack of image stabilization in either the body or the lens limits how much I use it.

The Aftermath of an Epic Belly Rub

You can tell Emma is enjoying a belly rub when she extends one of her front legs high into the air, then lets it slowly fall as she collapses into a puddle of happiness.

The Endlessly Bendy Boo

This is Boo at the end of August, he was about 9 months old and had been with us for just under two months. His sleeping position didn’t look comfortable to me but it was one of his favorites. He was skinny enough then to pull it off but it’s not so easy now that he’s grown to full-size.

Em in the Window

Emma watches the world go by outside the dining room picture window.

The Bed Thief

While Sam would occasionally sleep in one of Ellie’s beds, particularly the homemade one, the thieving of dog beds began in earnest in late July. Coincidentally, this is also when Boo was given free reign of the house. This is Boo on his first day out after a couple of weeks in isolation in my wife’s office in the basement. That week began his gradual introduction into the house at large, we’d let him out for a while but at night or when we were away we still kept him isolated.

Boo was shy and nervous when we adopted him and you could see on his face how exploring the house and meeting the pets was both exciting and exhausting for him, so we paced his introduction even slower than normal. Several times on this first day he’d go up and explore the ground level and meet the other pets and then come back down to Ellie’s dog bed for a little rest. The bed was right outside my wife’s office so he could enjoy a taste of his newfound freedom and yet easily scoot back in to his comfort zone if needed.

He showed little fear of Ellie from the start, and for her part, she was nonplussed by the arrival of the little fellow. So when he stole her bed, she laid down beside it on the hard floor, making life a little easier for the kitten as he began to understand what it meant to be home.

Spooning

Peace, love, & understanding.

HypnoCat

Don’t look directly into his eyes!

Anxious

We kept Boo isolated from the other pets in his first days with us by putting him in my wife’s large office in the basement and, since it doesn’t have a door, blocking the large opening into the room with a long piece of plywood. These pictures are from his second day with us, up top you can see him sleeping under the far corner of the futon, which for him was progress as he spent much of those early days hiding completely out of sight behind the desk.

Boo was already anxious and stressed from his weeks at the shelter and adjusting to a new home wasn’t going to be easy for the shy little fellow. But he was anxious in another way too — anxious to meet the other pets. The plywood blocked the exit but he could still hear and smell the pets on the other side, so right from the get go we had to be quick when entering or leaving the room, as a little black-and-white shadow might follow underfoot.